Within the week, not one, not two, but THREE movie trailers have come out that feature princess protagonists: Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror Mirror (the kid-friendly version of Snow White, apparently), and now Brave, with Pixar's first female main character. So far it looks like Kristen Stewart's princess, in SWatH, seems the closest to a "warrior princess" type, but all three heroines are shown wielding a weapon (double-bladed sword, epee or foil, and bow and arrow, respectively).
Out of the three I'm the most excited for Pixar's movie-- and how could I not be? They don't just make films, they craft them. And I'm pretty sure this is the first time seeing a main character who is a ginger and has massive amounts of enviably voluminous and curly hair. I don't know if the source material has the character thus coiffed, but it's kinda gutsy that they didn't just go with the typical long and flowy route with this princess. I can't think of a single Disney princess with curly hair (The Princess and the Frog's Maddie sorta had some texture in her hair but she's a frog for half the movie, so I'm not counting her). I can only imagine how difficult it was to animate Merida's hair. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about this movie for a lot of reasons, but...hair! My goodness! So cool.
Anyway some other recent examples of offbeat princesses:
- Hanna (2011). Okay, so the titular character is not a real princess, has no royal blood, but this film is very much a fairy tale, complete with mystical powers, a bloodthirsty witch, betrayal...it's like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, and even makes overt references to the brothers Grimm. Hanna has the "skin as white as snow" part down, and maybe even a vengeful mother...
- Tangled (2010?) I haven't seen this, but I know it's a Rapunzel story and that the princess wields a mighty frying pan as her weapon. Definitely offbeat.
- Black Swan (2010). Okay, "offbeat" isn't the optimal word to describe Natalie Portman's character; "tortured" would be closer. One could say that she's sheltered and coddle in the way that a little princess might be, the way that Disney's Princess Jasmine was (minus the pet tiger, bumbling father, lecherous vizier, etc.)
I'm of two minds about this phenomenon, regarding the three movies from the beginning of this post. On the one hand, these girls are all white/European and based off western European tales, and they're all, well, princesses. There are equally interesting and filmable stories about women and girls in non-European folk and fairy tales who are not born of royal blood. But on the other hand, these are all princesses who fight, who aren't just dainty damsels in distress, and they challenge gender expectations as royalty and as young women. And I'm a sucker for this kind of story, and genuinely look forward to watching all three movies.
This is the first time I saw the trailer for Brave. I had heard about the female protagonist, and was excited Pixar was going back to doing originals. However I'm getting a distinct, but perhaps inadvertant, How to Train Your Dragon Vibe from this trailer. Unlike HTTYD it seems ALL the characters in this one have Scottish voice actors, or at least accents, when HTTYD only had two. I'll reserve judgment till I see if of course. Pixar is still the top of the heap in animation. But with the Success of Kung Fu Panda 2, and Puss in Boots Dreamworks could very well knock them off their pedestal.
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