Brave

If you’ve never given Brave a fair shot, 2012 is as good a year as any to fix that — Mark Andrews’s film has aged into something like a cult favorite. Even the marketing knew what it had: the tagline “Change your fate.” sets the mood before a single frame plays.

Strip away the craft and the premise is simple — In the mystical Scottish Highlands, Merida is the princess of a kingdom ruled by King Fergus and Queen Elinor. An unruly daughter and an accomplished archer, Merida one day defies a sacred custom of the land and inadvertently brings turmoil to the kingdom. In an attempt to set things right, Merida seeks out an eccentric old Wise Woman and is granted an ill-fated wish. Also figuring into Merida’s quest — and serving as comic relief — are the kingdom’s three lords: the enormous Lord MacGuffin, the surly Lord Macintosh, and the disagreeable Lord Dingwall. Kelly Macdonald takes the lead role and runs with it, while Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, Julie Walters make sure the margins of the story stay just as alive.

What makes Brave linger, though, isn’t just plot mechanics — it’s the ideas underneath. There’s a clear preoccupation with archer here, and it’s paired with bear in a way that gives the whole thing more staying power than a plot summary suggests. You can also feel kingdom and rebel working in the background, quietly shaping how later scenes land even when they’re not the explicit focus.

Part of what makes Brave work is how comfortably it sits at the intersection of adventure, animation, family and fantasy. Rather than picking one lane and staying in it, the film borrows tonal shifts from each label attached to it, which is exactly why it resists easy summary in a single sentence.

Mark Andrews’s handling of tone throughout Brave deserves particular credit — it would be easy for a film juggling this many ideas to feel scattered, but the direction keeps everything pointed in the same direction. The rest of the ensemble matters too — Billy Connolly, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane all get moments that push the story forward rather than just filling out the frame, which is more than you can say for a lot of films with casts this size.

At 93 minutes, it never overstays its welcome, moving with a confidence that a lot of longer films could learn from. Pixar produced the film, and the polish shows in every frame. Produced for roughly $185,000,000, Brave eventually pulled in $538,983,207 at the global box office, well beyond what anyone expected going in.

If you’re the kind of viewer who gravitates toward adventure films with something on their mind, Brave earns a spot on the list. Love it or merely admire it, Brave is hard to walk away from without an opinion — which, for an adventure film, is exactly the point. It’s a detail easy to miss on a first viewing of Brave, but it rewards anyone paying close attention. That kind of craftsmanship is easy to take for granted until you watch a lesser film try the same thing and fail. Little touches like that are why the film keeps finding new defenders long after its initial release.