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The trailer for “Brave” has just just been released. The movie features a defiant heroine who goes against her parents’ wishes and does what is considered to be a man’s job! How progressive! The film is being praised for being Pixar’s first movie with a female lead… but why is this praiseworthy? Welcome to the 1960s. To me this only demonstrates that every other Pixar film to date has been excessively male centric.

Being impressed with such a progressive character is incredibly outdated. Female leads in movies are great, and there are far too few, but praising a studio who hasn’t done this sooner is ludicrous. Pixar is not doing anything that other movies with it’s same target demographic haven’t done. Let’s look at recent Disney movies for comparison. Disney’s latest film, Tangled, had a female lead who was strong, defied convention, did her down thing and even kicked tons of ass, though with a frying pan. Brave seems like little more than a rehash of Mulan, itself from 1998. Are we really breaking new ground 13 years later by doing the exact same thing?