Brave: C

Scott and I saw Brave yesterday. Scott convinced me to go because it was a Pixar movie and not merely a Disney princess movie (although technically it is). I forgot that I actually like Pixar (The Incredibles, WALL-E, Up, Finding Nemo, etc.).

The 3D CGI movie was visually beautiful and stylized. However, it didn't feel like an adult Pixar movie to me. It seemed too cartoonish. The castle in an enchanted forest setting just seemed too Disney cliche. Worse, the story took an unexpected turn becoming a sentimental mother-daughter movie with slap-stick animals thrown in.

A "C" rating is probably too harsh, but in terms of Pixar films, Brave just didn't wow me like their other films. It certainly isn't a bad film and I don't regret seeing it. However, it seemed a bit Disney average to me. And while it was beautifully done, the preceding animated short, La Luna, is more memorable to me.

Prometheus: B

Scott, Sheena, and I saw the much anticipated Alien prequel Prometheus. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of the Alien franchise. I never completely watched the original 1978 Alien although I've seen portions of it on TV. I only saw one of the later sequels which pretty much affirmed that the franchise is more horror movie than sci-fi.

It seemed the original premise of the Alien franchise was to set a horror movie in a gritty, realistic industrial space setting. The aliens were the horror movie monsters pushed to an extreme courtesy of H. R. Giger's gruesome imagination. Likewise, humanity is portrayed unsympathetically as a soulless corporation dispatches humans in harms way.

Prometheus starts off a bit more optimistically. Through the generosity of a corporate benefactor, humanity sets out for the noble goal of searching for the origins of life. And the aliens are discovered to actually not be that alien from humanity at all. While there are the usual horror movie cliches such as the doomed, expendable characters, Prometheus initially peaked my interest as the alien origins began to be revealed. Unfortunately, the movie builds up to a key scene, only to disappoint when the monsters are merely revealed to be monsters.

The movie then has the usual climatic action scene crescendo and the door is left open for a continuation. But I can't help but feel a little disappointed that story decided to dodge being a sci-fi movie and instead just went back to merely being a horror movie.