When I first found out that Merida would be part of the
Disney Princess line, I was wondering how Merida would fit in with the other
Disney Princesses. She’s so different from the other princesses. I now know how
and it is not good at all.
Disney completely messed around with her character design.
They made her hand drawn, which isn’t the problem since the other Disney
princesses, including Rapunzel (for the Disney Princess line, at least) are
hand drawn. This would help make Merida fit in with the rest. But Disney also
decided to screw up Merida’s body figure and made her thinner and “sexier”.
They also changed her face and made her eyes bigger. As if that’s not enough,
get a load of this: They put her in the dress that she HATED wearing in the
movie!
So pretty much, they made it so that kids who have never
heard of Brave would want to buy a Merida doll because she “looks pretty”. The
same goes for the other Disney princesses. Kids don’t care about the fact that
these are characters from movies, some possibly aren’t even aware of that. They
just buy the princess toys because they look pretty.
The fact that they put her in that dress, along with all of
the other character design changes completely depletes the purpose of having a
unique princess. You know, one that doesn’t care about her looks! It diminishes
Merida’s character to the smallest extent and makes her like any other Disney
princess. Her unique traits are gone in this design, and part of what makes
Merida such a lovable character is that uniqueness.
To me, Brave seemed like Pixar was intentionally trying to
make it so that Disney would have no idea how to make merchandise out of the
film and Merida. As if they were saying to Disney “Try and make crappy princess
toys out of THIS!”
Is the Disney merchandising division really desperate enough
to screw around a design of a lovable character and turn her into a cliché,
stereotypical princess when Merida’s intentions are specifically to break out
of her stereotype? I think we all know the answer to that.
Merida’s character design change has been getting tons of
complaints. Even from the creator of the story for Brave, and the first
director of the film, Brenda Chapman. She wrote a blog about it and an e-mail to Bob Iger, the president of Disney.
Brenda Chapman had a lot of difficulty when making this
film. She was originally the director, but got replaced, and then she left
Pixar, and now this! Brenda Chapman’s inspiration for the story of Brave was
her relationship with her daughter. It is a very personal film to her. Hearing
what they’re doing with Merida’s traits and how Brenda Chapman reacts to it is
really upsetting. I just wish Disney will realize that and recognize Merida’s
importance in film history.
It’s also upsetting to think of all the work the animators
and filmmakers did to perfect Merida’s character traits using her character
design to tell you about the character and making sure that her posture, facial
aspects, and body figure match the personality of Merida’s character through
the imagery. Hell, there was a whole team of animators just for her hair! Her hair is the sole representation of her
free spirit! Then you look at how the Disney merchandising team screws up the
design as if all that hard work never existed! It doesn’t pay respect to the
animators, filmmakers, the story, or the character that is Merida.
What are your thoughts on this?
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