We talk to the directors of Pixar's new animated feature Brave about what inspired the Scottish fairy tale and why it is so different from the revered studio's other movies.
Pixar is easily Hollywood's most successful studio, with 12 massive hits out of 12 in 17 years: three in the Toy Story series, plus Finding Nemo, Up, WALL.E, Ratatouille and The Incredibles among them. These films have amassed revenues totalling an astonishing US$7.2 billion (Dh26.4bn) between them.
So you might think Pixar would stick to the tried and tested, repeating story formulas that have worked already. Why not? It seems the whole world loves them.
But, remarkably, the 13th Pixar film breaks new ground in several respects. It's a gamble, and if it seems a brave one, that's appropriate: Brave is the new film's title.
How is Brave so different from its predecessors? Let us count the ways. First, it's a fairy tale of sorts - and until now Pixar has been content to leave fairy tales to its parent company Disney. Also, it's set in the past - in 10th-century Scotland, to be precise. And its world - the moors, glens and lakes of misty Scotland - is a recognisably human one.
Two even bigger differences remain. There is no attempt on the part of Brave's production team to make the film seem American; almost all the voice cast are Scots, speaking in their native accents. And above all, this is the first Pixar film with a female lead character - the teenage Princess Merida.
But forget the sort of princess you usually find in classic animation (Sleeping Beauty) - or this year's Hollywood hits (Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman). Merida, voiced by Kelly Macdonald (No Country for Old Men, Boardwalk Empire) is a feisty, rebellious girl with an unruly mass of flaming red hair. She's an expert at archery and escapes from the royal court when her mother Elinor (Emma Thompson) tries to arrange a marriage for her with one of three inadequate young lords competing for her hand.
"Merida's journey is a coming-of-age story," says Brave's story supervisor Brian Larsen. "She likes her life just like it is. That's so different from the typical 'princess' story where a woman is waiting for a man to change her life."
The film's co-director and screenwriter Brenda Chapman adds: "I think it's a really sad state. We're in the 21st century and there are so few stories geared towards girls, told from a female point of view.
"It was absolutely my intention to subvert the princess role. There is no prince in my movie. And my princess is a true teenager, in that her real 'problem' - or so she thinks - is her own mother." And that mother-daughter relationship lies at the story's heart.
In truth, Merida is as tough and resourceful as any boy her age. The film's producer Kathleen Sarafian notes that Pixar felt it was important that Brave not be mistaken for a movie for girls - hence the title, which carries no gender associations.
It was also a deliberate decision on Pixar's part to accentuate the story's Scottishness, rather than hide it or dilute it. Fortunately, there was a wide range of talented Scots actors to choose from. Emma Thompson's mother is Scottish, and she spent much of her childhood there. The Glaswegian actor and comedian Billy Connolly was a perfect fit for Merida's raucous, jokey father Fergus. The director Mark Andrews is of Scottish descent and is fascinated by his ancestral homeland. (He went on honeymoon there.) He loves the country's history, mythology and landscapes and he and Chapman went on a research mission in the Scottish Highlands before shooting. "Scotland evokes mystery and magic for me," he says. "It's an enchanted place."
Pixar's animators went to great lengths to get the look of the country - its hills, its unique light, its forests and even the moss that covers much of the ground in remote areas - just right. "We took a team on a tour to show them what we wanted to represent," says Sarafian. "They thought it was magical. They loved it. They didn't want to get back on the bus."
All together, then, Brave is a high-stakes risk for Pixar. Is the gamble paying off? It would seem so. In the US, box-office takings cruised past the $200m mark within a month of its opening. Another success for the Pixar hit factory.
Brave in 3D will open in UAE cinemas tomorrow.
Director's notes
The original idea for Brave came from Brenda Chapman, who is known as one of the leading female animators in Hollywood.
For Chapman, the story of the rebellious Merida was inspired by a real relationship in her own home. "I was dealing with a very headstrong daughter," she says. "She was so passionate and so strong - and she was only four at the time. I thought, 'What's she going to be like as a teenager?'"
Chapman says she then started to imagine a fairy tale "with a working mother and a really wilful daughter whose strength you don't want to squash - but sometimes you do want to squash it a little! But in the end, it wasn't a fairy tale at all. Brave turned out to be more of an epic action-adventure".
After six years of working on Brave, Chapman was controversially replaced as the director by Mark Andrews in 2010, but was later reinstated as the co-director. Still, there's no doubt that she feels a connection with the princess she created. Chapman herself has red hair - though it's nowhere near as wild and curly as Merida's.