Brave: Pixar's 'dark' new action-heroine flick

The video: In Pixar's 16 years, and throughout 12 beloved, animated films, from Toy Story to Up, the movie-making powerhouse has never made a feature with a female protagonist at its center. That will change, at last, with next year's release of Brave, the story of a defiant Scottish princess named Merida who wields a bow and arrow, and a fiery red mane. The trailer for the animation giant's first fairy tale, which played with Cars 2 over the weekend, went up online earlier this week, and offers a glimpse of a movie that's a marked departure from your typical Pixar flick. (See the video below.)

The reaction:It's great that Pixar is "finally" doing a movie with a sole female protagonist, says Kyle Buchanan at New York. "But most important, it looks gorgeous, and it's not a sequel." Yeah, this seems like a whole new direction for Pixar, says Ben Child at Britain's Guardian. The animation darling's first fairy tale supposedly has a "dark, Brothers Grimm edge," and by the looks of the trailer, and its "distinct muted color palette," it's a "million miles away from the glossy look of Toy Story or Cars." Indeed, says Adam B. Vary at Entertainment Weekly. Brave "looks about as different from the hurried rattle and bright din of this summer's Pixar adventure as one could imagine." The short trailer "evokes both the 1995 Best Picture winner Braveheart, and the work of legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki." Watch it:

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