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Brave (2012 film)

2012 animated film

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ126796
Source-derived summary

Brave is a 2012 American animated fantasy adventure film directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, and written by Andrews, Chapman, Steve Purcell, and Irene Mecchi. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, it stars the voices of Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin McKidd, and Craig Ferguson. Set in the highlands of Scotland, the film tells the story of Princess Merida of DunBroch (Macdonald) who defies an age-old custom, causing chaos in the kingdom by expressing the desire not to be betrothed. When Queen Elinor (Thompson), her mother, is turned into a bear, Merida must look within herself and find the key to saving the kingdom.

Brave features Pixar's first female protagonist and is their first film animated with a new proprietary animation system, called Presto. Originally titled The Bear and the Bow, the film was first announced in April 2008. Chapman, who had just wrapped up work as a story artist on Cars (2006), drew inspiration for the film's story from her relationship with her own daughter. Co-directing with Andrews, Chapman became Pixar's first female director of a feature-length film. To create the most complex visuals possible, Pixar completely rewrote their animation system for the first time in 25 years. Brave is the first film to use the Dolby Atmos sound format.

Editorial summary

“Brave (2012 film)” enters the record as 2012 animated film. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Brave, film and animated can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012, 2008, 2006—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—2012-06-22, 2012-08-02, 2012-08-31, 2012-06-10—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Brave, film and animated.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Brave (2012 film)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Brave, film and animated provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q126796. 4 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 5 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2008 and 2006.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Brave (2012 film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Brave (2012 film) primary sources, Brave (2012 film) archive and Brave research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Brave (2012 film)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Brave (2012 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.