Really, did they make fun of Disney for doing fairytales? I thought it was mainly that they wanted to get away from the seven song setup and the “princess as a love interest” thing associated with Disney. Although, since Atta in A Bug’s Life is exactly that, I guess they were referring to human princesses.
About Merida, she is a good role model when it comes to defying societal norms that you disagree with, daring to be yourself, and also learning to accept and overcome your faults in order to become a better person. All of these take a lot of guts. The movie was not all about Elinor’s development and Merida teaching her to understand her standpoint, it was also about Merida’s development. They needed to learn from each other, and the intention was never for Merida to be a perfect person from the beginning. Like you said, she had her shortcomings and she needed to grow up, which she does during the course of the movie.
Now the movie isn’t completely original in all aspects but the mother-daughter relationship is still a relatively unexplored one, and it’s unusual for a princess movie not to feature a romantic sub-plot. Not to mention it’s based on an original idea, which almost none of Disney’s movies are.
However, I agree with you a bit on the character design issue. Merida is a classic fiery redhead with crazy hair to represent her wild, free-spirited personality, and Elinor being a traditionalist is shown by her brown hair and eyes (read: boring, close-minded and plain). Don’t get me wrong, I actually love Elinor, but as someone with brown hair and brown eyes I get insulted by these stereotypes. I wish at least the triplets could have had more of Elinor’s features to break the pattern, as they were mischievous, fun-loving characters. I love Merida’s hair and I wouldn’t want it to be changed, but I’d like the existing stereotypes to be balanced out with some broken ones.

I agree, I was sad that Merida had to become a Disney princess. I would like for Pixar to own its films and characters alone. Making her a princess also caused some problems with the redesign and though they usually get along, Pixar and Disney do have their creative differences and it shows up every now and then. I l think many just assume Brave is only a Disney movie and that’s a bit strange to me because it’s not a musical and the animation is done in a style that differs from that of Tangled and Frozen (personally, I prefer the Brave animation style).

I have to agree…though my main problem with Merida is the mind set behind her. The “all the other princesses were bad role models, but THIS is the well done one” idea. Even worse, Merida doesn’t even life up to what she is supposed to be. She is a huge step back to the princesses of the Renaissance era – which were great back then, because they ware a huge step forward from the classic princesses, but since then, Disney has developed further and presented us with layered and competent characters who have way better motivations that “I want mooooooooooore!”

I don’t know how I feel about her character. per se. I’ve only seen it once and don’t remember it that well, but I do remember that I wasn’t entirely excited with her character. I loved her voice actress’ work though.