Just lucky?!? Pixar has made 14 feature films and only one is non objectively bad every studio messes up and if you hate Pixar so much why are you reading this?

“Brave” felt shallow and rushed. The characters weren’t developed at all beyond being broad archetypes, their motivations were poorly defined, and the story didn’t have any meat to it. It might have worked better if it had taken place over a longer period of time, but I had trouble buying the idea that having the mother turn into a bear for a couple of days was enough to heal whatever rift existed between mom and daughter.
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As for “Monsters University”, it was a generic story that could have existed in any universe. In fact, I’m almost certain this exact same plot has been used in other films, where a bunch of misfits prove their worth against all odds by winning some competition or other. It was a by-the-numbers coming-of-age story.
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Both films also suffered from a dull sense of humor. I know that Pixar doesn’t make comedies, but their films have always been laugh-out-loud funny. “Brave” and “Monsters University” just weren’t particularly funny even though they tried to be, so was nothing to lift the material or make it memorable. Like the essay here says, compare “Cars II”, “Brave”, and “Monsters University” to earlier Pixar classics like “Finding Nemo”, “Toy Story” (all three of them), “Ratatouille”, “The Incredibles”, and there’s no contest. It’s like they were made by completely different studios.

I can’t speak for everyone, but for me MU was a shell of Monsters Inc, and it just felt too forced 90% of the time. If there was no Monsters Inc, MU would be a terrible, cliche film. BECAUSE there is Monsters Inc, MU is upgraded to reasonable.

As for Brave, I honestly can hardly remember it at this point. Which is a good indication of how I felt about it, I suppose, since I can still nearly recite all of A Bug’s Life even having not watched it in years. I wrote a full review when it released that detailed the things I felt were wrong with it (found here: http://www.skwigly.co.uk/a-brave-2012-review/ ) but to summarize, the whole thing felt so familiar that it was like I had already seen the film 100 times, and it bored me. I also felt very little connection to the self-centered main character (a feeling familiar when I watched Treasure Planet) and the three little brothers felt like they were animated out of a whole different film they were so spastic and weightless.

As tt said above (below?), both films are fine. It isn’t that people “don’t” like them (though I might go to “not like” regarding Brave). It’s merely that they aren’t nearly as incredible as the early Pixar films, when story was indeed king and they were hungry to prove themselves in a way they just aren’t now.

If by “pretty good movie” you mean “an animated mess” then I absolutely agree. I’ve never screamed so loud at a film in my life. The only explanation I can muster is they must have DONE character model sheets but someone left a window open and they all blew into the river, so every scene the animators just guessed what the characters should look like.

Pixar unoriginal? Well if they are unoriginal, all of the others must not know the definition of original.

Yeah, because I was gonna comment on it, but since this IS Rotoscopers and everyone here does research, it was clear it was to make a joke out of it.

That makes sense