Brother Bear
Short description
Brother Bear is set in a prehistoric North American wilderness where humans and animals share the land. Kenai, a young Inuit hunter, is impulsive and holds a deep grudge against bears after one of them kills his older brother Sitka. When Kenai kills a bear in revenge, the ancestral spirits punish him by turning him into the very animal he despises. Stripped of human speech and hunted by his remaining brother Denahi, who does not realize what has happened, Kenai must survive as a bear. On his journey he is joined by Koda, a talkative bear cub, along with the moose brothers Rutt and Tuke, and he gradually comes to see the world from a different perspective. The film is an animated family adventure from Walt Disney Feature Animation, released in 2003.
Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker directed; the screenplay is by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman and Lorne Cameron, and Chuck Williams produced. It was Blaise's first directorial credit, followed years later by Snow Bear. The voice cast includes Joaquin Phoenix as Kenai, Jeremy Suarez as Koda, Jason Raize as Denahi, D.B. Sweeney as Sitka, and Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as the moose pair. With a budget of around 128 million dollars, it took about 250 million dollars worldwide.
Audience response was warmer than the critical one: on IMDb it holds 6.9 out of 10 from roughly 136,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.3 out of 10 from about 5,900 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 5.6 out of 10 from 130 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- The names of some characters are actually the names of various settlements and geographical objects in Alaska and Canada. For example, Sitka and Kenai are the names of Alaskan cities, and Tanana is a tributary of the Yukon River.
- Kenai's line, “I don’t care how you and Binky found the biggest pine cone in the world,” did not exist in the script – the actor made a mistake during voice recording, and Koda’s response was improvised.
- According to the initial script, Grizz – a large adult bear resembling the wise bear Toga – was supposed to be Kenai's companion. However, this image could not convey the necessary emotional message to the audience, and as a result, Grizz was replaced by the cub Koda.
- The painting that Koda draws in one of the short episodes accompanying the end credits is Georges-Pierre Seurat's 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte'.
- Work on the animated film began in early 2002 by the Disney Feature Animation team. It is the third project for DFA after 'Mulan' and 'Lilo & Stitch'.
- Initially, the cartoon was titled "Bears." The animation team traveled to Alaska in the summer of 2000 to study Kodiak bears and Native American culture before starting work on the cartoon, in order to create the most realistic animation possible.
- The film features songs and music by Phil Collins, specifically written for it. In 1999, Collins composed music for Disney's "Tarzan" and received an Oscar for the song "You'll Be In My Heart."
- The characters Ratt and Tuke appeared at different times in a trailer for Pixar's "Finding Nemo," as well as in a public service announcement warning about turning off mobile phones in the cinema.
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