Brother Bear

[Farerb]

Coming 10/12:

[Sotiris]

Before ‘Brother Bear’ was a story about brothers, it was a story about fathers and sons. Young Kenai butted heads with his father Chilkoot about his reverence for the Great Spirits. Panels and thumbnails from the film’s production.

Source: https://twitter.com/stevehatguy/status/ ... 1097979904

[PatchofBlue]

Today I learned about a 1988 movie called The Bear, and after reading the synopsis on Wikipedia, it struck me how similar Brother Bear's plot is to this movie's. Now, I'm not saying Disney definitely ripped it off nor does it spoil my enjoyment of Brother Bear, but the similarities are quite uncanny.

I suppose this now joins other potential rip-offs like The Lion King/Kimba and Atlantis/Nadia/Stargate.

I really enjoyed "The Bear" when I saw it in college, and I also noticed the similarities with Disney's film. This is one of those cases where I'd use the word "inspired" before "stolen." Part of the way that artists get inspired is by experiencing more art, and this idea of using two wild bears to explore this idea of brotherly love feels like ripe ground for artistic exploration.

A few changes stand out to me, beyond just the fact that one is animated and has actual talking and transforming animals, that show to me that Disney supplied its own creative material for the story:

-The setting is very different. There's literally like a few thousand years between the two films.

-The Bear is situated more from the perspective of the cub where Brother Bear is told from the viewpoint of the older bear.

-The older bear didn't need a redemption the same way that Kenai did--mostly because in "The Bear," the mother bear's death is purely an accident and was not at all caused by the older bear.

I also seem to remember "The Bear" has one or two dream sequences that read to me as the river sequence from Night of the Hunter meets the Pink Elephant segment from Dumbo, so it's not like the current of inspiration only runs a single direction.