Brother Bear is a 2003 traditionally-animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on November 1, 2003, the forty-third animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. In the film, an Inuit boy pursues a bear in revenge for a battle that he provoked in which his oldest brother is killed. He tracks down the bear and kills it, but the Spirits, angered by this needless death, change the boy into a bear himself as punishment. Originally titled Bears, it was the third and final Disney animated feature produced primarily by the Feature Animation studio at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida; the studio was shut down in March 2004, not long after the release of this film in favor of computer animated features. A direct-to-video sequel, Brother Bear 2, followed in 2006.
Summary
Long ago in a post-ice age North America, there were three brothers named Kenai, Denahi, and Sitka. Denahi, the middle brother, and Sitka, the oldest, work hard. They think Kenai should work more and play less. Kenai, the youngest, hates bears because they fight for the same food, overtake the land, and ruin his coming-of-age ceremony. Each brother was given his own totem when they came of age: Sitka, the eagle of guidance and Denahi, the wolf of wisdom. At the ceremony, Kenai is presented with the bear of love. Kenai questions the totem he has been given: "You think love has anything to do with being a man?!"
When Sitka is killed in a battle with a bear that Kenai provoked, Tanana, the tribal shaman woman, officiates a funeral rite for Sitka. Afterward, Kenai throws away his totem and ignores the village teachings of brotherhood with animals. He sets out to hunt the bear for revenge and eventually kills it. Angered by Kenai's actions, the Great Spirits, through the spirit of Sitka, transform him into a bear while singing "Everything will become clear to you, when you see things through another's eyes." Unfortunately his other brother, who was pursuing Kenai to stop him, doesn't realize what has happened. He finds Kenai's torn clothes and believes the bear he sees took his brother's life. In grief, he remembers Kenai's words to him and, as he had done, vows revenge.
Disoriented and falling into the river, Kenai awakens on the shore and in the presence of Tanana, who eases him through his initial shock at his change. Although she cannot understand his bear speech, she advises Kenai to find the mountain where the lights touch the earth so that he can ask Sitka's spirit to change him back, and then she disappears without giving him directions. To Kenai's surprise, he finds he can talk with the other animals - but the only animals who are willing to talk to him are two sibling moose, named Rutt and Tuke, who are more interested in cracking jokes at Kenai's claims to have been a man than helping him. Along the way, Kenai meets a talkative, pesky bear cub named Koda who saves him from a trap, and asks him to accompany him on the way to the salmon run where the bears gather to fish near the mountain where the lights touch the earth.
