“I wish James Cameron was in the Titan death trap sub” James Cameron would not be caught fucking dead in that thing because James Cameron for all his faults is actually an expert oceanographer and National Geographic explorer-in-residence who has contributed scientific advancements to deep sea exploration and underwater filmmaking and has dived to the Titanic over 30 times and was the first person to go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench solo where he discovered three new species. Like, he’s one of the few ultra-rich shitheads who put time and effort into their weirdo adventure tourism hobby.
Ballister is everything I want in a canonically gay character. Pathetic. Silly. Accidental adoptive father. Traumatized. Has a boyfriend who chopped his arm off. Wet cat energy. He’s got it all.
queer people for years, centuries, have been oppressed for being their most authentic selves, by the people who call themselves heroes and us the monsters, even nowadays with the most recent law for allowing discrimination against queer people in America. They call themselves the good guys, the saviours, the ones completely in the right and justified for hating against people just trying to live their lives. And apparently we’re supposed to be the bad guys in this story.
i’m so glad that this movie came out when it did, the world really needs it.
nimona’s sidekick application is actually so much funnier in the movie since they took away the “being a villain is like a job” thing from the comic. so it’s like. she just did that for no reason. she’s just like that
My favorite part of Nimona’s narrative queerness is the dichotomy of the trans experience and the cis gay experience explored in Nimona and Ballister’s relationship. They’re both queer people villains, but Nimona’s villainy is seen as more innate, while Ballister’s is something he can escape. Nimona is trans a “monster,” but he is just a victim of circumstances who can reclaim a powerful position. Nimona goes to him as a fellow queer person villain, but finds that Ballister has just as many judgements to unpack and insensitive questions to ask as other people, though he is more willing to do the work. I saw so much of the community dynamics of trans and cis people in queer spaces in this. Outsiders think we’re exactly the same, but internally many cis people either don’t care for uniquely trans struggles or want to distance themselves from us completely.
Watched the Nimona movie last night. Review I guess. It was pretty damn good. Definitely would’ve probably been regarded as Blue Sky’s magnum opus if they’d gotten to release it instead of being fucked over by Disney. Very cute, very funny, very powerful in the right moments. A thing that stuck out to me is that it’s really only an adaptation in the loosest sense of the word. It takes the core premise and beats of the comic but is functionally an entirely different kind of story that does its own thing. And given that ND Stevenson was heavily involved in production, I suspect that was intentional.
The comic was much darker and more downbeat in a lot of ways, plus it was significantly longer and thus could afford to be slower paced. But more than that, it was a lot more meaty in terms of themes and scope. The whole “LGBT allegory” element was there, but it wasn’t the sole focus, the comic was a story about a lot of different things; not just an LGBT experience, but also discussion of fantasy genre tropes and clichés, criticism of other fantasy deconstructions, character study, exploring what it means to be a hero or villain, critique of the glorification of crime and cruelty in underprivileged communities, corruption in governments, peer pressure, the senseless and self-perpetuating nature of violence, the worthlessness of revenge, etc.. And above all that, it was a story about trauma and people’s responses to it, with Ballister representing people who actually deal with their problems and move on while Nimona represented people who let their mistakes and suffering and grief consume their identity, or worse, use it as an excuse to indulge their worst qualities and take out their feelings on everyone around them.
The movie, by contrast, has a much more narrow focus. The LGBT allegory is front and center and basically the entire focal point of the movie, aside from a spattering of themes about the danger of zealotry and rigid fundamentalist thinking. This gives the movie a much tighter narrative and pacing that suits its inherently shorter runtime, but also leads to a ton of changes to the story either to convey a different kind of message or just work better in a different medium. Most obviously in how Nimona is vastly more sympathetic in the movie and essentially really is the silly gremlin the comic fakes you out into thinking she is, scrapping the comic’s twist that she was a genuinely bad person who was completely serious about wanting to be a villain, caring nothing for the lives she destroyed with her behavior and idolizing Ballister because she thought he was the same as her and would thus tell her what she wanted to hear (i.e., that she was justified in killing and destroying everything around her in the name of getting even). And in the changes to the Institution’s history and nature. And all sorts of other things.
All in all, I feel if you go in comparing and contrasting the movie and the comic, arguing which changes are for the better or worse, you’ll be setting yourself up for disappointment in either direction because they’re two different beasts and it’s like comparing apples and oranges. So keep that in mind if you’re a fan of the comic watching the movie or a fan of the movie wanting to look into the comic. I think ultimately I still like the comic better, but that’s purely my personal opinion and there’s plenty that I think the movie did better.
Some other observations:
Riz Ahmed my beloved, thank you Mr. Stevenson for this perfect casting. Literally perfect for Ballister.
Acting in general was very good. You can tell this was a passion project for a lot of people, not just Stevenson.
Only two changes that are objectively bad are Ambrosius losing his awesome Van Halen hairdo and changing Ballister’s last name — Blackheart is a way cooler name than Boldheart and it’s a pointless change, one that I’d argue even hurts the narrative since it makes it too obvious that Ballister isn’t actually a bad guy.
The animation is really great with fantastic expressions, stylish movement, and wonderful aesthetics that perfectly suit the story, but there’s times where it feels a little off. But there are parts where it looks less “movie” and more “cheap mid-2000s CGI-and-Flash cartoon show from France”.
The humor can be a hit and miss, in a “going through the motions of a Hollywood animated comedy for kids” way. The movie excels when it’s either imitating the comic’s Old Internet sense of humor or going hard on the drama, but there’s bits where it seemingly slams on the brakes to do Illumination-esque Twitter humor and those bits definitely throw off the vibe.
Having an actual straight up attempted suicide in the climax was shockingly ballsy. I genuinely can’t believe they went there, but I’m glad they did because the film wouldn’t have felt nearly as raw without it.
I don’t know how they managed to make the Director even more of an asshole than in the comics, but they did.
no NO bc SHHHH SHHHH. Rewatching the movie again knowing the context of nimona’s backstory just HIT In such a fresh way. SHHHH NO bc. shes been living like this for a THOUSAND years. She is an immortal being and she has seen this kingdom be built from the ground up for the entirety of its one thousand years. And the only reason it exists at all, the iron fist of the institute and the knight’s duty to protect inhbaitants inside the wall against monsters outside of it… is because of her. Gloreth’s will to create a league of knights only exists because of NIMONA. And a thousand years she stands surrounded by all this as it grows bigger and bigger. An entire kingdom built just so it can protect a threat that doesnt exist outside of HER. In a world where entire legislations and bills are made to target a small minority, where groups of adults agree to push a rule just so that the ONLY transgender kid in a small town cant play the sport they want - I cannot see how it isn’t similar at all. This shot hurts me so much because it is us settling into the realization that the world has expanded so far beyond nimona all because it will never want her. A thousand years of this…. why shouldn’t she finally give in?
twitter limiting the amount of tweets you get to read per day is ridiculous but if tiktok limited the amount of videos people got to see per day it would be the biggest win for mental health since ssris
