I’m not gonna be coy about this; I loved Nimona. This one’s going in my list of top faves for sure. It deserves a huge audience. (CW spoilers, trauma, suicide, abuse)
The plot: We’re in a futuristic medieval kingdom, protected from an ancient evil by a hereditary clan of elite knights. The queen makes the unpopular and controversial decision to allow a commoner to become a knight, and at the very moment of his knighting, he is framed for murdering her.
So our boy’s in a bit of a pickle here, running from justice in a technofascist monarchy. He’s lost an arm, everyone thinks he’s an assassin, and then his life gets weird when Nimona shows up. She’s* a shape-shifting teen who wants to be a villain’s sidekick. Ballister protests that he is not a villain, but she isn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. Besides, he really does need help.
To call Nimona ‘High Energy’ would be to excavate a whole new sub-basement of understatement. This is one chaotic, un-manageable superpowered “teenager”. And she must convince Ballister to ask some questions that he’s, uh, never asked before. At heart, he’s an establishment man; he thinks he can just expose a conspiracy but the basic institution is sound.
But the institution – and the society – are not sound. The dynamic of using fear and xenophobia for control will be very familiar. “We can’t let our guard down, for a second! If we do, the monsters will come rushing in!”
The trailer is selling a comedy, but there are heavy themes and moving scenes. Like when she describes why she has to shape-shift. Or what her life as an outcast is like. And a couple scenes I’m not even gonna warn you about.* I recognize several of the names in the production credits, and they are the reason this narrative feels personal, real, and quite raw.
Nimona is funny, action-packed, a great story, touching and emotional, violent, full of great stylized animation and a rockin’ soundtrack. It’s got like a 95% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, which isn’t small change. While it’s not gory, it also may not be ideal for small children.
The movie has a complicated history, though, and almost didn’t get made.
Based on a graphic novel by ND Stevenson (yes, that ND Stevenson!) it was also executive-produced by… (drumroll please) ND Stevenson. So you know it will be faithful to the spirit of the graphic novel. Which I am totally going to get from our local bricks-and-mortar bookstore.
It was in mid-production by Blue Sky, and set to be the studio’s masterpiece, while they were owned by 20th Century Fox, which got bought by Disney because the FEC is asleep at the wheel**, so we’re crashing into all kinds of dumb acquisitions and mergers. Anyhoo…
Disney looked at Blue Sky and said; “What’s this? We don’t need it” and looked at the seventy-percent completed movie and literally said; “Too gay” so the project was tanked. Go home, everybody.
Yes it was really that simple: Disney doesn’t do gay main characters (cue flapping arms and chicken sounds.) Ballister and Ambrosius are gay but that is not a point of conflict. (Can you imagine the conversation where Disney says to Stevenson; “Hey, ND baby, you got a great property here, but can’t you just you make the main characters straight? Pretty please?” Disney rep: toothy grin, waves new contract.)
Nimona herself is inherently a trans character, and that probably freaked out Disney executives too… assuming they caught on. She is a lot older than Ballister. But it’s fair to say any trans person who makes it to adulthood has endured a thousand years worth of distrust and hate from others. It’s what she had been trying to get him to understand.
Somehow the mostly-completed movie found its way to Netflix, which knows Stevenson very well from their triumphant “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.” And they were all; “Hell yeah, hook us up” and the dead movie came back to life, and we’re all lucky on that score.
- OK I guess I will drop a Content Warning for suicide and trauma. If you have experienced trauma or have spent most of your life pretending to be ‘normal’ just to get through every fucking day, this movie will absolutely wreck you.
- *Many reviewers are referring to Nimona as ‘they’ because her gender identity is flexible, which makes sense. And there’s a scene where Ballister wants her to be a girl all the time, and she (pardon the pun) sets him straight. But the movie itself also mostly refers to her as a girl, so I’m using that convention with the proviso that it is not the only possible answer.
- Entertainment Weekly: How Nimona broke barriers with a charming same-sex kiss
- The graphic novel and the movie are quite different, but I’m not concerned. The novel was quite literally a college project, and the movie’s executive producer was NDS himself. (Stevenson identifies as trans-masculine with he/him. If that changes, I will update.)
- Chloe Grace Moretz deserves an award for her voice work, just sayin’.
- Did you spot the scene inspired by Zootopia? I don’t know that it was for sure, but it was recognizable and equally moving in both films.
- See also the scene that will remind you of the last episode of Owl House
- And one possible spoiler: take note of what Nimona shape-shifts into right at the end…
- **Oh, hey, it turns out the FTC is not asleep at the wheel anymore; it’s fighting the good fight. But it isn’t winning every battle, and these mergers took place during TFG administration. (Update: this review was written during the Biden administration)
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