Nimona

I had a chance to be on the bleeding edge with Nimona. I recall watching the trailer shortly after release, before I’d seen many people talking about it online. However, I wasn’t impressed by the story as sold, and I remember being especially repulsed by the animation. How was it possible I was expected to be into a movie with visuals reminiscent of a cell-shaded video game from the early 2000s? Especially in a summer which contained the stunning and ground-breaking Across the Spider-Verse, as well as the highly stylistic and unique looking TMNT: Mutant Mayhem.

But no sooner had I dismissed it than my corner of social media exploded. People had Nimona fever, and most of the reactions were absolutely glowing. As its reach increased and it only gained in reputation, it became clear I would need to watch it by year’s end, as I expect it to nab a Best Animated Feature nomination. Which is impressive for a movie which was stuck in development hell for years: initially slated for release by Fox in February 2020, Disney delayed its release numerous times after the acquisition, and then outright cancelled the project, before it was rescued over a year later by Annapurna Pictures.

Nimona takes place in a futuristic dystopia modeled after the Middle Ages, complete with knights in shining armor who wield laser weapons. Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) has nearly completed his training at the Institute for Elite Knights when his weapon kills the queen during the knighting ceremony, turning him into a fugitive. He knows he’s innocent (as do we), but the only person on his side is the mysterious Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), who’s only interested due to being convinced Ballister is guilty, and thus a villain. Together, they elude the Elite Knights, and find evidence the Director of the Institute (Frances Conroy) is actually responsible, setting off a chain of events which threatens to upend their whole society.

Let me start by saying I get why people responded so strongly to this film. Which already implies where I come down, but just hear me out. It’s a brightly colored world, a story that doesn’t take itself seriously at all (save for the moments when it absolutely and rightfully does), and features an incredibly confident, in your face character who’s not at all ashamed of who they are. Because to be clear, while Ballister is our POV character, he’s not the focal point: that’s Nimona. And Nimona wholly embraces the role in which the world has cast her. She’s become a force of chaos, looking for every opportunity to overturn a system which is hellbent on denying her existence in the best of times, and uses an ancient fear of outsiders to portray her as an existential threat in the worst. Hence her latching on to Ballister: he, too, is cast out, so although it’s for very different reasons, he has a chance at understanding.

In most mainstream films, any messages about LGBTQ people tend to be subtext, especially if that film is aimed at kids. Which is 100% not true of Nimona. As soon as we meet Ballister, we’re introduced to his boyfriend, fellow Elite Knight in training Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang), with whom he shares a kiss. A shapeshifter, Nimona herself is literally non-binary, and just chooses to most often appear as a teenage girl (for reasons revealed later in the story). She talks about the need to express herself through presentation, and how inability to do so is physically uncomfortable, how it leads to discomfort in her own skin. This yields initial ignorance and incredulity and distrust from Ballister, which transforms into well-meaning misunderstandings as he tries to just let Nimona be Nimona. Nimona notices the difference, and begins to open up to him.

It takes on some pretty heavy issues, from the ones previously mentioned to lurking fascism to self-loathing and suicide. Their whole society was founded on the fear of monsters overrunning and destroying it before they even had a society, building an existential threat right into its core, and leaving it ripe for some fear-monger to come along and exploit them. And even before that, it was fear which let the monarchy persist.

(If this sounds familiar, it’s because that’s almost the exact same overarching plot as The Sea Beast from last year, just with far more queerness.)

But none of this is enough to overcome how much I dislike the characters. Nimona is one of my least favorite molds: the bull in a china shop who can get away with it because they’re never once wrong and are nigh invulnerable, and whose only struggles are self-doubt and insecurities caused by others’ abysmal treatment of them. She disregards the wishes and desires and autonomy of others, most notably Ballister, instead imposing her own will on the world. She’s incredibly obnoxious, and has no conception of why others might not be so cavalier about charging into danger. Ballister doesn’t help his own cause, though, showing himself to be a font of poor decisions from the very beginning. Sure, he’s not as vapid as Thoddeus Sureblade (Beck Bennett), but he has no ability to defend himself from the obviously facile framing of him as a murderer. At least he has some depth: Ambrosius is a fairly one dimensional character, following a very trope-y arc.

Although, if I’m being fair, this is a movie full of tropes, so he hardly stands out. And as much as I might roll my eyes at how obvious plot points and even individual lines of dialog are, despite having made an impact with a wide range of people, this is pretty clearly aimed at kids. That’s not intended as a knock on the movie or its fans: see my love of Pixar (Elemental not withstanding), or last year’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. It simply informs the approach to storytelling. Leaning on tropes for kids’ media isn’t terrible, especially if you’re using them to ease the delivery of an important message that the rest of the world isn’t really giving them. But it is going to mean the movie needs to work harder to really capture my interest, and have minimal fat on its bones, which this doesn’t quite achieve.

In any case, let’s talk about the animation, since I mentioned it up front.

Oh boy, the animation…

It’d bad. The style is clearly a deliberate choice, so it’s not incompetence: it’s just a cheap looking, boring, and ineffective aesthetic. It is a bit more elaborate than I’d clocked from the trailer, so I’ll call it early 2010s cell-shading. More advanced, but still clearly lacking. There are a handful of shots which are poorly composited, resulting in the layers popping out at you. I will say, there’s a sequence at the end of the movie involving a monster which does work very well. The monster is a bit more diffuse, and something about that lends better texture. I don’t want to say more since it’s basically the climax. Just to acknowledge it’s not all bad. However, in this modern landscape full of varying and incredible art styles, it stands out. So while I’m glad it’s not one of the dominant approaches to drawing, it’s still a miss.

Ultimately, if I’m being honest, I did like this more than I expected. There are some jokes that land, and the layered themes were a pleasant surprise: I knew about the non-binary angle, but that was it. I didn’t even get into the element of the bad guys (Ambrosius and the Director) wearing white while Ballister (a POC) wore black, which feels like a deliberate racial commentary on othering, although less fully developed. But it’s not enough to outweigh it being a slog, or the low hit rate for its humor. The well-trodden plot points make it even more tedious to sit through when they get dragged out, until the end when the plot deviates enough to be interesting. Its themes make me want to recommend it to others, since they’re still so rarely talked about, but I’d feel obligated to warn them about the presentation being subpar.