#Nimona movie spoilers

[wamo]

comic vs movie Ambrosius is the literal definition of twink death

[mayhaps-a-blog]

Still thinking about Nimona and about class (and caste) and how the Director really would rather burn her entire society to the ground than let a commoner rise up. Even before there was a monster on the field, she killed the Queen! The Queen! Who we know little about, other than that she supported commoners becoming knights, and that was all it took!

Like, that was the Queen! Anyone who had such strong beliefs in the monarchical system, in the noble/commoner class/caste system, should have seen the Queen as the top. She’s the leader of the government! She’s a NOBLE! But even so, the threat of one common-born knight - one commoner with a smidge of power in the system - was enough for the Director. Who didn’t just target Ballister - no, she killed the Queen, destabilized her own government, the very system she was trying to protect! To defend her “traditional” values!

One would assume that, traditionally, Gloreth also wouldn’t want anyone murdering the Queen. But no, keeping commoners out of the Institute is more important than such little concerns as treason.

[memoryshard]

Do y'all think that the Director was very willing to kill Ambrosius, not at all because he questioned her, but because he loved and accepted Bal? He's the descendent of GLORETH herself! She's nearly a god-like figure to them.

But instead of lying, when she had the chance to kill him, after going off about "cracks in the wall", she takes it. She viewed Ambrosius' love as another potential crack.

[rainbowskullsandcoffee]

[Nimona spoilers]

so imagine after finding out Nimona is still well and kicking, ballister brings them back home to ambrosius

ambrosius: *hears door opens* welco-

ballister: we have a kid now

nimona: hi >:)

[ilovedthestars]

ok wait i just realized that nimona revealing herself as a shapeshifter to ballister also involves her barging out of a literal closet. did anyone else notice this.

[scribe-cas]

Okay one thing that I have not seen anyone talk about in reference to the Nimona movie (which is unfortunate, because I think that this is absolutely hilarious)

At the beginning of the movie, Ballister says “that’s not for little girls” when Nimona picks up a blowtorch, and in response, Nimona replies,

“ ‘Little girls’?

Okay, how old do you think I am?”

To which he responds,

“I don’t know. Ten?

Alright, help me out. More or less than ten?”

Now.

This could absolutely be taken as just teenage sass-

Until you get to the end of the movie.

And it is revealed that she is, in fact, Gloreth’s monster.

She is thousands of years old.

And I am in absolute fucking hysterics

Over the thought of being what could be considered a god, with the range of powers she’s presented, and the incredible mass of years she’s lived-

And having some dude look her in the eyes.

And ask if she’s a ten year old.

“How old do you think I am” reads so differently when you’re rewatching the movie because you get to watch her scoff at this knight who she isn’t yet friends with, and clearly has no idea what he’s getting into

And she thinks it’s hilarious.

Anyways i love her i love this movie thanks bye

[fallloverfic]

Early concept art for the "Nimona" movie by Jun Lee

I can't get over that long-haired Ambrosius was planned at least at some point in the movie's creation. He's so beautiful.

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A post shared by Jun Lee (@sangjunart)

Spoiler for the movie and I guess the comic below the cut

And a sword duel rather than the joust where seemingly Ballister's sword is replaced and explodes? Maybe the Director still did the sword switch in this version, even this early.

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A post shared by Jun Lee (@sangjunart)

[pokemonkatia]

Something I love about the scene featured in the new clip is just how much of Blackheart (graphic novel version) we can see in Ballister (movie version).

Like this?? This all Blackheart. The villainy. The annoyance. The scemes.

[quitefair]

so, about Ballister’s origin...

alright so i’m a huge, huge fan of the original nimona graphic novel. and i’m genuinely a fan of the movie too! it did make some significant changes, but overall told the story it wanted to tell, and pretty much summed up the themes of the novel itself! it was an enjoyable ride!

but!!! there was one bit of the story that didn’t quite sit right with me. and it took me a while to realise what that thing was. (i didn’t want to make a post ranting about it without properly processing what it was that made me dislike this, so i let it ruminate)

anyway, after seeing this post, everything fell into place.

instead of ballister being a commoner rising to become a knight...

what if he was born outside the wall instead? 

(major spoilers for the graphic novel and movie below)

so in the original comic, the knights of the institution were all orphans, including ballister and ambrosius. they grew up and trained together, and were both considered among the most skilled and prominent knights of the institution at the time. however, everything changed when they were pitted against each other in a jousting match. the director gave ambrosius a weaponised lance (similar to ballister’s sword in the movie). its weight threw ambrosius off balance and caused him to lose against ballister during the joust. in a fit of jealous rage over losing, he fires the lance at ballister, causing him to lose his right arm and ruining his chances of ever becoming a knight.

all of this is implied to have happened because the director wanted ambrosius to win the joust. perhaps because of the way he looked. white skin, blonde hair, all the ideal societal characteristics of a hero. nate mentions this in a recent article as well talking about the movie.

while ballister... well. he didn’t. and now he also doesn’t have an arm. it was also implied that the director didn’t like that ambrosius and ballister were close, didn’t like that her perfect hero had a weakness, probably thought that ballister was not good enough for her poster child, idk. so yeah, she killed two birds with one stone. (except in this version no queens were harmed lmao)

the way they translated this into the movie was... well. interesting.

so now, gloreth has a bigger role in all of this. which is cool! it ties in so well with nimona being gloreth’s beast, and the entire reason that the city and the institution exists in the first place. this was actually one of my favourite changes to the comics that they made for the movie!!!

but! what i didn’t like was that our boys were no longer orphans. ambrosius is now the descendant of gloreth? which is why he’s the poster boy of the institution? and the one with the weight of familial expectation on him? 

(okay i lied this kinda slaps but it wasn’t explored as much as i’d liked. anyway wouldn’t it have been great if this was a limited series instead of a movie? lmao im going off track.)

but the weirdest part for me, and something i still felt difficult to accept, was that ballister... was a commoner. a commoner that was chosen to join the institution and to become a knight.

and it’s a controversial decision?

youre telling me that in this sci-fantasy world of super monster cops, that the only way people that can become a monster cop, is through nepotism????

and consider this: most of the commercial stuff aimed at kids, teens etc (kwispy dragon for example) sends the message that maybe, just maybe, you, the commonnest of commoner children, could also rise up and be a super monster cop hero?

there’s also the fact that in our current day and age, the story of the underdog gets the most attention and press? wouldn’t the crowds be ecstatic over a kid from nowhere, rising up among the ranks to become one of the most promising potential knights in this institution?

so yeah i dont really understand why the general population have gripes against ballister becoming a knight (it’s shown at the beginning during the whole montage that there’s some people who aren’t vibing with it) douchebag knights maybe yeah. but i don’t see how the general public wouldn’t be anything but supportive, and would turn on him so fast.

unless.... he wasn’t from the city itself.

you only really hear about the wall partly through the film. you’re shown that the city grows and that there’s a wall built around it during the intro cinematic, but nothing is mentioned until quite significantly through the film. which is odd... considering how important it is to the story. gloreth built the wall to keep the monsters out. to keep us in and to keep them out. the propaganda of there only being monsters outside the wall, and only good and respectable citizens live within the city walls.

(how does the wall keep us free? the wall keeps out the enemy. and we build the wall to keep us free, that’s why we build the wall, we build the wall to keep us free.)

which would make a ballister that came in from outside the wall... well.

1. it would make the director’s statement of ‘cracks in the wall’ make more sense. in a literal sense, ballister couldve come into the city from a literal crack in the wall. which also ties into the metaphor of gloreth’s walls/propaganda cracking. and the fact that he’s now rising up to become a knight? corruption from the inside? it makes the director’s motivations hold more weight.

(also having the director be a descendant of gloreth rather than ambrosius would make more narrative sense but that’s a whole other post)

2. now the public would have more reason to not trust this guy. it’s easier to spread propaganda about him once he ‘kills the queen’. a monster infiltrating the ranks. and then he’s allied with a monster shapeshifter nimona?

3. the parallels between ballister and nimona??? would be even more prevalent??? both literal outsiders. hated by everybody for basically no reason other than that they’re different. and the fact that ballister accepts nimona when gloreth didn’t?

4. there’s also the fact that throughout the movie, the concept of the wall protecting the people from the monsters outside is questioned - are there really even monsters outside, when we’ve never seen them for ourselves? what if you guys are lying to us, what if youre WRONG? and ballister becoming a knight might’ve been a step in the right direction towards pushing against those stereotypes, but the director wasn’t having any of it.

so yeah, those are my thoughts. the movie is still insane though i rly love it. but a lad can dream about what could’ve been, yeah?

[wamo]

butches??

punk kid meets punk mom

[muppetfreak]

Nimona movie / graphic novel spoilers (consider yourself warned!)

I really loved the movie for what it was, we laughed a lot and even the kids enjoyed it a ton, but the problem with having read the graphic novel so many times over the years is that it's impossible not to compare. And I understand why they needed to soften Ambrosius' betrayal moment to make it more palatable to kids / shippers, but It took away so much of the complexity of their dynamic!

Brushing it off as his training instincts made their whole conflict too easily resolved and took away most of Ambrosius' moral ambiguity and arrogance. (Even if the end result was the same, there is a huge difference between him acting in the heat of the moment and it being premeditated because of jealousy. HUGE). Plus, instead of ending the story on this complicated and tentative note where they have to figure out how to rebuild what they had in the new world together (as it is in the graphic novel), it's all easily resolved with outside parties to blame and they are smooching by the epilogue.

And I guess it was what they needed to do to be able to sell the story with the rep they wanted and I respect that's a challenge to begin with (especially with the long complicated history of this film in particular), but watching fandom continually strip all the complexity out of characters and demand purity from their ships only to now watch a major studio do the same with this relationship that I loved for its complexity, it's hard not to see this as a change in a troubling, sanitized direction.

[fearidescent]

I think Nimona's depiction of suicidal ideation is something we need more of in kids' movies. Obviously not all or even most of them, but some. Because, let's be real, there are more suicidal kids than we want there to be.

If I may use myself as an example, my first suicide attempt was when I was 12, and I found myself wishing for child euthanasia to be legal at a younger (not much younger, but younger still) age than that. And I don't think I'm some freaky exception.

I do think kids should watch these movies with parents present, or at least be able to safely discuss them with parents later. I do think that watching a movie with a suicidal protagonist when you're suicidal yourself but unable to safely discuss it with anyone may be too much.

But we should not hide suicidal ideation from kids. Otherwise they will feel even worse if they develop those feelings themselves.

[flintoaster]

Nimona spoilers

I cant even

But

One thing I want to point out some more is another part of the obvious trans allegory, cuz I wasn't expecting her to actually try to kill herself! Trans suicides keep rising and as obvious as the allegory is, they went all out💀 obviously she's trans/genderfluid and that's unfortunately a reality for alot of us irl, but I'm glad they made the allegory so heavy-handed and even included that. Earlier in the movie she said that if she didn't shape-shift she'd "die" and thats because she wouldn't be "living" but also because she'd literally want to die and try to.

Just- this movie was so thorough and ajrkfkfk. Thorough with everyone's cognitive dissonance, with the allegory, and every step is calculated. I'm not some important media critic (yet hehehe) but if I was I'd be able to say way more cuz 😭

(Also no offense, I ADORE the mlm ship, but the trans allegory in this time of despair and how perfect it was... Mwah 👌)

[tapcap]

whoever used the Doom Door Sound* in Nimona is my best friend. just btw.

[fallloverfic]

Dr. Meredith Blitzmeyer in re: the "Nimona" movie

I've been looking at a lot of the concept art and development stuff for the Nimona movie and it's at once kind of amazing and sad to be sort of proven right by something. Spoilers for the movie below the cut.

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A post shared by Louis Jones (@welcome_to_louieville)

According to Louis Jones, "I was incredibly fortunate to be brought on to Nimona at the very beginning (back in late 2016). I was already a big fan of @gingerhazing ’s comic, and I got to spend 3+ years helping to shepherd and develop this character, under then director @posborne, alongside an outstanding team of artists at Blue Sky — I have a lot of love for this character, and despite the film’s complicated journey, I’m very happy to see her out in the world… . . Straying from the 2D tests (and exploring a different character). I believe this was the first performance test for Blitzmeyer — For years the scientist from the comic was a prominent character in the film, before eventually being written out much later (though she may still look familiar as her design/model was used for the Queen) — this was just a blocking pass, at the time wanting to explore an almost “Kramer-like” frantic energy, being so comfortable in her lab that she can effortlessly multitask and “dance” around as needed. This was a fun task. Shame she didn’t end up in the film (though the simplification was probably needed) there were some reeeaally cool things being explored around this character."

So Blitzmeyer was a prominent character for a chunk of the movie's development, but ultimately cut. I had the impression from seeing concept art for the "Silver Society", some organization that Nimona and Ballister were supposed to befriend, at least one of the shots of which features a character very similar to Blitzmeyer, that she was in some of the cut materials. It's cool to have confirmation that she was at least planned. Sad she got cut, though.

(Unrelatedly, it's fascinating that this is why Queen Valerin looks the way she does, but it doesn't seem to have been the only place they reused older concept art in some form, given Sir Thoddeus Sureblade's face seems to be a version of Ambrosius Goldenloin concept art).

[distractionpie]

having seen the nimona movie I am already hankering for a fic where…

(spoilers, including spoilers for some of the movie's big changes, below the cut)

…somebody AU's the timeframe between Ambrosius taking Ballister's arm and the resolution so instead of being resolved relatively quickly* they end up with an era of being exes/nemeses** as per their comics counterparts***

this is not to throw shade at the changes made in the movie, as I enjoyed its versions of them immensely in their own right. I just think it would be a) entertaining as a concept and b) interesting to explore how the exes era would play out similarly/differently based on their changed circumstances and the way the movie versions differ from their counterparts

*the movie isn't super clear on the timeframe but based on my one watch I would say the timeline between the arm incident and everything being resolved is a couple of months to a year max, it's been long enough that Ballister is 'still' on the loose and has had time to heal and get his prosthetic (though we don't know if the tech in their universe would make that recovery quicker than irl) but it's still fairly fresh

** http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=327

***maybe nimona doesn't show up until much later or maybe they just don't find the evidence / it takes much longer for everything to get pushed to the tipping point