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lcatala · 2 years ago

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A Review Of Nimona

Despite some reservations, I really liked Nimona.

I open with the conclusion because this review starts off quite pessimistic and is rather long, so that way those of you who won't make it to the end will not leave with the false impression that I didn't like Nimona; I really much did.

I have a complicated relationship with 3D animation.

Well no, actually, it's a pretty simple relationship: I hate almost all of it.

It's not that there's any reason why 3D animation cannot be good in the abstract. I'm not a medium snob; you can tell good stories in live action, in 2D animation, in 3D animation, in stop-motion, with hand puppets, with shadow puppets, with paper cutouts ; in theory, it absolutely doesn't matter.

Except, in practice, most 3D animated films range from mediocre and forgetable to actively repulsive.

Visually, they almost all look the same, to the point that it's really hard to distinguish studio styles at all (without looking it up, between Coco and Encanto, which is Pixar and which is Disney?) Storywise, it's all very pain-by-numbers, hero's-journey crap with little deviation. But what gets those from merely nondescript to actively annoying is the tone. So so many of these movies revolve around "hype" and "cool" teenagers who constantly strike poses, raise their eyebrows, and talk in one-liners. Everything is manic and noisy, there's not a single moment to breathe, because if nothing stimulating happens on screen for more than three seconds, surely the audience will stop watching, so there's always someone gesticulating, dancing, singing, making faces, or all four at once. And everything has to be crammed with pop culture references and topical allusions so that the audience can relate.

Don't get me wrong, it's good to have media you can relate to, media that speak of modern problems and adress a modern audience in its own terms. But there has to be less insultingly condescending ways of doing it than shouting "HELLO FELLOW KIDS" over and over for 90 minutes.

Let's be clear: this isn't happening because the people involved are not competent or because the budgets are too tight. Very talented people work hard (routinely to the point of exploitation in fact) on these movies, and they actually get quite strong budgets reflecting the benefits they're expected to make.

And that's the actual problem: there's too much financial stake in 3D animated films, too many producers and shareholders breathing down the neck of everyone else, too many committees trying to craft the perfect crowd-pleaser, too many rewrites and re-rewrites, too much fear of failling to capture the children-and-teenager audience and losing hundreds of millions. So everything must be made to appeal to the widest, shallowest base as possible, and every second of screentime must be an attention-grabber that leaves absolutely no chance of anyone getting bored.

Mirroring this, there's no reason for 2D animated and stop-motion movies to be inherently better than 3D ones. They are so in practice because big studios see them as uncool and no longer profitable, which means that the only people who still make these kinds of movies have to actually deeply care about them and go in with the full awareness that their next project might well be a commercial flop that will set them back for a decade on the project after that or might even end their career.

So when it was announced that Nimona, a webcomic I had really liked for its quirky, original, both humorous and dark tone, was going to be adapted by Blue Sky Studios, who had afflicted the world with not one, not two, not three, but five Ice Age movies, well, I was not happy at all, because that seemed like worst possible match. It was hard to imagine them doing anything other than remove anything remotely interesting about the story and turn it into a generic seizure-inducing mess with poop jokes because that's all that they do with their movies.

I feel bad about it retrospectively, but my first instinct when I heard that the movie was cancelled was to rejoice that we had been spared from what would certainly have been a complete disaster and a terrible insult to the original comic. And the revival of the project, while it was always a positive for the actual people involved, left me largely indifferent.

Who would I have had instead to adapt this into a movie? Why, Cartoon Saloon of course! A fantasy story about a free-spirited, hyper-active, shapeshifting red-headed girl and the friendship she seeks with another outcast character, leading to a fight against the instutions of law and order that turn out to be corrupt and evil? Why, they would have loved making that movie.

Except they did make that movie. What I'm describing is not just the premise of Nimona; it's also that of Wolfwalkers, the absolutely amazing 2D animated film that Cartoon Saloon released in 2020, as the third part of their "Irish Folklore Trilogy" (following The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea).

Ok fine then, if Wolfwalkers already exists, it would be redundant for Cartoon Saloon to make it again, so I guess Nimona can be in its own thing; if it doesn't work out, I'll just rewatch Wolfwalkers.

Then I saw that ND Stevenson, the author of the original comic, was actually really enthusiastic about the project — which in itself isn't a definite proof, many times has a creator be enthusiastic about an upcoming adaptation of their work only to get burned when the actual thing came out, but at least it was a positive sign. Maybe I was going to give this movie a chance.

Then the movie came out, and I saw a lot of positive reviews from people who I trusted not to be easily swayed by any old crappy animated film just because it had some queer representation. Ok, ok, fine, y'all win, I'll watch it.

So I watched it and… I actually had quite a really good time.

I liked that there actually was a conscious stylistic choice in the animation, this sort of 3D-2D hybrid technique, like very-advanced-cel-shading seems like it's a lot more flexible when it comes to actually give an animated movie a distinct, signature style — and it blends in a lot better than pure 3D, as seen on how Ghibli has used those techniques for complex individual shots since Princess Mononoke in 1997 — a movie mostly made in 2D traditional animation, but that has a number of digitally made shots seamlessly incorporated using those 3D-painted-over-to-look-like-2D techniques. By the way if you like Princess Mononoke, you should also watch Wolfwalkers, it has a number of similar vibes!

I liked the humor! For the most part, it worked, and some jokes were actually pretty clever in their absurdity, like having Nimona pull out a polaroid picture she's somehow taken a few minutes ago just for the sake of a visual gag, even tho we've already established that this is a futuristic fantasy setting (which is also a thing I like, the worldbuilding was pretty cool) where everyone has smart phones (but it also works as a subtle early hint that Nimona is much, much older than she seems).

I liked that queer representation was front but not center: several main characters are openly, explicitely queer, but this isn't a plot point, this isn't something that they have to defend or call attention to. It's just a normal character trait, and the problems, drama and obstacles these characters face do not stem from them being queer.

I liked the story, the themes it went for and how it executed them, twisting traditional feudal fantasy and hero's-journey tropes but without being heavy handed and obnoxious about it, showing that you can play with a genre and pick apart its problematic implications without being a scatological edgelord about it (yes I loathe the Shrek franchise, why do you ask?)

It still has some of the things that make me strongly dislike modern 3D movies, but it's contained. It's here and there, but not to the point of ruining the story. Yes Nimona is an out-of-control nuclear-powered goblin, but the movie actually goes into why she is like that, and suddenly it's a lot more interesting to have a character be manic and constantly at 11 because she has a lot of pent up anger and insecurities about being alone than just because that's a quirky character trait to throw in randomly; and the movie does manage to have a few quiet and reflexive moments, and those matter a lot in the story.

I am of two minds about its qualities as an adaptation. On the one hand, even if this is a very different story from the original, the themes are there, the spirit of the original story is there; different media have different strength and what would work in comic format wouldn't necessarily work in an animated movie. Having the movie tells its own story makes it less redundant compared to the comic, more complimentary — you can know the one by heart and still get surprised and awed by discovery when you get to the other. And updating the material can be good; people always complain about Disney's track record of sanitizing fairy tales, but I can assure you that you don't want to see a faithful adaptation of Sleeping Beauty on screen. In general, an adaptation making significant changes to the story isn't a deal breaker for me, some of my favorite movies massively depart from their source material, usually for the better.

On the other hand, it seems to be almost a constant with animated adaptations that the source story is going to get discarded. It gives the feeling once again that the people involved in making these adaptations do not take the medium seriously and cannot imagine that these stories could stand on their own without needing heavy rewriting, that they can't see them as deserving a faithful adaptation. I understand why a lot of these changes happened for Nimona, but I still regret some of the stuff from the comic. Like yeah, it's very clever that in this version, Nimona has essentially no origin story and actively refuses to talk about how she came to be, but then we miss out on this absolute wham moment from the comic, Ballister telling her "Nimona, you forgot your own backstory!"

So in the end, I have to take the movie for what it is, rather than look too closely as what it is an adaptation of. Those are two different takes and stories on the same characters and themes, both with their strong points, and I think I can live with that.

So in the end, I had a pretty good time. It had some small issues, it's probably not the best version possible of that story, but it's still far, far better than anything I was expecting. I you loved it, I do still recommend checking out Wolfwalkers as soon as possible if you haven't already, you might well love that one too.

#nimona #nimona 2023 #nimona movie #nd stevenson #movie review #old person yells at cloud vibes #a nimona review but actually it's propaganda for wolfwalkers #no but I actually liked it I swear #wolfwalkers #3d animation #2d animation #rant

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