Editorial: Nimona

 

Okay so I'm really late to this punch but, this month has just been a fustercluck for me, what with classes, personal life stuff, and of course the excitement of both The Muppet Show and the new category "Star" coming to Disney+, I've been busy, and honestly the fact has kind of fallen out of my head for a bit, I mean what's more important, some silly animation or movie studio or making sure I don't have an emotional breakdown because I have to animate a minute and a half of animation by myself? By the way, a minute and a half of animation is over two-thousand frames, think about that next time you brush off animation as lazy work, but that fact still remains that Disney has officially shut down Blue Sky Studios.

Disney acquired Blue Sky, most likely with the Fox acquisition, the acquisition that completely screws over the entertainment business because it gives Disney an insane amount of new properties which includes, and is not limited to, "The Simpsons", "Alien", "Family Guy", "The X Files", "Firefly" and the most depressing out of all of them, "Dude, Where's My Car?". I swear, next Disney is gonna try to acquire SquareEnix or Scholastic or something. Either way, Blue Sky would have been acquired during this acquisition, and Disney has decided to shut them down, because the live action reboots make more money than the medium that Disney literally became synonymous with. Legitimately, that is the reason I talk about animated movies instead of live action movies, with the rare exception, I want people to respect the over one hundred year old artform.

Well anyway, with the news of Blue Sky turning grey also came the news that all of their current projects would be cancelled, which included the movie I was most looking forward too seeing, Nimona. So, instead of looking at one of Blue Sky's movies, spoiler, the next review is gonna be a traditional Disney movie, I thought I would write a post talking about Nimona, what it is, why I'm sad the film got cancelled and whether or not it can and should be saved. Here we go.

What is Nimona?

Nimona began as a webcomic, not unlike other famous sensations like Penny Arcade and Cyanide and Happiness. Unlike the previous though, Nimona was shocking in a different way, rather than make it's lead character a zoophile or make jokes about some dude's crotch looking like applesauce, Nimona was one of those properties that started off really cute and charming about a villain who gets a new sidekick that can shapeshift, and then Nimona turned into a monster, demolished an entire city, and everyone almost died. Also there is something in there about some kind of conspiracy, the main antagonist was forced into maiming his best friend, the government kind of wants to run tests on Nimona, and it gets dark. Don't be too surprised about that, this comic was first published in 2012, and if you know anything about 2010s TV, it's that the cartoons started off super cute and charming, but then ended with apocalypse. That was kind of the thing with the 2010s, and I wouldn't really call it "Shocking" in the same way I wouldn't call Adventure Time or Steven Universe "Shocking", but it's still in that bubble.

Later it was published into a full graphic novel by Harper-Collins, so when the great internet purge happens and every scrap of internet content is erased from existence, we'll still have Nimona, which is great because, Nimona is one of my all time favourite graphic novels. It's not that I've read a lot of them, but I've read some big ones, like V for Vendetta, Maus, I've read the Legend of Zelda mangas for a bit, and I think the only Graphic novel I like more than Nimona is Anya's Ghost, and it's mostly because of the artstyle. Seriously though, if you have yet to read Nimona, I highly recommend it, seriously, one of the best graphic novels of the last decade.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, who wrote Nimona? Well, the comics and novel were done by one Noelle Stevenson, and if you recognize that name, you may be a fan of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, because they did that too, or you might be familiar with Lumberjanes, which they also did. So, if you're fond of either of those, you might like Nimona.

Why are people bummed it has been shelved?

Well, I can tell you why I myself am bummed about it; Nimona's awesome. I think I've hit the nail on the head a lot in this blog, but I really love this book. I love how it flips the narrative on it's head, the black haired villain and the spunky girl that loves to make things explode are the protagonists while the charming and handsome blonde dude is one of the antagonists. I love the characters and their relationships, how the main guy meets another enthusiastic scientist and immediately puts them as their emergency contact, or how he starts to see Nimona as more of a family member than an accomplice, at least that's how I see it, and I think these characters would have been really good in a movie.

Now, I think most people also have the same view, they really love the story and characters and wanted to see it all on the big screen, but there is something else that some people may be bummed about; this movie may have also been massive for the LGBTQA+ crowd.

So, I am unsure if Noelle has actually said anything about this, but I do feel that the characters can appeal to the Gender Neutral audience, and Noelle is LGBTQ+ and gender neutral, so yeah, this movie would have been pretty huge for those groups. So Disney pulled the plug on a movie that would have been a big thing for them. Now, I'm not LGBTQA+, My Q stands for questioning, so I am probably not the best person to talk to about this subject, but I can see people being upset about that, honestly it is worth getting upset over, unlike a variety show from the 70s having a disclaimer attached to it because some of the material is completely wrong by the standards of today, seriously that is a disclaimer, if warnings are so offensive to you, maybe you need to chill the hell out and realize that having a panic or anxiety attack is about as fun as it sounds, so it really helps if we minimize our exposure to anything that can trigger those. No I am not getting off that soap box!

Anyway, the other big reason that people are bummed is because the film was, pretty much 90 percent done at least, give or take. Some tweets from people who worked on the film have stated that it would have had a unique animation style and I can tell you I was ready to call it the best animated movie of the year when it came out. Jumping the gun? Yes, but I was also ready to call The Lion King the worst animated movie of 2019, so I'm not always too far off on predictions like that. However, this all leads us to our final question;

Can Nimona be saved, and should it?

Now, can it be saved? Yes, it totally can. With the amount of work finished on the movie, and the fact that Disney is pretty much made out of money at this point, there is no question about Nimona's ability to be saved. The real question is, SHOULD it be saved and... that gets complicated.

On the one hand, yes I and a bunch of other fans, would love for the movie to be salvaged, in fact I made a joke about starting a hashtag campaign to save the movie, and yeah a small hashtag campaign has started, so yeah, we would love for this movie to see the light of day. On the other hand, I have doubts that the original crew is going to be brought back to finish their work. If Nimona does get another greenlight, they'll probably bring in a completely different crew and rework the entire movie, I would not be surprised if sometime later down the line Disney will take the fan backlash as a sign that they want A Nimona movie and not THE Nimona movie that was already being made.

While Noelle does have some recognition thanks to She-Ra, one show does not always net you the recognition you really need to get far. Stephen Hillenburg got that recognition because he made SpongeBob SquarePants, an icon that stands alongside Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, Nimona is not on the same level and She-Ra was a reboot, also the industry may not be as respectful towards women and LGBTQ+ people as we would like, but that's another argument. So, while Noelle does have recognition, I don't think it's enough recognition to really sway anyone at Disney.

Should Nimona be saved, well, I'm not gonna say no, but there needs to be some massive steps taken before I can say yes. That was a lot of people that were working on this movie, and some of them have probably moved on to other projects, either by choice or by being put there, it is how the industry does sometimes.

In the end, I'm sad to see my most anticipated movie since Deadpool be shelved, but maybe it's not the end of the road for Nimona. Again, the fan backlash has been vocal if nothing else, so there may be something at the end of the rainbow. So, if sometime in the future I have to eat this entire blogpost with a nice cold glass of hindsight, I won't be surprised. That being said, I also wouldn't be surprised if this was the end of the road for this particular Nimona movie.

Once Upon a Forest (1993) - The best of garbage, which is still not good.

1993 was a very... odd time for animated movies. What were the most well known releases this year? Well there were movies like Batman: mask of the Phantasm and The Nightmare Before Christmas, but there was also Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound, The Thief and the Cobbler, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, I think it says something that most of the releases this year that people might be fond of were Japanese films like Sailor Moon R and Yu Yu Hakusho: The Movie. I mean, does anybody remember David Copperfield or Once Upon a Forest?

This is another one of those environmental awareness movies, like the previously reviewed FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Between the two of them, I think this movie is better, if only because I didn't feel completely preached at, but this movie still wasn't "good".

During an excursion with their teacher, four young forest animals find their forest home was destroyed by a toxic gas. After one of them gets deathly sick, the others have to find another meadow to gather some herbs, and they have to find them and return within a set time before their friend expires. Along the way, they meet incredible obstacles, strange situations and a gospel choir that makes me feel more uncomfortable than I did watching Dumbo... I'm going to chalk it up to Dumbo not having Timothy Mouse talk at the crows in their slang.

It's a basic adventure movie really. The characters move from one location to the next and deal with whatever obstacle is there. I really shouldn't be to hard on movies using this plot, it's been a standard for a long time, I mean The Divine Comedy is a classic example. The appeal of this kind of adventure story for writers is easy to understand, it can allow for interesting obstacles that the characters must stand up against, can lead to interesting locations and can lead to some good character interactions. Done right, you can get a movie like Kubo and the Two Strings or The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Of course the downside is that if you do this story type poorly, you can end up with a story where the situations and locations are more interesting than the characters. Yellow Submarine worked because the locations were bizarre and literally otherworldly, and the Beavis and Butt-Head movie worked because of the characters complete lack of understanding of what was going on.

Speaking on characters, you don't have a bad selection, just not a very interesting one. You got your headstrong tough character who does first and thinks later, you have your smart and timid but heartful nerd, and you have the big eater dum-dum. You can tell which character arcs they're gonna get, one has to learn to not lead others into danger, one has to learn to stand up for themselves and one has to have their genius idea that proves they're not an idiot. I wouldn't say the characters are awful, but much like the plot, they're really nothing special.

As an aside, it is really hard to separate modern views on subjects like this. On the one hand, I can't be too hard on movies that keep to the formula because, well there is always the chance that this will be the first time someone sees this kind of story. This is a kids movie, so simple formulas are not too unwelcome. However, it really is hard to not notice when this is getting repeated, and unless you really like this kind of thing, you're going to want to see new twists on the formula. This was a big problem I had with Klaus, which, while still a good movie, had a very formulaic plot that I could see where it was going before it got there. Whether or not this thing bothers you... well it depends on you more than anything else.

As for the technicals of this movie, the best I can say is that they're mixed. The animation is, mostly good. There were some moments that didn't sit right with me, but rather than try to explain it, I'll just say that, I can understand if someone thinks the animation is good or bad. It does look appealing, not visually stunning, but I can look at it and see that some talent was put into it. There weren't any moments that looked ugly, super bright or visually unpleasing. I can give it a pass for the animation.

Music wise, on the other hand is... a half mark. This is another example of a "pseudo-musical", a movie that only qualifies as a musical because it has more than one song in it, but no more than three. The two songs in this movie were... not good. The first song is sung by Michael Crawford, so, take that for what it's worth. Honestly I can't really decide if I disliked the song or if I just thought it was bland, and the other song was part of that scene with the gospel birds. Thankfully the background music was not too bad, but it wasn't very memorable either. I think the technicals are another aspect of this movie that are nothing special.

Really, "nothing special" perfectly summarizes the movie. The animation isn't terrible, the music isn't unlistenable, the characters aren't awful and the plot isn't a mess, but it's all nothing special. It's a harmless watch, I can see someone watching this with their kids and not hating it, or even as a morbid curiosity viewing. It's harmless, but nothing special. Even for kids, I can recommend something like Smallfoot, which is also rather safe but still offers a bit more than this movie. While I can see people watching this movie, I can't see anyone really loving it, so I can't really recommend this movie. It's better than FernGully, but that really isn't saying a whole lot.