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.