Movie Thoughts: Nimona (2023)

• Released: June 30, 2023
  
• Directed by: Nick Bruno, Troy Quane
• Running time: 1 h 41 min
• Rating 4/5

Synopsis

Ballister is an (almost-)knight accused of murdering his queen. He's joined by rambunctious shape-shifting person known as Nimona in trying to prove his innocence. But will proving himself innocent even really fix all the problems?

My Thoughts

I'm not going to to in-depth about the backstory of this movie because everyone and their nan is already talking about it. Got cancelled when it was almost done by Disney, Blue Sky Studios was closed and it was brought back to life by Netflix and Annapurna animation.

And the final product is...honestly really good. Yeah, with such a troubled production history you might think the final product would be bad or at least suffer from quite a few issues, but I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. Not that I was going in expecting it to be bad or anything, but when a movie has a troubled production history this does tend to show in the final product at least somewhat.

Nimona is a daring and visually stunning movie about self-identity and overcoming oppressive societies. It's also a very obvious queer metaphor (or sometimes just frankly queer in and of itself), with Nimona being genderfluid and this being symbolized through their shapeshifting. Society sees them as a monster for this, and Ballister will have to learn to overcome his own prejudices as he slowly starts to befriend them. The bond between these two characters is honestly really sweet. I also really loved how complicated the relationship between Ballister and his boyfriend, Ambrosius, is. They're very obviously in love, however after Ballister is framed for the queen's murder this makes things very difficult, with Ambrosius very clearly being torn between the love of his life and the Institute of knights he's loyal to. All very good stuff.

Is this movie perfect, then? Eh, I wouldn't go that far. I do have a few issues, but they're all minor. In no way do these make the movie bad for me, I just think they could've been handled a little better. First of all, the Director. Talk about a bland villain. While I think she has an interesting design and I like her dignified mannerisms, we just...don't get much of a motivation for her other than her being a bigot. Of course, some people are just bigots, as much as it sucks to admit that, but with this being the central villain of the film you'd expect there to be a bit more to her. A backstory or a bad experience or at least something that makes her stand out from other villains of this type. Because right now they didn't give us much to work with.

Second, the past stuff with Gloreth. I like the flashback with her and Nimona as friends; that scene was really cute. But then when Nimona visits the village and shows that she can shapeshift, Gloreth turns against her best friend literally on a dime and casts her out for being different and "a monster". Which like, could happen, but it shouldn't have happened so suddenly. The scenes prior to this established that Nimona and Gloreth were very, very close friends. You can't just expect your audience to buy such an intense shift in character in an instant. 

Also, I'm not really sure how this flashback of Gloreth, a literal child, rebuking Nimona turned into this huge tall tale about her being a heroic knight who slayed "the monster" and founded the Institute. Obviously tales can be altered and stuff, but the flashback just showed a (relatively speaking, of course, it still sucks for Nimona) rather small occurrence, just a girl turning against her friend. I just...don't see how this story logically can be blown into these proportions to have the whole Institute founded with all these strict rules and all this nepotism for the knights. Especially since we're not shown how we went from this scene of Gloreth rebuking Nimona to there being an entire force of knights dedicated to killing monsters in her name. It's just a very big leap in logic to make. Again, stories can obviously be changed especially when told by the victor, but there's just nothing really here connecting the two. A fight between two children. BAM, giant Institude with strict rules that is dedicated to killing everything deemed different. I'd have liked a little bit more information on how what really happened between Nimona and Gloreth turned into this whole organization and legendary tale of Gloreth slaying "the monster".

But these things aside, yeah, this is genuinely a great film. I love it's LGBT+ representation, I loved the visuals, I loved the story and the way it constantly kept me guessing where it was going, it was just very good all around. Check this one out for sure.