Nimona

[unspeakablehorror]

Oh, I watched Nimona recently. I thought it was fun but also feel it fell rather short of what it could have been.

I quite enjoyed it and I think the whole being an outcast to society thing is really relateable to me for a number of reasons, but the desire of both characters for acceptance from people who despise them is something that's more than a little foreign to me. 

And this is especially true of Ballister but even for Nimona it's kind of the culmination of her whole arc, despite her being the much more overtly rebellious of the two for much of the film.

And I feel like this undercuts a lot of the political aspect of their rebellion (or Nimona's rebellion at least) against the Institute because then it becomes a story about the personal politics of acceptance more than a story about rebellion against society. 

And the problem with that is that it places the power with society, with the status quo, on accepting the other. And I don't think that is ultimately an empowering message. At no point does anyone accept themselves just for who they are. At no point is this even a story about helping any of the other 'monsters' in society besides the two main characters. And resolving society's animosity against them specifically is the happy ending for the story, so even if it's just looked at from the angle of a politics of acceptance it falls pretty flat.

Society accepts them because they save all their lives. I feel like the message isn't one of hope directed to an outcast, it's more of a 'those people are other and different but you should accept them because they are cool and useful to you' directed at society. Which maybe makes some outcasts feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but not me because I don't think I should have to be useful or exceptional to be treated like a person by society.

Like, I enjoyed the story and thought the sci-fi magic kindom idea gave it its own unique flair. Ballister was fun and he grows a bit more of a spine towards the end at least so I appreciated that. Nimona is a really fun character and I enjoyed her plots and plans.

But no, the critic in my mind does not have an off setting and the political implications of a story are always going to be of importance to me.

I'm just going off of memory here based on my one recent viewing so feel free to correct me if I've made any factual errors in my assessment here, but even if there's things I've overlooked or misremembered I'd be very surprised if they were considerable enough to completely negate what I've said here.