Nimona
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 The film that not only started DNEG's animation career but "saved" Blue Sky.
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Nimona is a 2023 animated film directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane from a screenplay by Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor. It is based on the 2015 graphic novel of the same name by ND Stevenson. This movie was notable for being the last feature film Blue Sky Studios worked on before being shut down in April 2021, leaving it unfinished despite 75% of the work being complete. However, Annapurna Pictures revived the project the following year with the film set to be released on Netflix.
Plot
After a knight is framed for murder, he goes on the run with a teenage shapeshifter while also uncovering a dark secret that could destroy his city.
Why It Monstrously Rocks
- There was almost no hope for this film to be released. Despite Blue Sky completing three-quarters of the film, Disney shut them down during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the film's fate uncertain. However, the film was picked up by Netflix making it nothing short of a miracle.
- Even more amazing is that much of what Blue Sky worked on for the animation remained intact, instead of the new animators restarting everything from scratch.
- The film is incredibly faithful to the 2015 graphic novel it's based on.
- Much like Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse, the animation is incredible. It combines both a futuristic city along with a medieval world perfectly. Nimona's transformations also add to this further.
- Amazing characters.
- Nimona seems to be a typical deadpan snarker girl, but all she wants out of life is to make friends, after scaring her old friends off with her shapeshifting powers.
- Ballister starts off as a by-the-book protagonist, but he later cares about Nimona and saves her from ending her life after she loses control.
- Ambrosius starts off as the Director's dragon but later turns on her after discovering the truth of her wanting to kill Nimona.
- While not the first film to do this, it does feature LGBT main characters (namely Ambrosius and Ballister) in prominent roles that are significantly portrayed better than Disney's portrayal of them.
- The humor is great.
- Nimona's attempt at telling her tragic backstory but Ballister interrupts her awkwardly.
- Nimona is breaking stuff while she and Ballister attempt to escape prison.
- Ballister: "I am not gonna get arrested!"
- (Instantly cuts to Ballister getting arrested.)
- Demon Baby. Enough said.
- The Banana Splits theme song makes an apperance there and the execution of its inclusion is pretty funny.
- Nimona's and Ballister's dance party scene.
- Excellent soundtrack by Christophe Beck, who did both Frozen films.
- Good pacing.
- To balance out the humor, there are some tear-jerking moments like Nimona wishing for a friend and her attempted suicide. She even ends up atoning for her destruction of the city by sacrificing herself to kill the Director.
- This movie was the perfect sendoff to Blue Sky Studios. While Ice Age: Scrat Tales was their final completed production, this film serves as the last project the studio ever worked on. With the combination of the complexity of the production and Disney's shutdown of the studio, fans were hoping that this film would deliver. And boy does it show.
- Netflix released this film to YouTube when this film was nominated for an Oscar, this is quite unique for a streaming that has one of the highest profits in the world and in history for limited time only.
- "If you see anyone... MURDER 'EM."
Murdered Qualities
- Even though this is probably just a nitpick, this film will sometimes shove in topics that can be too frightening for younger audiences, such as murder, suicide, and onscreen blood, which resulted in the film getting banned or censored in different regions, especially in Southeast Asia and the Middle East (Most specifically; Iran).
- The director, while seemingly a complex villain, felt one-dimensional as she doesn't want a common boy in the ranks.
- While the animation is good sometimes some frames do look a bit awkward.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Nimona holds an approval rating of 95%, based on 55 critic reviews with an average rating of 8/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "Tapping a rich emotional vein with its splendid animation and thoughtful allegory, Nimona is a deeply lovable animated adventure." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on 16 reviews indicating "generally favorable reviews".