My inclusion of this on my Netflix list was quite tentative. The ad had looked only so promising, and I hadn't heard of the graphic novel on which it's based. But the Academy has nominated it for Best Animated Feature, and I've seen only two other nominees for the year so far.
The main setting looks like a near-future metropolis, except that knights in shining armor are still around, sworn to protect the realm from magical threats. Sir Ballister "Bal" Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) stands out as the first commoner ever to be knighted, facing mixed reactions. At the knighting ceremony, his sword fires a laser beam and kills the queen (Lorraine Toussaint). Seemingly everyone else, even boyfriend Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang), presumes he intended as much. (It doesn't help that he sports black armor and facial hair.) Bal escapes and lies low, trying to figure out a way to clear his name. The first entity to find him is Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), who usually presents as a fangy teen girl but is actually an ancient, super-speedy shapeshifter. As a fellow vilified outcast, she insists on being his sidekick in whatever he plans next.
We never get a complete backstory for Nimona. Was she born to human parents? Did she always have powers? In general, the movie skimps on a lot of details, such as the names of the kingdom and the prominent director of the Institute for Elite Knights (Frances Conroy). It's kind of a shame, because what we know of the combination of futurism, pseudo-medieval fantasy, and present-day relatability is pretty intriguing and sometimes funny. Of course, there's more focus on the fun of Nimona morphing, mostly into red-pink talking animals.
I feel a lot sorrier for Bal than for Nimona. It takes a handful of seconds for what should be the best day of his life to become the worst, complete with the loss of his sword arm to Ambrosius. Yeah, this is on the more intense side of PG, even if we don't see any blood. The kingdom has a lousy justice system, and the more Bal learns, the less he likes what it represents.
Nimona is not played for sympathy until the third act. Admittedly, she has been alone way longer than Bal has. (Might I say, I've grown tired of the modern trend in fiction of friends becoming bigoted foes due to peer pressure, tho I don't doubt it happens in RL.) The trouble is, she has a worse case of "Then Let Me Be Evil" syndrome than Nick Wilde or even the Bad Guys. While we don't know for sure that she ever murders anyone, she's way too gung ho about the idea, and Bal keeps having to talk her out of needless violence. It half-baffles me when he calls her "kind" after all the unkind things she does for fun to him and more innocent parties. In fairness, he says this to dissuade a knight from slaying her on the spot, and I get why Bal himself refrains from doing so at his most annoyed.
I'm not sure I like the approach to morals herein. It would be nice if Bal and Nimona met at a happy medium, but Nimona never gains any respect for rules, even in games. Only her eventual heroism can possibly redeem her. The overt moral is not to condemn the different as "monsters," but I worry that it goes too far in encouraging rebellion against existing institutions.
The art quality? Well, it manages to look distinctive to some extent. Sometimes characters are unrealistically stiff, as befits a project that initially went to Blue Sky. I can't help thinking that Pixar or DreamWorks would have done a better job, partly by filling in the missing details noted above.
Nimona was a worthy use of my 99 minutes (minus most of the credit time). I just can't see it winning the Oscar.
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