Entertainment- "Nimona" stars a shape-shifting protagonist as one of the film's anti-heroes.
- While the film contains explicit LGBTQ+ representation, it's also intrinsically queer.
In February 2021, "Nimona" was effectively dead in the water.
The highly anticipated adaptation of ND Stevenson's webcomic turned graphic novel was shut down at the same time that the original animation studio helming it, Blue Sky, shuttered that year. At the time, staffers told Insider that they thought the film would never hit viewers screens.
"We all believed in it," one staffer told Insider.
Now, over two years later, "Nimona" is finally reaching audiences under Netflix's banner. The streaming giant announced in April 2022 that it would release the film in 2023, partnering with Annapurna Pictures on production.
"Nimona," now out on Netflix, is certainly a film that deserved to see the light of day — and it's thrilling that it found a home.
Warning: Spoilers for "Nimona" ahead.
'Nimona' hits LGBTQ+ representation landmarks at its base level
Within the film's first five minutes, it's clear that "Nimona" isn't going to dance around or play coy with its queer characters. The film follows Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed), a man whose knighting ceremony goes horrifically wrong when a weapon planted inside his sword kills the Queen, turning him into public enemy number one. Prior to the ceremony, he shares a tender, and romantic, moment with fellow knight Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang), who will be hot on his tail shortly after.
But Ballister and Ambrosius' romance is only one undercurrent in the queer torrent of "Nimona." Their fraught lovers-to-enemies relationship adds some emotional heft to the film's sometimes disjointed chase. The couple's on-screen kiss feels earned by the end of the film, particularly given that three Blue Sky staffers told Insider that it faced pushback from leadership at Disney, which owned Blue Sky at the time.
But amazingly, that kiss — something that Pixar, itself a Disney subsidiary, had to fight to keep in the 2022 film "Lightyear" — isn't the most queer thing about "Nimona." That, of course, would be Nimona herself.
Nimona is a 'power fantasy,' and a queer one at that
Nimona (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz) isn't a girl, something that she reminds Ballister of several times after asserting herself as his sidekick. She also isn't a gorilla, a whale, a dragon, or a demonic little child, though she appears as each of those over the course of the film's one hour and 42-minute runtime. When Ballister prods her to pin down her identity, human, girl, or otherwise, her statement is definite: "I'm Nimona."
Not shape-shifting, she explains to Ballister, makes her feel worse.
"I wouldn't die, die," she tells him of the possibility of simply staying in one form. "I just sure wouldn't be living."
The queerness of Nimona, and more particularly the propensity to read her as a trans allegory, doesn't just play out in her refusal to be labeled. It's also in the dazzling way that she revels in her own nature and knows herself, and her deep, cutting desire to be known and accepted for exactly who she is. In the film's most affective moment, Ballister says, "I see you, Nimona. And you're not alone."
Stevenson, Nimona's original creator, has poked fun at his past self for having "no idea" that Nimona's shape-shifting could be read as a "metaphor for transness" when he was writing the original comic (in the years since, he has come out as trans). But Nimona's refusal to be "constrained to any form," as Stevenson explained in a press day per Polygon, was a "power fantasy" for him — and as a viewer, it's one that feels intrinsically queer.
"Nimona" doesn't have quite the same visual flair as contemporaries like Sony's paradigm-shifting "Into the Spider-Verse" or DreamWorks' outrageously good "Puss in Boots: the Last Wish." But its depiction of queer identity transcends Ballister and Ambrosius' kiss (still an achievement in and of itself) or superficial messaging about being yourself.
"Nimona" knows herself, and doesn't need others to categorize her — just for them to see her as she is.