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Nimona · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This film is lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple question. Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an english degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers, because this film is lit. Kids, little kids, they grow up believing that they can be a hero if they drive a sword into the heart of anything different. And I'm the monster. It's Nemona, and this film is lit. Hello and welcome back to this film was lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. We are talking about Nemona this week, the Netflix original, although it had a pretty precarious path to get to that release, which we talked about in the prequel episode. If you want to learn more about that. And I wanted to mention this here as well, in case you don't listen to the prequel episodes, because I know our main episodes are more popular. That makes sense. We most of the content is. But on our most recent prequel episode, we had some incredible user listener submitted information from Miko over on Goodreads. One of our fans who did some data analysis that we we shared the link to that on social media and in the notes and stuff for the most recent prequel episode. But in that we discussed this information, basically he did some data analysis, data collection to compare the ratings on Goodreads to the movie ratings, and then juxtapose that with our whether or not we choose the book or the movie and all kinds of different things, and also culminated with the now I don't know if infamous is the right word, but the Steve variable, the Steve, they've got to come up with a term for the.
• 2:16
  Speaker B: I've been calling it the official Steve count.
• 2:19
  Speaker A: Yes, the Steve count, the Steve index, what have you, of how many Steves or Stevens work on a film? Does that relate to the quality of the film? As it turns out, I won't spoil it, but there is a relation of how many Steve's work on the film, and Miko was able to get that information by basically scraping IMDb's cast and crew list and then comparing that to IMDb ratings and other things. And it's all beautifully mapped out and scatter plots on that on the website that we shared on the last prequel episode. If you have not listened to that and checked that information out, it's a lot of fun and I wanted to thank Mikko again for that. So go, go listen to that prequel and check that information out. But now we're gonna get in to our discussion of Nemona and start with a little summary. If you have not read or watched Nemona in let me sum up, let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up this is the film synopsis plot summary for Nemona as sourced from Wikipedia the citizens of a medieval futuristic kingdom are protected by the Institute of Elite Knights, established by the legendary heroine Glorith, who vanquished a great black monster and enclosed the kingdom with a high wall a thousand years ago. Ballester Boldheart is the first commoner to become a knight. As queen, Valerian is trying to change traditions so that anyone can become a hero. During the ceremony, a laser is shot from Ballester's sword, killing Valerin, Ballester's boyfriend and fellow knight Ambrosius. Goldenloin becomes distraught and disarms Ballister, dismembering Ballester's right arm in the process. Ballister then becomes a fugitive. As Ballister crafts a prosthetic replacement arm, he is visited by Nemona, a teenage outcast who has faced persecution for her shapeshifting abilities. Seeing a villainous spirit in Ballester as he is facing similar treatment for his commoner origin and the murder of the queen, Nemona declares herself to be his sidekick. To clear Ballisters name, the duo kidnaps Diego, the squire who gave Ballester the sword. Diego gives them video evidence of the director of the institute swapping out Ballester's sword, revealing her to be the murderer. The duo confronts Ambrosius and the director with the evidence, but the director manipulates her knights into destroying it. Later, Ambrosius confronts the director. She admits that she framed Ballester and murdered Valoran as she objected to Valoran, revising tradition by allowing commoners to become knights, fearing that doing so would lead to the kingdom's downfall. However, Ballester reveals that he had recorded the director's confession, and Ambrosius turns out to be a disguised Nemona. When celebrating this in the hideout, Ballester posts it online, leading to public outcry. The director discovers that Nemona is the great black monster defeated by Glorith on an ancient scroll. She then uses this information to convince the kingdom's citizens that Ballester uses Mnemonith's power, used Nemona's powers to fake her confession, the real Ambrosius meets with Ballister and reveals Nemona's past, insisting that Nemona deliberately deceived Ballister. Shocked by the revelation, Ballister argues with Nemona and questions their friendship. Feeling betrayed, Nemona flees into the woods. There, Nemona reminisces about her past. A thousand years ago, she wandered the world and transformed into animals to try and fit in with the wildlife. But none of the creatures she encountered accepted her. After encountering Gloryth, who was a child at the time, Nimona transforms into a human. Transformed into a human. Glorith and Nemona became friends, and Glorith was accepting of Nemona's powers. However, the other citizens of Glorith's village, Glorith's village, including her parents, believed Nemona was a monster. After discovering her abilities, the villagers attacked Nemona with torches, which accidentally set the village on fire. A confused Glorith became hostile towards Nemona, with Ballester's abandonment and Glorith's betrayal echoing in her head. A distraught Nemona transforms into the great black monster after entering the city and decides to kill herself by impaling herself on the sword of Glorth's statue. However, before she can do so, Ballister stops her and apologizes. Nemona changes back to human form and embraces ballister. The kingdom's citizens see this and are moved by it, but the director, unmoved, orders a laser cannon to be fired from the wall to kill Nemona. Ambrosius protests, knowing that firing a laser into the city would kill thousands. The director, however, turns on them using the same laser she used to kill the queen, and prepares to fire the cannon herself to save the kingdom. Nimona assumes a giant red phoenix like form and flies into the cannon, resulting in her apparent death, as well as the death of the director. The resulting explosion destroys part of the wall, revealing a beautiful mountainous valley beyond. Sometime later, the kingdom undergoes several changes. The breach in the wall has become a passageway through which citizens travel freely. Nemona and Ballester are honored as heroes, and Ballister's relationship with Ambrosius has been restored. At the end of the film, Ballester visits his old hideout that he and Nemona shared. He hears Nemona's voice and joyfully realizes that she has survived. The end. Ooh, that was longer than I thought it was. Alright. That's what happened in Nemona. If you had not watched it, I have quite a few questions. Let's get into them. And was that in the book?
• 7:27
  Speaker B: Gaston, may I have my book, please?
• 7:29
  Speaker A: How can you read this? There's no pictures.
• 7:32
  Speaker B: Well, some people use their imagination.
• 7:34
  Speaker A: So as I stated in the summary, we were introduced to Ballester pretty early, who is a young. When we see him, I guess, in like, a video.
• 7:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, we see, like, a video of him as a kid. Yeah, but he's an adult.
• 7:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, he's an adult now. But he has been trained to become a knight and become the first commoner who's a knight. Because before that, I guess it was some sort of, you know, royalty sister, or, you know, like. Like Lord nobility or whatever. But he's a commoner who's going to become a knight. And then we also find out during this introduction to his character that not only is he the first commoner set to become a knight, that he's dating Ambrosius, who is, like, the archetypal knight. He is a descendant of Glorith, and thus has the most glorious bloodline encounter to Ballester. Anyways, I wanted to know if that background of Ballester becoming a knight, but he's a commoner and this being like, a new thing, and then him dating Ambrosius, the descendant of Glorith, if that all comes from the book, because it is peak. Ya, it is peak young adult literature, let me tell you.
• 8:45
  Speaker B: All right, so got a couple questions here. Yes. First off, there's nothing in the book about Ballester being the first commoner to become a knight. I did like this change, though. I thought it felt in line with the themes, and it also felt like a good kind of modern quote, unquote, addition to the story.
• 9:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you say that the story's only.
• 9:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, the graphic novel is only almost ten years old, but it felt like, kind of in line with issues that we face today, I guess.
• 9:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, and it also, I mean, it's definitely in line with stuff that was popular maybe when this movie was being written and made, where. Cause that was, like, the big thing that people were, like, arguing. And one of the things I liked about the Last Jedi, I'm a last Jedi defender. But one of the things in that was that, hey, find out spoilers for Last Jedi, I guess, and then not spoilers because they undid it. Spoilers. Rey is like, not anybody. She's not like, she doesn't have.
• 9:44
  Speaker B: You don't have to be a special Skywalker bloodline.
• 9:46
  Speaker A: You don't have to come from one of, like, three families or really just one family with ancient, you know, incredible bloodline in order to be a hero in this universe. You can just be a normal person. And this is, like, in line with this idea.
• 9:59
  Speaker B: Yeah. So moving on with the rest of your questions. Ambrosius is not a descendant of Glorith either, but I also thought that that was in line with the themes and worked well. And in fact, in the book, it's also revealed that both Ballester and Ambrosius grew up together in, like, an orphanage. I think there's a little, like, it's not part of the main storyline, but there are a couple, like, bonus comics at the back that it said ran as Christmas specials when this was originally being published online.
• 10:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 10:29
  Speaker B: And one of them was, like, the two of them, like, growing up in what appeared to be an orphanage when they were kids. So it's almost kind of like the opposite for him.
• 10:41
  Speaker A: Yes. Which I think works. Yeah. Just adding that dynamic of since we are making them, like, a relationship, and then you're adding the storyline of the commoner making, since they're in a relationship, adding even more kind of tension there by having him be from this, you know, glorious royal bloodline or whatever at noble bloodline. Whereas Ballester is. Yeah, just a.
• 11:05
  Speaker B: Just a guy.
• 11:06
  Speaker A: Just a dude.
• 11:09
  Speaker B: But Ballester and Ambrosius do have a romantic history, although the movie is actually more upfront about it. A graphic novel uses a lot of subtext in regard to their relationship, and part of that is because there's actually not a time jump, but the events of the novel take place much farther removed than the inciting incident that causes Ballester to no longer be a knight.
• 11:38
  Speaker A: Oh, so that makes sense.
• 11:40
  Speaker B: So they have a history.
• 11:42
  Speaker A: Right. Because that's honestly what I was expecting once the, uh, the inciting incident that I'm. I'll ask about here.
• 11:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 11:49
  Speaker A: Just momentarily happens. I was actually expecting a bit of a time jump when it doesn't seem like they're really maybe a couple weeks or something, but, like, at most, like, weeks or days.
• 12:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 12:01
  Speaker A: But I would have thought maybe, you know, like, oh, it's a year later. It's two years later.
• 12:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. I thought there was gonna be a time jump as well, just having read the graphic novel, and I was a little surprised when there wasn't. But overall, I also thought that the movie being, like, more upfront with their relationship was also a positive change. And I agree with you, it is peak. Ya. Yes. Never forget that this started as a Tumblr blog.
• 12:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So we get to the actual knighting ceremony where Ballester is going to become a knight. He gets up on stage and Queen Valerin does the thing where she knights him. And then as she hands back his sword, the sword opens up and shoots a laser out of the bottom of it and murders the queen. And then everybody assumes that Ballester was somehow responsible for this. And after the first laser fires, Ambrosius, who is standing right there, goes to knock the sword out of his hand, and ends up cutting Ballister's arm off again. It seems kind of unintentional in the movie, at least, it's portrayed his goal wasn't to cut his arm off. He was swinging his sword to knock the sword away, and it just clawed his arm kind of. Again. It's kind of how it feels in the movie, and I wanted to know if that. That is our big inciting incident that will kick everything off, and I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 13:25
  Speaker B: The Ballester sword murdering the queen is not from the book. That is not the inciting incident in the book. Ballester's backstory is that he and Ambrosius were competing against each other in a joust, and the winner of this joust was going to be the institute's champion and be, like, the head of the knight police force, basically. And so they're jousting, and then Ballester wins, and Ambrosius Lance explodes, kind of similar to how the sword does, and it takes off Ballester's arm, and Ambrosius insists that this was an accident, but Ballester thinks that he did it on purpose. So then, because Ballester has been damaged, quote, unquote, the institution casts him aside, and he can't be a knight anymore, which is what kicks off his path to villainy. And as I said, all of this takes place, like, implied, years before the event of the novel. Yeah. It's also later revealed in the novel that the exploding Lance was given to Ambrosius on purpose so that he could win the joust at all costs because they wanted him to be the champion and not ballester. And Ambrosius did know that it was weaponized, but whether or not he set it off on purpose is left very vague.
• 14:49
  Speaker A: Interesting. Is it ever. Maybe we'll get to it later. Of why they wanted Ambrosia's to be.
• 14:55
  Speaker B: No.
• 14:56
  Speaker A: Interesting. Okay.
• 14:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:58
  Speaker A: Cause this story doesn't have the background of. Cause as we discussed in the last question. Story doesn't have the background of ballister being, like, a commoner or something?
• 15:10
  Speaker B: No.
• 15:11
  Speaker A: So they just decided Ambrosia should win? Like, whoever. Who they.
• 15:15
  Speaker B: The institute? Yeah, the institute. For no reason that I'm aware of.
• 15:22
  Speaker A: Okay. I definitely prefer the movie's kind of version of events here, because that seems. I will say there's a slight tweak of what the story's about in that instance, or at least this element of the story then, because in the movie, it's about being a commoner, a normal, everyday person versus being nobility. Whereas the book's version sounds like it's almost maybe a bit about disability or that sort of thing, whereas he's kind of cast aside.
• 15:51
  Speaker B: That's an element of it. But it's not something that at least I didn't think was an overall important part of the storyline altogether, which, to.
• 16:04
  Speaker A: Be fair, in the movie, the commoner thing is not that important, is not the main point of the story ultimately either. It's just like a little sub theme kind of.
• 16:15
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 16:16
  Speaker A: So I guess it kind of tracks in level of importance.
• 16:19
  Speaker B: Yeah. But I agree with you. I think the movie made a lot of good choices here. I think that what happens in the book doesn't not work.
• 16:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like, it sounds. Yeah.
• 16:28
  Speaker B: But everyone's motivations feel much more clear in the movie. And I also like that Ballester being more obviously shoved into the villain role gives him more in common thematically with Nemona.
• 16:41
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So. Well, I actually have a separate question then. Does Demona and him team up, and if so, why in the movie or in the book? Because in the movie, she thinks he's a villain. Cause he, like, killed the queen or whatever.
• 16:55
  Speaker B: Right.
• 16:57
  Speaker A: But in the book, it doesn't sound like that would be the case.
• 17:01
  Speaker B: So the book starts with her showing up to his, like, evil lair, and he is a villain in the book, although we don't know what he's done prior to the events of the book. That is villainous. He's just the villain.
• 17:22
  Speaker A: Okay, interesting.
• 17:24
  Speaker B: So we're playing with some archetypes, right?
• 17:27
  Speaker A: For sure. For sure. I guess I'm just. Yeah, I'd be interested to see what, without having read it, I don't know, like, what he has done or like what, I guess, like, so why. Hold on. Did I. Did you say why? He's like. They cast him aside and that's what kicks him off his path to villainy. But, like. So he actually. Maybe in the book is doing bad stuff.
• 17:51
  Speaker B: Maybe. Yeah.
• 17:54
  Speaker A: Okay. Because in the movie, he's not. He's not a villain at all in the movie. Like a patsy.
• 17:59
  Speaker B: Yes. In the book, he. Everybody says he's the villain. Like, oh, he's. He's like the supervillain. He's like the resident supervillain.
• 18:08
  Speaker A: Like yeah, kind of. Yeah.
• 18:11
  Speaker B: He's like the town's. He's not like a joker, but he's like, he's, he's the resident villain, right. In the kingdom. He's like the resident bad guy. Yeah.
• 18:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:25
  Speaker B: But we don't actually know what he has done. Yeah. What. And if he has ever actually done anything villainous, like, by the time we, when we meet up with him, however many years removed from the events of this joust, he has, like, leaned into the villain role. He's like, yeah, he's become the villain. I'm the villain. Yes. He's become the villain they wanted him to be, but we don't actually know if he's really done anything villainous other than, like, leaning in, like, tackling and, like, rubbing his hands together.
• 19:00
  Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense because. Yeah, and that tracks with, basically tracks with the movie in the sense that because it's the same idea with, like, nemona's backstory, which we'll get to. Speaking of Nemona, though, so she meets up with Ballester and teams up with him because she thinks he's a villain and she wants to be a sidekick so they can go do evil, do crime together. And he very quickly explains, no, actually, I'm not a villain. I've been set up. This is all like, I didn't do. Like, I didn't do it. And so she's like, okay, well, I guess, like she basically is going to help him prove that he didn't do it. And in order to do so, they need to break into the institute to get something. I can't remember.
• 19:46
  Speaker B: Is this one they're going to get, the squire?
• 19:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. I think that's why they're going to the institute. Well, they, they need to get into the institute at the very beginning. They need to get instituted. This is when we first start seeing her transform.
• 19:58
  Speaker B: Oh, no, I remember he goes there because he's like, if I just go and tell them the truth, they'll believe me. And she's like, good luck with that. And then they arrest him and she comes to break him out.
• 20:07
  Speaker A: That's right. That's right. He says, I can just tell him. And she goes, okay, fine. And then she breaks him out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. So as she's breaking him out, she gets in and she's breaking him out. And then this is revealed to us that Nemona is a shapeshifter. She can turn into mainly creatures, but all kinds of things turn into other people. She can, she can just basically transform into whatever she wants. And I say she. I don't know, actually, if Nemona uses.
• 20:31
  Speaker B: They use she her pronouns in the book.
• 20:33
  Speaker A: Okay. I was just realizing, because in the movie, several times, she's like, I'm not kind of in the same way that. What's her name from the good. A good place. Yeah. Janet girl. Place is like, not a girl. Yeah, we'll find out. Spoilers in ancient entity of lovecraftian, like, horror or whatever, essentially. But she is a shapeshifter. And I wanted to know if the ability to turn into different animals and people and all that stuff, if that is what Nimona's abilities in the book are.
• 21:05
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. In the book. We see her turn into a lot of things in the book, similar to how we do in the movie. But she also explicitly says that she can turn into any animal, but it has to be real. And there are so there are fantasy creatures in this universe because she turns into, like, a dragon, dragons, and that she can turn into any person, real or made up, but that it's harder to do than turning into animals.
• 21:29
  Speaker A: Okay. So as they're escaping, they get out and they eventually make their way to a subway. And they get on this subway to, like, get away. A bunch of stuff happens, but they're on the subway. And there's this very little brief reference that I was like, this is probably not in the book, but I was just interested where they're getting onto the subway and Nimona turns into a rat and is dragging a slice of pizza onto the subway. And I was like, it's pizza rat. Is pizzerat in the book? Cause I feel like that reference, I don't know when that's from, but it felt like it might have been after the book, but I wasn't sure. So I wasn't positive whether or not this would be in the book.
• 22:11
  Speaker B: The pizza rat reference is not from the book. And that video is from 2015. It's from the same year that the completed graphic novel was published. I really thought pizza rat was more recent than 2015. I was a little surprised.
• 22:26
  Speaker A: I knew it was before the Trump presidency. Cause nothing good since. Very few good things have happened since. And pizzerat is too pure for.
• 22:38
  Speaker B: Did pizzerat make the rounds again more recently? Cause I feel like I remember people talking about it. I mean, within the last couple of.
• 22:46
  Speaker A: Years, pretty consistent meme for quite a. It probably kicked back up again after this a little bit. Cause this is a fairly popular movie. I don't know. There also may have been another pizza rat? I don't know. Who knows? I'm sure it happens occasionally. You know what I mean? I'm sure with the amount of pizza in New York City and the amount of rats in New York City, I'm sure the sight of a rat dragging a piece of pizza is not that uncommon.
• 23:08
  Speaker B: But I bet it kicked up again. When was the rats don't run this city. We run this city. Because that was a big meme on Tumblr.
• 23:18
  Speaker A: I don't know what that even is.
• 23:19
  Speaker B: It was like an interview. Oh, God, when was that from?
• 23:26
  Speaker A: I don't have no idea.
• 23:26
  Speaker B: It was like a clip from an interview of, like, the mayor of. It might not have been New York. Now that I'm thinking about it, it might have been some other, like, major city where they were having, like, a big rap problem. And there was this, like, clip sound bite that went. That, like, made, like, the rounds on TikTok, particularly where she was like, the rats don't run this city. We run this city.
• 23:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, that would probably be a good.
• 23:53
  Speaker B: Time for two, but actually, I think the rats do run the city.
• 23:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So one of the things, kind of a recurring theme throughout is that, especially as Ballester is getting to know Nemona and coming to terms with her abilities and the ability to transform and all this sort of stuff. And initially, he's kind of like, whoa, crazy. And I think he does call her a monster initially at one point. And monster's kind of like the bad word in this one. It's like a stand in for, like, you know, bigoted language, I guess you should say. Or I guess you could say. But one of the things that she keeps turning in all these different creatures, and at one point, he's like, look, I think they're trying to, like, blend in or whatever, like, with a crowd. And she's like, wants to turn into, like, she wants to have wings or something. I don't know. She wants to do something. And he's like, look, I think it'd just be easier if you were a girl. And I can't remember what her response is, but she says something to that. And I wanted to know if that line was in the book, because to me, it felt like, as we discussed in the prequel episode, the author of this book, Indy Stevenson, is a trans. You said nonbinary, or I think it.
• 25:04
  Speaker B: Was transmasculine, but by gender, I couldn't.
• 25:10
  Speaker A: Remember what you said, but they're transmasc. And so that line stuck out to me as maybe a thing that the author would have been heard several times, maybe from family members, et cetera. And I wanted to know if it came from the book for that reason, because I think it's definitely. This movie obviously plays a lot with identity, and Nimona is kind of a stand in for a character that not even a stand in is a character that doesn't really have a super strong affinity for any of their specific identities.
• 25:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, she doesn't fit in any particular box. We'll say, yes.
• 25:45
  Speaker A: As we said, he keeps calling her a girl, and she's like, I'm not a girl, blah, blah, and this sort of thing. And at one point later, he has this line where he's like, would it kill you to not transform? Or something like that? And she says, no, it wouldn't kill me, but I wouldn't be alive, or something like that very much. The idea that she doesn't really have strong affinity for any specific identity that she can assume and so kind of transforming and constantly changing her identity, which in this instance, kind of stand in for gender or whatever in a way that I think is kind of digestible for children, I thought was really interesting. So I wanted to know if this line came from the book and if it felt like something that was very much in line with the message from the book about if that kind of broader message about gender and identity and. And that sort of thing was something that you felt kind of suffused the book.
• 26:38
  Speaker B: So I do not believe the specific line is from the book. I don't remember it, and I kind of flipped back through, and I didn't find it anywhere. I would not have been surprised if it was in the book, but I don't think it was. And as for this kind of idea of Nemona being a stand in for the way that she plays with her identity, being a stand in for gender, sexuality. Yeah. What have you. Definitely.
• 27:07
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 27:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 27:08
  Speaker A: You think that definitely comes from the book?
• 27:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:10
  Speaker A: Okay. That's what I figured. It seemed pretty kind of integral to the film as, like, a subtext to mind Demona's character, so I assumed it.
• 27:21
  Speaker B: Came from the book. And obviously, like, I think it's more subtextual in the book. I think the movie has more, like, direct and overt conversations would be one of those.
• 27:32
  Speaker A: If it doesn't come from the book, would be one of those instances.
• 27:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But it is for sure something that is present within the subtext of the book.
• 27:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it wouldn't surprise me to know. Cause I believe I said that the. I believe the. The authors of this film were just. I think it's like two cis guys, I'm fairly certain, but it wouldn't surprise there was a ton of other people that were, like, credited as working on the film. And it wouldn't surprise me if Indy Stevenson, I assume, was fairly involved in the film.
• 27:58
  Speaker B: I mean, I would think so, yeah.
• 28:01
  Speaker A: So I imagine he had input on some of that stuff, and maybe there were some ideas that he, at the time, wasn't exploring as thoroughly in the book that then, in later years, wanted to make more kind of explicit in the film. That's one of the cool things about adaptations, is if you're the author and you are involved in the film, you get a second go.
• 28:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. You get a chance to revisit some.
• 28:26
  Speaker A: Stuff and make things either more explicit or tweak some things to be more in line with, you know, what you wanted to say. If not, maybe everything was not every idea you had came across perfectly in the book or whatever, you get another go at it. So, yeah, like I said, I'm fairly certain that Indy Stevenson is credited as one of the story. I could be wrong, but they're definitely credited as a.
• 28:51
  Speaker B: For the adaptation, and because we know he worked on she Ra and the princesses of the. Very familiar with animation. Yeah. Are familiar with all of that. And already at Netflix when this whole thing came to Netflix.
• 29:07
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, sure. He was involved. So we then eventually get it revealed that the director, who seems to be the head of the institute, which is essentially their version of, like, a police force, kind of. This is what the knights are a part of. And they are. Yeah, they're equivalent to cops. Roughly. Roughly equivalent, seemingly. We don't really explore it that much because we're mostly not there, but that seems to be kind of what's going on. And it gets revealed that the director planted the murder sword on Ballester because the director, she didn't want commoners becoming knights. And so this is like a way to make him a pariah and be like, see, look, we can't let their kind in to the institute or whatever. And I felt like that was a pretty obvious reveal. I don't think it's trying to be particularly tricky, but I called that one, like, immediately upon the first time we talked to the director, I was like, this lady's evil. I was like, 100% this lady's evil. And I wanted to know if the director planting the murder sword, which I guess there isn't a murder sword. Well, there is kind of in the.
• 30:19
  Speaker B: Murder Lance kind of.
• 30:21
  Speaker A: It doesn't murder anybody.
• 30:22
  Speaker B: Yeah. Dismember Lance.
• 30:24
  Speaker A: Is the director of the institute revealed be behind the evil, nefarious plot?
• 30:30
  Speaker B: So I kind of covered this earlier, but the director does turn out to be the main issue in the book in the sense that the institution is overall bad. And the director is definitely leading the charge on that.
• 30:43
  Speaker A: Okay, interesting. I'll have more about that here on my next question about the institute, because there's this line that I thought was interesting and the movie kind of maybe my only disappointment with the film as a whole, honestly, because I actually really, I really enjoyed this movie, which I thought I would. I had a feeling I would. My only other complaint, which I'll just mention now because I don't really have another note about it, some of, especially Nemona's dialogue was a little much in terms of the speed and the quippiness. The quippiness was a little try hardy at times. Just.
• 31:17
  Speaker B: Yeah, I would agree with that.
• 31:18
  Speaker A: Just a speed smidge. And it wasn't, like, awful. And it was mostly funny and enjoyable and cute. It was just. There was a little bit too much where I'm just like, okay, we get it. Like, just a little. Just like a 1015 percent too much of the quippy. Like, constant. Every single line gets. Uh. It's like we, we. It just reminded me of like a. Oh, God, I can't even think of a good example. But, yeah, it just felt a little dated for. And maybe because part of this, maybe when this film was being worked on in 2016 or whatever, it felt like. It felt like ten or 15 or 15. Felt like maybe five to ten years, like, out of date in terms of the style of the quippiness and humor, especially coming from Nemona specifically, just felt a little dated in a way that hasn't aged perfectly. But again, not bad. Just. I don't know.
• 32:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's just a wee bit. It's not one of those things where it disrupts your enjoyment of the movie. I was thinking, when you said quippy, I was thinking of beastly a little bit, actually. And how they, like every. Everything that they say to each other is like.
• 32:27
  Speaker A: It's a retort.
• 32:31
  Speaker B: It's all equipped. Yeah, clever.
• 32:33
  Speaker A: It reminds you a little bit of like the first avengers or what, like that. It's very. It's a little weedy, which I don't want to. It's not. He doesn't hold a fucking, you know, copyright on. On obnoxious retorty dialogue. But.
• 32:48
  Speaker B: But it's a good reference for it. Nonetheless.
• 32:50
  Speaker A: Nonetheless. And I like a lot of Whedon's style of writing, some of that stuff, but it's just. Yeah, it just felt like it was dialed up. Like, what it felt like, I think, is that there was a writer's room, and almost every single joke got put in to the point where it's just like, okay, we just. Guys, just take the foot off the gas just, like, a little bit.
• 33:10
  Speaker B: At least she's supposed to be, like, a thousand plus year old entity and.
• 33:16
  Speaker A: Not, like, 14 year old, which would be completely unreal. Yeah. And that's fair. It's just. Yeah, and it's. Yeah, it's not so much that it didn't feel true to her character or anything, or like, it was. It was just, like, physically grating, like, a little bit. Like, it's just like. Or, like, mentally exhausting. A little bit of. Just, like, this person would be annoying to be around, like, too much. Like, if they're just like, can you just dial it back just a touch? But just, again, just a smidge overall, really liked. And it really was only, like, the very beginning of the film. I actually think, like, as the film progressed, that, yeah, it kind of leveled.
• 33:50
  Speaker B: Out a little bit.
• 33:51
  Speaker A: Leveled out. And there wasn't nearly as much, like, constant banter, which I thought was nice. But anyways, during this whole thing with the institute, there's this line where. This is my other criticism of the film, is that there's this point where they're talking about how the director knows, like, she's. I don't remember the exact context of this conversation, but Nemona and. And Ballester are having a conversation about the institute and about the director, and I think Nemona's basically like, we need to tear it all down kind of thing, because she's very, like, anarchy pilled or whatever. And Ballester has this line where he says, the institute's not the problem, the director is, because at this point, he's still in line and buying the whole thing. That the director, which is true, but that the director set this all up, and he's like, we need to take her down. And Nimon is kind of leaning more into the, again, anarchy kind of like, no, the whole system needs to be raised kind of thing. And I 100%, especially knowing this movie came out in 2023, now, knowing that maybe the writing started a little bit earlier, I'm interested to see if this is in the book, because the line, the instance is not the problem. The director is. Is, like, quintessential kind of liberal. And I say liberal in a fair, somewhat derogatory term. Like. And what I mean, liberal is like the liberal institution. Trustworthy, trusting liberal institutions and institutions in general. I mean, it's literally called the institute. It's a little bit like, oh, the issue with policing isn't the whole structure of policing and the structure of our society and the way that policing is kind of built from the ground up. The problem is that there's some bad cops, when really the problem is more holistic than that. And I was surprised because I really thought this movie was going to undercut this idea that ballester has that. No, it's just the director that's the issue. The institute's fine. The institution of policing is fine. It's just this one person is an asshole. And I just feel like that's a slightly outdated, progressive critique of institutions like this is. We've got. We've gotten away because we've become more holistic in our critique of. And when I say we, I mean people on the left, progressives, that sort of thing. More holistic in our critiques of these sort of institutions and realizing that it's the institutions and the structures of the institutions and the power, the powers that create these institutions that are the problem, the systems, as opposed to, like, specific bad actors within them.
• 36:27
  Speaker B: Right.
• 36:27
  Speaker A: And so I was really expecting this movie to disabuse Ballester of his belief that the institute is fine, that it's just the director. I really thought we were going to get a second rug pull for him, where, oh, it goes way beyond just this director being evil. It's actually this whole institution is messed up. And so I wanted to know if that line came from the book or if any of that critique of the institution and stuff came from the book and how that all played out versus the movie, because that was interesting me.
• 36:58
  Speaker B: So I think this is an area where we can hand it to the book. So the book doesn't explicitly get into the one bad apple mindset that you're referencing. But the institute does get completely disbanded at the end, and it is shown to be villainous. Overall, the director is kind of our main point of focus for it. But overall, the institute is bad, and it's rotten to the core. And we're shown that explicitly within the novel. Yeah, whereas in the movie, the institute seems to still be a thing at the end of the story.
• 37:34
  Speaker A: And that's what really surprised me, is that it doesn't seem the movie never really, to my memory, my recollection critique, the idea of the institution as a whole. There might be, like, one throwaway.
• 37:47
  Speaker B: There's, like, a little bit. Maybe a little bit of a critique of the idea of, like, just nobility getting to participate in this, but not a ton.
• 38:00
  Speaker A: No.
• 38:01
  Speaker B: And it is interesting because it does feel like they explicitly set up critiquing that.
• 38:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I almost wonder if something got cut towards the end or whatever.
• 38:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, maybe.
• 38:12
  Speaker A: But yeah. Cause we see, like, night still walking around after, like, in the happy wrap up, like, where, like, everything is fixed and there's a big hole in the wall, blah, blah, blah.
• 38:20
  Speaker B: Like, yeah, everything's great now, but we still have cops.
• 38:23
  Speaker A: We still have cops seemingly functioning the exact same way. And all that's changed is that the director is, like, not part of it anymore. They don't go. At least they don't go into any detail. And again, it's a kids movie. Like, we don't have to get into a very deep critique of. But should. We probably should, in my opinion. I'm just saying, like, it's, you know, we don't have to get into the nitty gritty about the ways they've restructured. But there's. I would expect some pat, if that was a point the movie really wanted to make was about the fact that the problem is the institute, not just the director. I would have thought the movie would have taken more time to actually make that point. And it really doesn't feel like it does at all, which I thought is really. And it's especially surprising to hear that the book does that when the book is from 2015 and the movie was written 2020. Like, I don't know when the. Like we talked about in the prequel, it was a long, arduous production process. But, I mean, the film didn't get finished until 2022, so they could have.
• 39:21
  Speaker B: Made tweaks to the story following a lot of.
• 39:24
  Speaker A: That's what I mean.
• 39:25
  Speaker B: Very public discussion about institutions. Institutions.
• 39:29
  Speaker A: And that's. Yes, there was. We hit at that inflection point in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement and during all the discussions of policing and everything. And obviously, not much has actually changed.
• 39:38
  Speaker B: Right. But we did have that discussion.
• 39:40
  Speaker A: But we had that discussion. And generally speaking, the people that are writing a movie like this, which is full of very progressive, left leaning ideals about identity, about, you know, all that sort of stuff, this is the woke movie that everybody, you know, that. I'm sure people, like, scaremongered that it is. It is. Except for this particular instance, that feels.
• 40:03
  Speaker B: We still like cops.
• 40:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. That, like, actually, it's not, yeah, cops. And look, I'm not. We're not. This is a whole different discussion. That's a very complicated thing. But I was just very surprised for the movie to not stick. To, like, stick to its guns more and really, like, go for the throat in terms of dismantling systemic injustice, and instead just kind of went, actually, it is just kind of one bad person. Like, was the main issue.
• 40:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:33
  Speaker A: Like, also we should be more, like, egalitarian. But really, the issue was this one evil lady who, like, just was racist, kind or not classist, I guess, but, like, yeah, classist. Yeah, like, it doesn't say, hey, society's classist. It says, this lady was classist. And to me, that is not a holistic or correct take, which is a little disappointing, especially when the book did it earlier. And I would be interested to hear, like, Indy Stevenson's thoughts on the way the movie handled that. I don't know. That was very surprising. And, like, it was my main critique of the movie, like, narratively and thematically.
• 41:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, I would agree.
• 41:16
  Speaker A: Anyways, well, it's just a kids movie. Yeah, shut up. Nobody fucking. You're not. I say that that person's not listening to this podcast. They wrote a one star review a year ago saying, why couldn't you leave your politics out of it? And then stopped listening?
• 41:30
  Speaker B: That's still my favorite review of our podcast.
• 41:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. My favorite thing about that review is that it happened so long after we had been. Cause it was, like, years into the podcast and, like, and written with the implication that they had been listening since the beginning and that somehow we had recently decided to bring politics. And I was like, were you even listening to the. Whatever. Anyways, a bunch of stuff happens. Ballester talks to Ambrosius, who they find out that Nemona is the ancient black, evil monster thing. From the stories that they all knew about, Nemona is like, an ageless, again, lovecraftian horror, basically. And Ambrosius reveals this to Ballester. And then Ballester kind of confronts Nemona about it, and they have a falling out over this because he calls her a monster again, blah, blah, blah. And then she kind of has this crisis where she runs into the woods, feels very abandoned and whatnot. And we get this flashback revealing her backstory. We learned a little bit about it earlier, but now we kind of get more about it. And actually what happened between her and Glorith, because in the beginning, the whole idea was like, oh, there was this evil monster. Glorith defeated. It created the knights to stop them, you know, to protect the realm kind of thing. And then it's revealed in this that Glorath and Nemona, and Nemona was this quote unquote monster, were friends as children, and there was a misunderstanding, basically, and. But I wanted to know. There's this montage. Whereas Ramona Nemona is reminiscing about her childhood and trying to find a place where she fit in, we get this montage of her turning into different animals and trying to be friends with other animals and them all just bailing on her. And it's heartbreaking. It's so sad. And I wanted to know if that particular flashback part came from the book. And on top of that, the whole thing with Gloria and her children.
• 43:32
  Speaker B: This flashback sequence broke my heart and I loved it. It's so sad and it's so good. It's also pretty different from the book's version. In the book, the flashback that we see of Nemona's actual backstory, because she does give a false version earlier, similar to how she does in the movie. The flashback to her actual backstory is that she's a little girl whose parents and entire village insist that she has been replaced by some kind of monster because they saw her transform into a dragon in order to defeat raiders that were attacking their village. And so then the institution apprehends her and does experiments on her before she escapes from them. Glorith is not mentioned in that backstory, but the legend of Glorith defeating a monster is in the book, along with a mention of a theory that she didn't actually defeat the monster at all, but that it defeated her and then took her place. So there's maybe some things that the movie is kind of pulling from a little bit, but overall it's not particularly similar. Yeah, I really liked that the movie tied Nemona's backstory directly to Glorith. It's also thought that the movie's version fit really nicely with the overall themes and messages, perhaps better than the books does. The book's backstory explains why she hates the institution so much, but I think the movie does a better job of communicating some of the overall themes. We've got kind of this idea that evil isn't born, it's created, and it's often not evil at all, but it's just something that's different and misunderstood.
• 45:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And vice versa, that the people who are oppressors, in this instance, the institute and stuff, are born from a place of, like, misunderstanding and fear and that sort of thing, and not like, outright evil either. The place where this all started with Glorith. Wasn't from a place of glorith being evil or being a bad person. It was her being influenced by the adults in her life in this particular instance. And people just being scared and. And confused in, like, you know, not understanding something different, basically.
• 45:59
  Speaker B: Yeah. And not willing to try to understand something different.
• 46:03
  Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so then that's the whole backstory for Nemona. We find out, yes, she was this ancient monster, and then she's. So she's been dealing with this sense of abandonment and not having a place where she belongs her whole life for thousands of years at this point. And then Ballester basically, like, this all comes to a head after Ballester kind of confronts her, and they have their falling out. And in this instance, Navona basically comes to the decision that she's going to kill herself. She sees Glorith. They have this giant glorith statue in the middle of the city with a sword that is recreating the famous moment from legend where Glorath vanquished the monster or whatever, and Nemona decides she's going to kill herself by impaling herself on the sword. So she turns and this seemingly, kind of uncontrollably turns into the giant black smoke demon monster that is from legend or whatever that we have not seen her become yet because she has smaller, more controlled versions, I guess, that she can turn into. But I specifically wanted to know if the design of this great black monster thing that Nimona turns into came from the book, because in the movie, it is cool as hell, in my opinion, and I want to know if it was in the book.
• 47:22
  Speaker B: I would not say that the designs are super similar. She does transform into a huge beast at the end, but it's depicted as more dragon, like this one of dragony, but not dragony, more dragony in the book than it is in the movie.
• 47:37
  Speaker A: But as I mentioned, Nemona decides that she's gonna kill herself because she can't. She just has. She doesn't fit anywhere. She has nobody that cares about her, that sort of thing at the utmost, kind of. She's just feeling very helpless and hopeless, and so decides to do this. And I wanted to know if that moment came from the book, because it is woof.
• 47:59
  Speaker B: This is not from the book. So at the book's climax, Nemona and Ballester have both been captured by the institute, and they have Nemona in a self healing bubble, some kind of containment system thing. It's an orb. I don't really know exactly what it is, but it's like a self healing.
• 48:20
  Speaker A: Thing, like the thing they trap. What's the guy, the sandman in. In the Sandman series? Remember in the tv show? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have him in, like, a little.
• 48:32
  Speaker B: They have him in an unbreakable, unmagicable thing.
• 48:36
  Speaker A: Crystal ball thing.
• 48:37
  Speaker B: Yeah. So she can't break out of it, but they take a blood sample from her, and she's still able to control the blood from inside the bubble. So it's actually her blood that transforms into the dragon thing, and then the.
• 48:52
  Speaker A: Dragon just goes rampaging. Or is that basically okay with any goal in mind or not destruction. Okay. Okay. So in the movie, Ballister shows up on the sword at the last second, and as Nemona is going to impale herself, uses his magic. Not magic, his robot hand to stop her. And I wanted to know if Ballester kind of. He, like, basically, he's like, hey, I see you. I care about you. That sort of thing. Basically just, is there to be the friend that she needs in that moment and support her? And I wanted to know if that moment came from the book.
• 49:29
  Speaker B: It does not. In the book, Ballester actually ends up having to shoot the dragon in order to make it stop rampaging.
• 49:37
  Speaker A: Okay, so pretty different.
• 49:39
  Speaker B: Pretty different, yeah.
• 49:40
  Speaker A: But I mean, I guess shooting the dragon doesn't. In that instance, it's not mnemonic.
• 49:44
  Speaker B: It's not.
• 49:44
  Speaker A: Right. It's like an extension of her, technically.
• 49:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's like an extension.
• 49:47
  Speaker A: It doesn't kill her to shoot at her.
• 49:49
  Speaker B: No.
• 49:50
  Speaker A: Okay, interesting. So then the director, he's able to stop her, and she turns back into just, like, regular, you know, non giant rampaging monster Nemona. And they kind of hug in that sort of thing. But the director decides that now they have their opportunity to shoot Nemona and destroy the ancient evil beast once and for all. Despite the fact that shooting this cannon into the city that they have, they have these huge, like, ion cannons on the wall or whatever that they use for defense. They turn it around to shoot it at Nemona, and Ambrosius and all the other knights are like, hey, we shouldn't do this. You're gonna kill a bunch of people. But the director is like, no, we must stamp out the evil kind of thing. And in that moment, they see that this is gonna happen, and Nimona turns into a giant. In Wikipedia, it's a phoenix like creature. I guess it's just like a giant red bird kind of creature.
• 50:43
  Speaker B: I mean, that is kind of what a phoenix is.
• 50:45
  Speaker A: Sure, sure. I don't know if there's any discernible enough features to say it's like, definitely.
• 50:50
  Speaker B: A phoenix, but it's also, like, symbolically a phoenix?
• 50:55
  Speaker A: Sure, I think that all makes sense. It's just. I don't know if I would say it probably like a phoenix. It does say phoenix. Like, sure, fair enough, whatever. Does that happen in the book?
• 51:05
  Speaker B: No, it doesn't. She goes nuclear at the end and blows up the institution, and the citizens don't really know anything about her or her sacrifice. In the book, the official story is that the dragon creature was an escaped illegal experiment, which is part of what gets the institution shut down for good. My thoughts on the changes to the ending overall are that I preferred the movie's version. It's like a little saccharine and a little obvious and a little peak. Ya. But I think it's more thematically resonant than what the book does, especially alongside the other changes that the movie made to the story and the characters.
• 51:48
  Speaker A: I would agree. The ending in the movie, I thought, works beautifully. It's not super unique or original. It's not anything. It didn't take me by surprise. I wasn't like, oh my God, I didn't see that coming.
• 52:00
  Speaker B: I mean, we've seen saved through the power of friendship a million times.
• 52:03
  Speaker A: A million times. But it's done very well.
• 52:07
  Speaker B: It works really well. It's like I said, it's thematically resonant.
• 52:10
  Speaker A: Yes. And there's some great visual. I absolutely love the shot where you see the. We get this big, wide. I'm a sucker for a tableau. And we get this big, wide shot of the sword and ballester standing on it with his hand up and the monster right up against it, about to impale itself, and it's this big, again, tableau. And I just. It's so cool. I loved so much about the visuals throughout the whole movie, but in that scene in particular I thought was really neat. And yeah, it's. Again, it's nothing groundbreaking, but it's all done really well and is very emotionally affecting. And I think, yeah, it gets across the message perfectly, especially for this kind of story. No notes. I mean, other than, I guess it could be a little more original, but, like, whatever. It's for what? This is perfect. Perfectly.
• 53:04
  Speaker B: Not everything has to be original.
• 53:06
  Speaker A: No, not at all. No. And my last question is. So then Nemona flies as the giant Phoenix thing and destroys the cannon and kills the director, saves the city, and Ballester goes up there, and there's little red specks, sparkles, ashes, whatever kind of falling from the sky. And they go out and it. It appears that Nemona has sacrificed herself, is dead. But as I said in the summary at the beginning, he goes to their old hideout, and as he's kind of cleaning up their old hideout, he hears a knock at the door, opens the door, doesn't see anybody. But this is echoes, the exact same thing that happened when he met Nimona for the first time. He shuts the door and turns around, and we hear Nemona's voice, and he starts to cuss. Or he's like, you son of a burst. I don't know what he says. And then it cuts. And the implication, and not even the implication with revealing that Nemona has survived somehow, is alive, has been rebuilt. Who knows? Maybe there will be a sequel and we will find out. I don't know. But is there a last second reveal that Nemona survived the big climax?
• 54:15
  Speaker B: So there is something similar in the book. As Ballester is recovering from the events of the whole climax, a doctor comes in to check on him and kind of casually refers to Nemona as a monster. And Ballester defends her, expresses regret that he couldn't save her because she was worth saving. And then that doctor leaves. And then the same doctor walks in and has no recollection of their conversation. So it was Nemona. And then he chases after her, but he's not able to catch up with her. So she is alive, but we don't get the implied happy reunion that we get in the movie.
• 54:51
  Speaker A: Okay, cool. All right, those are all my questions. I don't have anything for lost in adaptation, but we do have some other stuff to get to, so we're gonna find out now what Katie thought was better in the book.
• 55:06
  Speaker B: You like to read? Oh, yes, I love to read. What do you like to read? Everything. I have a handful of things here. The world building in the movie is way more, like, futuristic, anachronistic than it is in the book. In the book, it's much more recognizable as, like, a straight up fantasy world, but with, like, fantastical Sci-Fi elements woven in. And the movie kind of flips that it's, like, more primarily Sci-Fi with some fantasy elements woven in. And I don't hate what the movie did, but I did think that the book's take was slightly more unique and interesting. Speaking of that, Ballester is really into science in the book, and I thought it was a shame to lose that we see him build his robot arm in the movie, or we presume it's.
• 56:02
  Speaker A: Kind of like during that opening credit montage kind of. It's not even credits, but, like, yeah.
• 56:07
  Speaker B: We see a very good. I feel like it's kind of implied that maybe he built it, but that's really all we get of his affinity for science that he has in.
• 56:16
  Speaker A: There's nothing else.
• 56:18
  Speaker B: While I overall preferred the movie's timeline, I liked the way that the book's narrative, like, metad out the backstory. The movie front loaded a lot of information, which ended up being fine and working, but the book had more of a slow burn to it. That was very enjoyable in the way that, like, information was doled out.
• 56:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, a little easier to do.
• 56:41
  Speaker B: A little easier to do in that.
• 56:43
  Speaker A: Form than an hour and 30 minutes movie or whatever.
• 56:46
  Speaker B: And one other thing that I forgot to write down here is that a couple times throughout the graphic novel, Nimona changes her hairstyle and hair color, which I thought made sense because she's like a shapeshifter. And it was fun. And I was a little surprised the movie didn't show that maybe they felt.
• 57:01
  Speaker A: It would be too close to Ramona flowers from perhaps Scott Pilgrim. Cause that is. All right, let's go ahead now and find out what Katie thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 57:22
  Speaker B: We already talked about a lot of things that I thought were better in the movie, but a couple other little things. I liked changing Ballester's last name from Blackheart to bold heart, especially given other changes. I initially thought that the movie might have him take on the name Blackheart, but I thought it made sense. Before I saw the whole movie. I was like, oh, maybe that's what they're gonna do. But now, having seen the whole thing, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense, to just have it be changed.
• 57:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's definitely one of those things. If I had to guess, it's one of those things where they just decided to, well, one, he's not a villain at all.
• 58:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 58:01
  Speaker A: But two, even if he had been, I think it was probably just a choice of, like, coming to a place where maybe we don't always mean, have black mean evil in these stories. Like, maybe it's just one of those small, subtle language changes that is like, you know, might as well make that change we don't like. Obviously it plays into a lot of, and I'm sure there's a lot to it. I'm not saying that any. It's inherently racist to use, you know, to have a character named Blackheart be evil or whatever. But it is one of those small language changes, especially in a kid's thing, where to just, like, not have black always be associated with evil or whatever is like a, I think a perfectly good goal, like a perfectly good, like, subtle small change to make in the way we write and talk about things. And that would be my guess as to probably why.
• 58:49
  Speaker B: One of the main reasons, one of.
• 58:50
  Speaker A: The reasons they changed the name.
• 58:53
  Speaker B: I really liked the scene where Nemona shapeshifts into Ballester on the subway platform. I thought that was fun. And then something that the movie dropped. A big part of the plotline in the book is that Ballester and Nemona discover that the institute is experimenting with Jade Root, which is, in universe, a highly dangerous and highly illegal substance. So they put this plan into motion where they make some of the citizens sick on purpose to sow distrust in the institute, which does work, but overall ended up feeling not super related to the rest of the story. So I thought that excising that was a good call on the movie's part.
• 59:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I wonder if they also decided that maybe it was a little bit too. Cause that seems like maybe an allusion to, like, the crack epidemic of, like, the. Or something like that. Like, potentially about, like, and I like, maybe that's what the kind of ideas are playing it here. And maybe they decided it was a little too messy to, like, try to work that in a way that is, like, politically coherent or something like that.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker B: Well, I think it would have just been too messy to work in, especially with everything else going on.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker A: True. Yeah, it's definitely just from a time thing. It makes sense to cut it, but I also could just see it being like, this is like, maybe there's an interesting allegory or something there, but it's just way too complicated to, like, make work in this story. So let's just cut it out. All right. That is it for better in the movie. Let's go ahead and talk about a couple things that the movie nailed.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker B: As I expected, practically perfect in every way. Just a few things. Few little details here. Ballester does have a mechanical robot arm in both. Nimona does take an arrow to the knee.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker B: Everybody remember that meme. Hands up if you remember that meme.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker A: That meme. But it checks out. That was meta.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker B: Memes on memes.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker A: But it checks out. That's an old meme. But it checks out. That's an old meme. But, oh, God.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker B: We've entered recursion and Ballester and Nemona, do watch a zombie movie?
• 1:01:16
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. As a whole. Do you feel like the style? Can you just open that to, like, a page? I would just be interested, like, aesthetically, like, visually, does it feel similar at all or does the movie go like a fairly different. Oh, very different.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, pretty different.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker A: Wildly different. So, yeah, this is not.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker B: I mean, this is Andy Stevenson's, like.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker A: Comic style, and he, like, drew it himself.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker A: Okay. I wasn't sure if he illustrated it or just.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker B: I've read one volume of Lumberjanes, and Lumberjanes is the same. Yeah.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker A: Okay. So, yeah, yeah, the movie is very much. It's completely departure from. Yeah. And pretty good looking. We'll talk about that more in a little bit, but. All right, well, let's get to a few odds and ends before the final verdict. There's a great little comedy beat that I thought was really funny. When they. When Ballister is explaining his robot armor or whatever, or that his arm got cut off, Nemona says, did they let you keep the old one in this very creepy way? But while she's saying it, her face, she gets these big, like, doll eyes and she does this very slow mechanical head turn towards him while saying that line, like, kind of like a creepy doll in, like, a movie. Like. And I thought it was a great visual gag. It made me laugh a lot. I liked that moment a lot. Did they let you keep the old one? And just that, like, again, the very specific choice of the way the head moves and everything was so fun. I thought there's another great. There's a lot of little details in the animation of this movie that are fantastic. But when they're in the institute and she's breaking them out and at one point something happens and an alarm starts going off. Ballester's like, we gotta run. We gotta get out of here. And Nemona's like, no, we gotta break things or whatever. And we, like, she's like, got this look of malice, or not malice, but, like, chaos. Chaos on her face. And the alarms are going off, so there's like, red lights blinking everywhere. But the red light is, like, reflecting in her eyes and not in balusters standing right next to each other. Little subtle detail. Cause she's ready to burn it all down. And he's like, no, we should leave. And I liked that. A little subtle allusion to their personalities. And then during that escape, they end up on the subway. And I was just showing this to a co worker today because I thought it was so freaking cool. Who hadn't seen the movie. She explains that this is the first telling of her backstory.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker B: This is the fake backstory.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker A: It's true, but just leaving out a lot of. Well, I guess it's not true. Really?
• 1:03:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. Sorry. But she tells this fake version of the backstory, but the way it's done in the movie is that she starts telling it and as she tells it, she goes and kind of looks wistfully out the window as she's reminiscing. And the camera pans over and looks out the window of the subway they're on. And then we start looking at the tiled subway wall.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. As it's, like, rushing by.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker A: As it's rushing by. And then the tiles become the, like, visual representation of the story she's telling.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker A: And it plays out, like, picks, like, in the tiles, basically. But it's really cool because every now and then you see, like, power boxes and pipes and, like, stuff that would be on the actual wall, like, rushing past on the wall as the story is playing out. I thought that was freaking awesome.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, it was a really cool little animated moment.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker A: It's the only part of the movie that does anything super different like that. The intro is kind of different, but it's just, like, mostly, like, stills and stuff like that. Like the. The backstory of and all that's a little different. But it's not particularly. It's just kind of. But this part I thought was super cool. The rest of the movie in general is very beautiful, but it's not, like, super unique looking. It reminds me of some other things I see remind me a little bit of arcane, but not nearly as pretty as, like, the tv show arcade when we watch. But it's.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker B: It reminded me a little bit of the Spider Verse movies, but not really as nearly as pretty.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, not nearly as detailed or as pretty. Somebody else was saying, or some other movie. One of my coworker was like, oh, kind of remind I came. He said, is there a movie called claws or something? I don't know that he. There was some other movie that our tv show or something that he thought, but it wasn't like, it looks good and it looks. And it looks great. And there were some really cool visual moments and, like, some of the designs and stuff were really cool again, like, the big evil black monster at the end and some of the big scenes and tableaus we get are really cool. But the actual art style was not, like, mind blowing. It wasn't like watching spider verse for the first time or even, like, arcane. Which was really, you know, unique in its way. It was just kind of like a lesser version of all of those, but still very serviceable, very good, and works for what the story was. But that scene with the subway, I thought was awesome. During that scene, though, I think, or a scene close to that, we find out, or, no, they're in an alleyway or something. A piece of pizza pops up that has pineapple on it, and Nemona's like, pineapple on pizza at you. And I was like, oh, no, I have to hate this character now.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker B: Maybe it was hawaiian pizza.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker A: She just said pineapple on pizza. She didn't say hawaiian pizza. And even hawaiian pizza is not that bad. It's just not the best way to eat pineapple on pizza. But pineapple belongs on pizza. Fight me. Fight both of us.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker B: This is an official position, okay? If you just don't like pineapple, that's one thing. That's fine. Carry on with your life disliking pineapple. And you like pineapple, and you hate pineapple on pizza. You are simply not doing it correctly.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker A: This. I will stick to this. You're either not doing it correctly, or you're being a weird puritan. Puritan for no reason. Because that's one of the other things, is people are like, oh, I think the big thing is people have hawaiian pizza. Hawaiian pizza is not great. It's just not the best combination. Like, ham is not salty enough. It's not spicy. It's just ham kind of sucks in general on pizza, in my opinion. Pepperoni, bacon, any of those things is better. And you need something else to go with the pineapple. But. So, yeah, I think that's part of it. But I also think there's a huge thing where. Not a huge thing. I think another portion of it is people who are like, puritans and for some reason just think pineapple itself doesn't belong on pizza, period. Which I think is very strange.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker B: I also think that's strange.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker A: Put whatever you want on pizza.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker B: I agree.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker A: I think it can get to a point where it's maybe not pizza anymore, depending on what you put on it. But Pineapple has not hit that. Pineapple is no different than putting so many, like, a tomato. It's like they're, like, not even that far off. Pineapples are sweeter and, like, whatever. It's a citrus. But, like, I think it's actually. I don't know if Pineapple is technically a citrus. I imagine that it is.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker B: Isn't pineapple, like a really big berry?
• 1:07:51
  Speaker A: Probably. I don't know. Anyways, point being, pineapple's great on pizza.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker B: So there a thought that I kept having continuously throughout the movie when, like, Ballester is trying to sneak around and then later on when he meets, when him and Ambrosius meet up at this pub or whatever and they've got cloaks on to hide their identities, I'm like, you guys would be way more inconspicuous if you took off your giant ass armor once in a while because they have this giant knight armor on and then a little cloak over it. And I was like, what do you think you're getting away with here? Everybody knows it's you.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. A little detail that I thought was really fascinating in the animation style that I didn't, that it took me a while to notice. And then once I did, I was like, holy cow, that's kind of cool. And I'm not sure how common this is in animation. Maybe it's more common than I thought, but a lot of the different characters, and I don't think every single character is unique, but the characters have, the main characters at least, all have different shaped eye highlights. So in the animation style, everybody's eyes have, like a little white, kind of like in an anime or whatever, like a little white highlight that is light reflecting off their iris or whatever, off their eyeball. And the movie makes this choice where all of the characters have slightly, the main characters at least have slightly different shaped ones, which I thought was really interesting. Like Ambrosius highlights are triangles, balusters are squares. Nemonas are like thin diamonds, kind of almost more of just a traditional version of it that you would normally see. And then the director has, like, square, diamond. They're like diamonds, but they're squared off more like where Nemona is kind of like squished and more like thin. The directors are basically like squares that are rotated to a diamond shape. Anyways, I just thought that was really fascinating to have that little subtle difference to kind of help differentiate between their character designs, I thought was really neat and something I've never noticed in animation before. Again, it's probably not unique to this movie, but I thought it was interesting. Before we get to the final verdict, we want to remind you, you can do us a giant favor by hanging over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, goodreads, threads, any of those places. Follow, interact. We'd love to hear from you. Love to hear what you had to say about Nemona, what your opinions are on the film, on the graphic novel. If you've read it, you can also help us out by heading over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Drop us a little five star rating. Write us a review if you want to subscribe. You can also do that on YouTube. Now you can just search for this film as lit. You'll find us every single episode of our backlog except for like one or two that were copyright issues are out there. And then every episode going forward gets post, gets posted to YouTube. So you can listen on YouTube if that's your preferred podcast catcher. And then finally, if you wanted to help us out even more, you get over to patreon.com. Thisfilm is lit. Give us a few bucks a month. You get access to bonus content starting at the $5 level a month where you get one episode every month where we do whatever we want to talk about. It's been a while since we've done one because we did them back to back at the end of.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker B: I know it feels like it's been forever since we did a bonus episode, but we're actually right on schedule.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, because we did the March episode right at the end of March, and then we did the April episode also right at the end of March to get ahead. So our most recent bonus episode was the Alice in Wonderland for Disney. And then before that was the singing in the rain. Singing in the rain episode, which was a lot of fun. And the next episode, next bonus episode.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker B: Will be the land before time.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker A: The land before time. So there you go.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker B: Get your tissues ready.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker A: Yes. That's every month a new bonus episode where we spend about an hour or so, however long, talking about a different movie, you know, whatever it is that we want to talk about that's not based on a book, usually. So, Katie, it's oh, and then also, if you want to support us even more, at $15 a month, you get access to priority recommendations. If you're a big fan of the show and you would really love for us to talk about your favorite book or movie, you know, adaptation that we haven't done yet and you want us to do it, you can support us for $15 a month, stick around for a little bit, request that, and we'll add it to our list as soon as we can get to it. Usually doesn't take too long, but we're scheduled pretty far.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker B: Sometimes it does.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, sometimes it does. It just depends, but okay, Katie, it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker B: That's stupid. After we finished the movie, I turned to you and said, the world is the same and the characters are the same, but the story is completely different. Well, it's not completely different, but it is quite different. I enjoyed reading the graphic novel, and I'm glad to get it off of my to be read list, where it had been languishing probably since 2015. It was fun and unique. I liked the art style and I liked the overall message. However, I do think that the graphic novel suffers just a touch from its origin as a serial publication. It seems clear, at least to me, that some parts of the story were being made up as the author went along, which is fine, but it does result in a story that feels a little disjointed at times. The movie has an overall much smoother and more cohesive plot, as well as more complete feeling character arcs. And while, as I said, I did enjoy the graphic novel, it did not hit me emotionally the way that the movie did, particularly in regard to Nemona's backstory and the climax of the film. I think that the movie benefited from having a completed world to play in, whereas it seemed at times like the graphic novel was trying to find its footing as it went. And while both the book and the movie were going for the same final message, the movie hit that nail on the head in a way that the book just didn't manage, at least for me. And it's for those reasons, primarily, that I'm going to give this one to the movie.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker A: All right, Katie, what's next?
• 1:14:13
  Speaker B: Up next, we are talking about something current and topical.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker A: Oh my goodness.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker B: We're going to be talking about poor things. Novel by Alastair Gray and 2023 film so excited.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker A: I've been dying because I've been wanting to watch this movie for a while because it just looks like an interesting movie. But then I started seeing discourse and boy, I have to watch this.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker B: Boy, did the discourse look like something we could sink our teeth into.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker A: I had to watch this. I was like, we got to do this ASAP because I need to be able to participate in, not even participating in the discourse, but understand where I fall in the discourse because I haven't seen the movie. So I don't actually know. I've seen the trailer. You know what I mean? I don't. I don't know who I agree with. I have my inklings, right?
• 1:14:59
  Speaker B: I feel like I think I know where we're gonna fall in the.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker A: But having none seen the film, I don't know. So yes, I'm very excited to finally get to be. Get to be part of that and be caught up on it. So, yes, poor things, that's what we're talking about in two weeks time. But in one week's time, we'll be back here to see what you all had to say about Nemona and preview. Poor things. Maybe. Maybe mention some of the discourse. I don't know what we're gonna talk about in the prequel episode, but yeah, that'll be in one week's time. Until that time, guys, gals and I'm binary pals and everybody else, keep reading.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker B: Books, keep watching movies, and keep being awesome.