Based on his New York Times bestselling graphic novel, the 3DCG animated film follows Ballister Boldheart, a knight framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and the titular, mischievous shapeshifter who sets out to help him prove his innocence; coming to Netflix June 30.
It’s not unusual for a good story to stick with its reader, for its messages to linger long after they’ve been consumed and digested. But rare, uniquely rich stories not only stay with fans, but continue to teach and provide insights each time they’re revisited.
Award-winning animation producer and cartoonist ND Stevenson has been most recently praised for She-Ra and the Princess of Power, his DreamWorks adaptation of the 1985 Filmation series. But more long-time fans of Stevenson will remember one of his earliest works, a 2015 graphic novel titled “Nimona.” While Stevenson admits that many of his early college writings were nothing to brag about, “Nimona” was an exception, a story that he connected with both before and after coming out as transgender.
“Part of what makes it fun to look back at is that I do see myself maybe figuring things out before I was ready to have them figured out, and now it remains relevant to me because it's something that I wasn't quite ready to know yet, but it's starting to make sense now,” notes Stevenson. “It's definitely not that way for everything I wrote at that time. I happened upon a folder of my writing that I did for my creative writing classes in college, and they're just awful. No one will ever read them because not only are they just not good, but they weren't me. I was trying to write what I thought these teachers wanted to read. But it wasn't what I wanted to be writing and it didn't reflect me. So, it just felt false. It's good to know what's you and what isn't.”
Nimona, since developed into an animated feature film for Netflix, premiering Friday, June 30, tells the story of Nimona, a mischievous, shape-shifting teen warrior (Chloë Grace Moretz) living in a futuristic medieval world, who helps prove the innocence of Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) a knight framed for a crime he did not commit, who coincidentally has sworn an oath to destroy individuals like our titular character.
The film also stars Eugene Lee Yang (Ambrosius Goldenloin), Frances Conroy (The Director), Lorraine Toussaint (Queen Valerin), Beck Bennett (Sir Thoddeus Sureblade), Indya Moore (Alamzapam Davis), RuPaul Charles (Nate Knight), Julio Torres (Diego the Squire), and Sarah Sherman (Coriander Cadaverish). Annapurna Animation produces the movie; DNEG produces the animation.
Take a look!
It’s a 2D/3D fantastical action-adventure murder mystery, a stick-it-to-the-man kind of tale but with a twist. Actually, lots of twists. Stevenson first came up with the story in high school at a time when he says shape-shifting was a big wish for his own reality. “Nimona” continued to exist in Stevenson’s sketchbook as he entered art school until the story was published by HarperCollins.
The novel has won an Eisner Award, a Cybils Award, and was nominated for another Eisner Award and a National Book Award. The hardcover “Nimona” collection became a New York Times bestseller.
“I actually was able to revisit ‘Nimona’ about three or four years ago,” shares Stevenson. “I didn't reread the book for the first few years, because I was worried I'd see a typo or be like, ‘Oh, I should have written that differently.’ I actually do that with a lot of my stuff. I make it, then turn off my phone and need to be distracted for the first 24 hours. But, in this case, I sat down and read the whole thing again, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really good.’”
He continues, “It was nice to be able to have that moment of coming back to this part of me from a moment in time and being able to engage in that and feel that fondness. I didn't have that feeling that I was afraid of, where I wish I'd done something differently or kicked myself over missing a mistake. All of that just drops away. And you get to just appreciate the fact that it does exist, and that people have read it, which is all you can really hope for as a creator.”
Nimona’s character is gender nonconforming and can transform to be as big as a dragon or as small as a mouse. Her story is one which challenges nonconforming concepts, including those outside of gender identity, and questions rules regarding what’s considered right and wrong, good and evil. The book, as noted by Stevenson, is dedicated to “monster girls and boys” who challenge normativity. And while Stevenson’s personal journey, while not entirely known to him at the time of writing the novel, is woven through the fabric of Nimona, he says that this story isn’t just for the transgender or genderqueer, but to anyone who sees themselves in Nimona.
“Some of the stuff, like the queerness in the story, I don't even think I knew that was there at the time, with Nimona or with characters Ballister and Goldenloin,” says Stevenson. “I was a huge ‘Wicked’ fan growing up, so the Elphaba and Glinda of it all is honestly where a lot of that inspiration came from. And there's a little bit of Kim Possible in there, too. I was also making it at a time when I was finding my voice as a storyteller. I was engaging with a lot of media that I really liked, watching my favorite things, reading my favorite things, and then thinking, ‘What would I want to do different? How do I hope to take this forward with me?’”
At the time, Stevenson says he wasn’t even sure the story would reach people because it felt so personal.
“I was making the thing that I wanted to see, but I didn't necessarily know if anyone else wanted to see it,” says Stevenson. “But it only starts out as your story. When you put it out into the world, you give up that control a bit and then it becomes something that other people are putting themselves into as a way of understanding it. That's the moment when it passes out of your hands and into the hands of the world. You don't really control how people react to it, or how they remember it going forward or what the narrative is around it. As a writer, you say what you need to say, and then you let it go.”
That was the mindset Stevenson continued embracing during the animated feature adaptation and production process with directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane (Spies in Disguise).
“The movie went through a lot of iterations, and I had various levels of involvement at various times,” explains Stevenson. “It definitely increased when Nick and Troy came on board, but I always had this mindset of just trying to hold the story with an open hand, as the old cliche goes. It is a personal story, but it’s going to be what it’s going to be. I've already said what I needed to say and now it's time for that to be said in another way.”
Stevenson says the biggest challenge actually wasn’t watching his incredibly complex novel getting boiled down to a 100-minute story, but rather brainstorming with the team ways to incorporate modern culture into a story written almost a decade ago and conceived even further back.
“A movie like Shrek has a lot of wink-winks towards modern-day culture, and does that very well, so we had to figure out our version of that, something that doesn't take you out of the world but is still recognizable for us,” shares Stevenson. “Finding that balance was harder than it looks, as it turns out. It all seems clear, heroes, villains, knights, and squires, and all these things. It’s stuff we all know and have grown up with. And yet, we still had to figure out how to reconstruct it. There was always a lot of fine-tuning that balance of the world, the characters, how they interact with that world, and how we can see out own world in all of it.”
Nimona’s world is one where technology has progressed, but culture has stagnated. The society has fallen back on classism with very black-and-white definitions on acceptable behavior for well-meaning citizens. Not surprisingly, other characters besides Nimona find this system suffocating but, at the same time, are also afraid to leave the familiar confines of its structure.
“One of the things I did pay a lot of attention to, as the comic increases in detail, is the light and the shadows, especially in the way of what's glowing,” says Stevenson. “It's something that I learned in my comics classes at art school as a way of having something in-between the characters to represent the distance between them. It was actually really cool seeing it done in so much detail in the animation because the team took it and really fleshed this thing out beyond my wildest dreams.”
He continues, “There's a scene where Ballister and Nimona have a big fight and she ends up leaving, and it seems like it's the breaking of their friendship. They have a version of this in the movie where she's backlit by the open door, Ballister’s in shadow and Nimona’s face is in shadow, and all you can really see is her shape and the rim light on her hiding her identity. It's also like she’s looming over him. To see this incredibly smart team of people taking that apart, making these rules around that, meticulously crafting these beautiful shots around those ideas of light and darkness, subvert both of those things as well where light can also be a sinister thing and shadow can be a place of warmth and forgiveness, I was on the edge of my seat.”
It’s not an easy thing to do: develop such an in-depth fantasy world at such a young age, so early in one’s career (or even before a career takes off), that speaks not only to the broad spectrum of LGBTQ people, but also individuals feeling like outcasts because of their faith, race, politics, personal style, being a single parent, choosing not to become a parent, choosing a solitary life or a profession far removed from that of their family or friends, and so on.
It’s a story that turns every trope on its head and, at the same time, makes everyone feel seen.
And Nimona continues to speak to Stevenson as much now as it did when he first created it, in both new and old ways.
“I'm really proud of the book,” he says. “I still learn from it, and I think the catharsis that it gave me was incredibly important to who I am as a person now. It helped me work through things that I really needed to get out of my body. And now seeing people relate to that is also similarly very healing for me in a way that is always catching me by surprise.”
Nimona is a story that proves the power of nonconformity – whatever that may mean to each person who watches the film – and that writing honestly and vulnerably creates characters who take on a life of their own and who will outlive their own creators.
“For anybody who's ever tried to start a project they are really passionate about, and for the first time… there's a lot of fear,” notes Stevenson. “It’s really hard even just to get started. But I found the only way to really do that project, and do it truthfully, is to find a way to leave that fear behind.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
