Leo Elliott

I loved it. The one-star reviews are all from two distinct flavors of idiots: people who missed the entire point of the story and have a similar mindset to the villain, and people too homophobic to focus on anything other than the fact that Bal and Ambrosius kiss (and I guess one person who’s super angry about white people being portrayed as villains, lol). Bal and Ambrosius were gay for the whole book, they obviously had something going on for the whole movie, and it’s just people kissing, grow up. The movie’s really good and while the plot is both predictable and in some ways wildly different from the book, it has something to say about who we decide the monsters are and why, and you can see what it’s like to be the monster. Nate Stevenson and the rest of the people making this movie have gone into why they made all the changes they did, and everything was done for a reason. It’s good as a stand-alone and it’s good after reading the book. It has some really funny points (I’m convinced the animators were bored during the many years it took to get this movie out and added weird expressions everywhere) and I personally think the animation is cool and stays true to the comic-book origins of this story. Could the characters be a little more rounded out? Yes. Was it good anyway and did the characters still feel real and relatable? Also yes. I watched his with my brother and we both cried at least twice, it does stuff to your emotions. If you aren’t a bigot and you’re smart enough to understand context and basic metaphors, you’ll enjoy it. Some people have said that the ‘villain’ isn’t fleshed out enough. I think this was done because the true villain in the movie is the human instinct to fear and hate anything different. She doesn’t need to be fleshed out, she just needs to be a catalyst for and embodiment of this fear and hate-a shell containing evil rather than an actual villain. The conflict in the story isn’t character vs character, it’s character vs self and character vs society. The movie is better when you watch it through that lens. There is a rather noticeable amount of arson/planning of murders/chopping of limbs/stabbing of limbs with arrows/manslaughter in this movie, so really little kids probably shouldn’t watch it. When you’re done watching the movie, you should read the one star reviews for entertainment purposes. There are some grown adults throwing temper tantrums in there, it’s absolute gold.