Trans Allegories in Film: 'Nimona' (2023)
Animation as a medium of storytelling can be thought to be open to all ages and as I hope my reading will reveal, 'Nimona' could be interpreted as a transgender story.

When two troublemaking female prisoners (one a revolutionary, the other a former harem-girl) can't seem to get along, they are chained together and extradited for safekeeping. The women, still chained together, stumble, stab, and cat-fight their way across the wilderness, igniting a bloody shootout between gangsters and a group of revolutionaries.
Animation as a medium of storytelling can be thought to be open to all ages and as I hope my reading will reveal, 'Nimona' could be interpreted as a transgender story.
Step deep into the 21st century and discover the complexities of artificial combat soldiers.
A direct fall into the white savior narrative
These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.
Even without the messaging, Mercy does not hold up as a movie. It's sloppily done and the mystery doesn’t tie together at the end.
As Sexual Assault Awareness Month comes to an end, I’d like to urge viewers and filmmakers to take a long and hard look at how rape is portrayed on screen.