Steven Universe Movie (mostly about the ending)

Thought it would be an opportune time to go and watch the Steven Universe movie, which first aired about 2.5 months ago.  You might think that's a long while, until you realize that I'm not yet done watching the Smash documentary, which came out in 2013.......and if you think that's bad, .....

The movie had relatively good pacing and was pretty enjoyable.  Though it explored some different themes, the crux of the movie ended up being about Spinel, of course.

[Spoilers I guess]

I don't think it would surprise anyone to hear that the ending of the movie would involve redemption for Spinel.  This is a villain character that is portrayed at first as totally maniacal, then tragic once you learn about her trauma and why she came to be this way.  Steven Universe is very similar to Undertale in the sense that the longer you go, the more you get used to the way that the stories go, trying to achieve that "harmonious ending" and resolution of conflict through whatever means possible.  It's not like the ending was ever quite in that much doubt, but the real question is how to get there, because that's really the important part, and the thing we can take away from the story.

In the case of Spinel, I think I'm on board with the general idea of her redemption, but the execution fell a bit flat for me.  To be fair, in the process of this redemption we basically have to do a 180-degree turn from "I am so freaking upset that I literally want to kill you" to "I'm feeling better and we can have a happy ending now" and that's probably =always= going to be very difficult to portray in a story like this, much less the climax of an animated film.  In real life these things take =time= and are often really messy.  The road to recovery is a slippery slope and regardless of whether it's depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or any number of things, I'd wager that it's a very real struggle with no real "turning point".

Spinel's turning point in the film comes right after she reaches the peak of her "tantrum" I guess, as she's trying to pound Steven's shield into smithereens, she ends up breaking down, admitting her own feelings of worthlessness, and then questioning why she is so angry and trying to harm so much.

It's at this point that the ship that Spinel and Steven are standing on explodes and we go from a very tense and meaningful emotional moment (she just "broke"), to a suspenseful action moment where there's a large explosion and we're left wondering whether the two are physically OK.

I think this is the part of the execution that I have the most mixed feelings with.  I understand that a lot of the time in Steven Universe (as well as other shows) character growth, development, and emotional mood is accentuated by music and action and I think the show, even this movie pulled that off wonderfully at many other points, ...but this one didn't really do it for me; I think it really sort of broke the moment.

After the dust settles it seems that everything and everyone is OK and Spinel starts apologizing, etc.  In other words we're now into the resolution phase of the ending and everything is sort of downhill from there.  But it left me unsatisfied because I feel like the whole time we were going through Spinel's conflict it was leading up to some sort of big emotional resolution, and instead we got a big physical explosion.  In other words, it feels like in this case the emotional development got =replaced= by the action rather than being supplemented by it.  We didn't get to see some sort of very meaningful moment where for example, Steven asks Spinel how she feels or what she really wants, or tells her that he thought their times together were actually fun, or where Steven asks Spinel if they can be friends, or I don't know, =something=.  I needed =something= there.

Imagine this alternate version of the story instead: Spinel's feelings of frustration and worthlessness mount to a peak, and seeing that even her plans to get rid of Steven/etc are completely failing, and imagining that not even Steven cares about her, she grabs the Rejuvenator scythe (or similar) in a final act of despair and prepares to use it directly on herself again, claiming that "the world is better off without her" (or that she's better off being a goofy ignorant entertainer, rather than the way she is now which is just depressed and worthless).  But before she can do so, Steven stops her, and hugs her, telling her that he's so sorry for everything she's been through / she doesn't need to change, she's fine the way she is / he doesn't want to lose his friend.

Actual details of the execution aside, I feel like:

- I feel like this sort of despair makes sense for a character who could be read as being symbolic of mental trauma

- If you think about Spinel's emotional arc, she probably feels like nobody in the world loves her -- she was abandoned by Pink Diamond, and even when she started to hang out with Steven she found that he already had all of these other close bonds and friendships that made her feel left out.  There is almost no real compassion shown to Spinel throughout the entire movie, even from Steven himself (!), and I think having that be the key moment in the resolution here would be a big emotional payoff in terms of sympathizing with Spinel and also show Steven's strength in that he can be compassionate when it matters.

- If we go back to the original ending of the movie, the ultimate resolution of Spinel's story is that she goes to serve as an entertainer for the Diamonds.  But I think that's kind of disingenuous to the process of recovery.  Spinel was in a place where she was very messed up and suffering a lot, and I don't think it's healthy for her to seek happiness by jumping straight into "people pleasing" mode again.  If I was Spinel, I would be wholly lacking self-worth and self-compassion after aeons of feeling rejected and unloved.  I understand that the idea behind this ending is to say "actually, we liked the old silly you just the way you used to be", but the thing is that the charming joking Mickey-Mouse Spinel is NOT the Spinel that we saw at the climax of the film.  At the climax of the film, we see a tear-streaked, manic Spinel who honestly probably would have tried to hurt herself after failing to hurt Steven.  By saying "you'll be loved!  All you have to do is just smile and joke around again!" you may as well be telling her "yeah we'd like you a lot more if you use the rejuvenator scythe to erase all of your personality and memories!"  So I think I'd rather see Spinel realize that even when she's feeling like crap, crying, and thinking to herself "I am a horrible person who can't be happy at all", she still deserves to be loved.  Because I have personally been in a spiral of depression many times before, and finding that self-compassion (difficult as it may be) and =allowing= myself to be not ok is I think really important.

Anyways that said I am hesitant to really critique something like this in this way because I feel like SU has a pretty good track record with a lot of other things, but I guess a critique is sort of what this is.  I can't pretend to know what a better ending would look like exactly, but I felt like the one that exists isn't the one I was looking for.

At the same time I think that through the whole development arc of the movie I felt like they did a wonderful job with Spinel's character, turning her from really unlikable and annoying to a character that you could genuinely care about and root for.  That is really tough to do so I think that deserves some props.

Pretty much every time I write a critique about a story of some sort, I feel like it's always about the ending...  I wrote about the ending of Yuri on Ice I remember, and a lot of the recent things that I've seen, I also have critiques about endings.  Ne Zha for example, came really close but screwed just a few things up that it could have done a lot better.  And I could talk about how the ending of Wreck It Ralph 1 was dang amazing but the ending of Wreck It Ralph 2 wasn't.  I could talk about how the ending of Shigatsu no Lion I think was really well done despite not that much happening at all in the last episode.

Endings are hard, but I do really appreciate a well-done ending.  As an artist -- no, simply a consumer of stories, I think I'm beginning to have more strong opinions on these sorts of things.


Edit: and yeah, I get that the whole breaking apart of the ship is probably supposed to be representative of an emotional breaking point and catharsis, but it didn't really do it for me -- compare this to what happened in Kyoukai no Kanata for example, which really pulled that part off well.

Edit2: Sangatsu no Lion not Shigtasu omg....those two confusing shows -_-

Edit3: As a friend pointed out, Spinel didn't need to be "rescued" in this way and I think seeing things from a bigger perspective, I don't have any problem with how her arc got resolved, I think my only real issue now is the execution and pacing, and how I got pulled out of the moment thinking about her spaceship.  But I think the basic idea of what happens is totally fine!