My thoughts & review of Nim's Island

Nim's Island was rather nice.

----- Spoiler Alert : Unsafe region -----

Nice, with a little bit of cheekiness, I sense...

"Alex Rover" was supposed to be a man. Nim had believed so throughout her email correspondence with "Alex Rover". But Nim realised, only upon meeting Alexandra in person, that "Alex Rover" was just a pen name that the writer Alexandra adopted. And it turned out, to Nim's surprise, that Alexandra was female. Conveniently so, I would say. Alexandra just filled up the vacancy - father-mother-daughter. The story started with a duo (father and daughter) on the island. The story ended with a trio (a complete family) on the island. It made me believe that it was by the authors/scriptwriters cheeky touch, that "Alex Rover" turned out not to be a male only at the very last minute. The revelation was so last minute that it leaves trailing thoughts, for we would conventionally assume that another man on the island was not needed, because father-father-daughter relationship wouldn't work out as well as father-mother-daughter, unless ---

A cheeky touch indeed! Don't you think so?

----- End of unsafe region -----

After watching the movie, and thinking about it in a hasty manner that can be likened to scrubbing through the video in my mind with the resultant cacophony of voices trying to grab my conscious attention, I brushed past another significant thought. My cognition, admittedly disorganised, goes roughly as follows, "... like... adventure stories... island... bravery, overcoming...". I mentioned that that was significant (or at least, one that I would personally consider worthy), because my thoughts were truncated after that.

The smooth reflective flow was disrupted as I considered how I had categorised the movie/story. Adventure. The devices are almost always the same, there must be an island, there must be a calm sea turned restless, there must carry some moral/theme such as bravery or grit, and so on.

Adventure?

Had I at the moment, denounced the brilliance and novelty of the written script?

Adventure!?

So it is just another such story, all built upon the 'adventure' template!?

Adventure...

Or the lack thereof... We all want to keep things simple, don't we. In it, the shameless need to categorise. System over style. It is not my fault, at least not to a very great extent though, because I am human. Human, or Man's egoistic nature calls for the need to be in control - to manage via 'divide & conquer' means.

Adventure.

The callous denigration of the writer's work; the indifference to his/her efforts.


I think I finally understand why I hate conventional stuff. That is, stories that conform to the 'standard rulebook' (the conflict-resolution format and its variants). It puts me in this painful and troubling dilemma: while I'd like to consider the story beautiful and unique, the other side of me dismisses it as just another typical copy.