#judge her by her actions which was trying to kill the krakens and rule over the ocean and land

[kahluah]

Okay, let's pretend for a moment that everything in Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken is exactly the same, but instead of krakens and mermaids, there are just normal people of two different races. Do you realize how iffy the statement "well, it doesn't MATTER if one race is pure evil and the movie comes off as incredibly eugenics-y, it's just set dressing and not the primary focus!" sounds in that context?

And plus, it's a pretty well-established rule in writing that if you're going to introduce worldbuilding into your story, you're going to be expected to elaborate on it. If the film was just trying to explore a young girl's adolescence and relationships with the adult women in her life, why even bother throwing in all that stuff about mermaids, krakens, and the war that broke out between them?

Ok but here is the thing, they aren't just regular people of two different races. I understand why it's the first thing people's brains are jumping to since we've had many movies recently who explore race through a lense like this, but that doesn't mean that is what this movie was doing. If you break it down to basics, we had a conflict between two differing entities. So how about, as another pretend moment, we view them to be regular people of two different political identities. Political parties usually have some sort of symbol, so it's not that far of a stretch that a movie could have their characters be representing that. And I'm saying this because people have no difficulties writing some political parties off as pure evil; I think we all agree that nobody should side with Nazis and that they should be wiped out. Tories and Republicans are also very much hated, especially on this site. I think most people can find those views understandable for writing someone off as evil; we do it all the time and we fully believe it's correct!

So you could also totally view the movie as a commentary on two different monarchy factions, one where the Queen did not want to expand her kingdom to the land outside her borders and pretty much let her subjects live their own lives, all she wanted was to wipe out the other potential Queen and her supporters. Said other Queen wanted to invade the land outside the borders to expand the kingdom and wished to rule over the people with an iron fist. While I'm not for monarchies in any way, I know I would prefer the first one over the second if I had to choose between the two.

You are the one conflating it with race when it doesn't have to be. I get it's easy to jump to, but that does not mean it's the intent. There are multiple ways it could be viewed. But all of it would just be conjecture because that's not what the movie presented itself to be about and we don't have enough info on the world to make any solid say about anything.

I can understand a disappointment in there not being more world building, it seems like a cool world to explore, but the reason the movie didn't was because it was not necessary for the story they wanted to tell. I'm sure everyone would have loved more info on the war and whatever is going on in the ocean in this world, but all that was not needed for this movie and so it wasn't put in. Wanting the movie to go into unnecessary detail of background info that isn't needed for the story is just entitlement. The war served it's purpose of being something that gave Ruby a goal and objective that led into the "twist" and climax of the movie. It was a vehicle to move the story along and that was all. They don't need a deeper reason to add krakens, mermaids, and a war other than "they sound cool" and "more movies aimed at younger girls should totally end in a giant Kaiju battle". It's frustrating, but sometimes that's just the way it is.

I also find it funny that people are soooooooo latched on to the "Krakens were trying to genocide the mermaids!!!" when Nerissa was trying to do the exact same thing to the Krakens. Pot, meet Kettle. So sure, let's say it was a race and eugenics thing, but at the very least don't be hypocritical by saying the mermaids were any better.

#ruby gillman teenage kraken #frustrates me that the people that want to argue this don't acknowledge that both krakens and mermaids want to genocide each other #at least the krakens aren't also trying to dominate other lands and people #also we don't know how the other mermaids are even living in the ocean #they could be perfectly fine and free and not wanting to deal with Narissa and her vanity anymore #we only see one mermaid and she is a liar so stop taking her sob story at face value #judge her by her actions which was trying to kill the krakens and rule over the ocean and land