Inverting good and evil is a common practice in modern society. In advertising, social media, music, and movies, every day brings further descent into disruption of the natural order. In the last few years, this trend has become disturbingly common in children’s entertainment. While fairytales, picture books, and cartoons once used exaggerated examples of good verses bad, the lines between heroes and villains are now purposely being blurred. While mature people with a strong sense of right and wrong can discern stories with unjust scenarios and morally ambiguous characters, spiritually immature people of all ages are confused by anti-heroes, sympathetic villains, and reversed roles.
A recent example of this trend is “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” a DreamWorks animated film which came out earlier this summer. There are more sinister examples of traditionally evil characters being depicted as good, and vice versa, but this film stands out because it’s geared toward children. Also, it juxtaposed a similar family film released by its direct competition, Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid.” Released just a few weeks later than the long-anticipated mermaid movie, “Ruby Gillman” takes the characters of a red-headed mermaid and an octopus-like sea monster and swaps their roles to send a deceptively dangerous message.
The Latest
“Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” was released in the United States on June 30, 2023. Distributed by Universal Pictures, it features the voice acting of Jane Fonda and Toni Collette. After having the most disappointing opening weekend of any DreamWorks film, it has been deemed a box office bomb. Reviews of the film have been mixed, with most people agreeing that the movie is not that bad but not that good. Although it’s generally agreed that it was overshadowed by bigger releases which came out around the same time, this film really didn’t do anything to distinguish itself.Ruby Gillman (voiced by Lana Condor) is a 15-year-old girl in the town of Oceanside who goes to high school, has a small group of friends, and is secretly infatuated with classmate Connor (voiced by Jaboukie Young-White). Ruby is a fish out of water at her school, but not because her friends are misfits or because her mother won’t let her participate in any nautical activities. Ruby has a secret. She and her family members are krakens, disguised as humans. No one seems to notice that they have blue skin, no noses, and scaly, finlike hands. What Ruby doesn’t know is that, when she goes in the water, she will turn into a giant kraken, which humans fear and hate as a monster. After accidentally discovering this when she has to rescue Connor from drowning one day, Ruby goes on a journey of self-discovery involving her warrior kraken queen grandmother (voiced by Jane Fonda) and a popular new girl at school, Chelsea (voiced by Annie Murphy), who reveals to Ruby that she is a disguised mermaid.
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In terms of genre and category, “Our Very Own” couldn’t be much more different than “Ruby Gillman.” It’s a touching drama in black-and-white film made by Samuel Goldwyn Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It stars many Hollywood luminaries, including Ann Blyth, Farley Granger, Jane Wyatt, Ann Dvorak, and young Natalie Wood. However, if you look beneath the surface, you’ll see that this also is a movie about a family with a daughter who has a secret.
Gail Macaulay (Blyth) is a senior in high school who is about to turn eighteen. She is a beautiful, happy young lady who has a wonderful life. She has a devoted family with loving parents (Wyatt and Donald Cook), two younger sisters (Joan Evans and Wood), and she plans to marry her steady sweetheart, a young working man named Chuck (Granger). However, everything goes wrong after her birthday party. Her teenaged sister, Joan, starts a fight by pointedly flirting with Chuck. When their mother intervenes to reprimand Joan, the girl rebelliously lashes out at her sister by blurting out a secret she accidentally uncovered that afternoon: Gail is adopted. Gail is devastated as she realizes everything she has believed about her family her whole life was based on a falsehood. Her relationship with her adopted parents struggles as she becomes determined to meet her biological mother (Dvorak).
“Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” has many comparable features to “Our Very Own.” Both are about a high school girl who lives in a seaside town with her family. The older film’s setting is Los Angeles, and the newer film could also be set in Southern California, since the only U.S. town called Oceanside is in San Diego County. Both main characters have an energetic, much-younger sibling, a girl named Penny in Gail’s case and a boy named Sam (voiced by Blue Chapman) in Ruby’s. Both Ruby and Gail discover a secret about themselves and their family backgrounds which drastically impacts their personal identities. Both girls feel betrayed that their parents, particularly their mothers, didn’t tell them the truth about themselves long ago. As a result, they both seek out other female relatives, Ruby’s grandmother and Gail’s birth mother, to discover who they really are. Both girls get very confused before realizing that this new information about themselves doesn’t detract from who they are; it just adds something.
Subverting Good and Evil
Artistically, there is no comparison between these two movies, in my book. “Our Very Own” is a touching, sensitive masterpiece of acting and emotions, while “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” is a disjunct, forgettable farce of worn-out movie tropes. However, morally, “Ruby Gillman” is not mindless.The people of Oceanside have always looked on krakens as monsters while considering mermaids kind and beautiful. However, it turns out that the opposite is true in this story, since krakens protect humans from mermaids, who are declared to be evil with very little supporting evidence. Is this not similar to how people, ideas, and values which were once honored are now considered bad?
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” — Isaiah 5:20
