Praise4Media #64 - Steven Universe: The Movie

I’ve wanted to talk about Steven Universe for a while. I did a small section in an editorial about it but I didn’t do it justice. I like Steven Universe, a lot. But it handles it gem characters better than most of its human ones. With some exceptions, of course, human characters come off as one-note, which is understandable given that there’s already a sizeable cast of characters, the problem is when episodes focus on these characters, where the conflicts seem forced at best.

The other problem with the show as it stood is with how they treated the main villains. And I’m just gonna put up the spoiler banner for not just this movie but whole main plot of Steven Universe.

The Diamonds, who created an empire of mass genocide and destruction, valuing only their own creation over the lives of everyone else are pacified by the end of Steven Universe. It’s got all the markings of a rushed redemption arc, and with Steven Universe future being half way done and barely touching on the diamonds, I don’t see much changing. And the question becomes whether you should redeem someone who’s responsible for mass genocide.

Good redemptions: Peridot, Zuko

Bad redemptions: The Diamonds, Kylo Ren (we will be getting to that – although Vader also counts here), Kuvira

The difference, the ones that are good take time, the ones that aren’t are generally rushed and tend to ignore the magnitude of their actions (for the purposes of this, I'm ignoring the comic Korra book that helps elaborate on Kuvira)

So, now that the wars are over, what’s next for Steven Universe? Here’s my take on Steven Universe: The Movie.

First off, it’s a musical, of course it’s a musical. The show has had a history of truly stellar musical numbers and this has a number of standout songs. None of them are outright bad, but some are very expository and some are a bit more personal. The first very much fits in the latter camp as the diamonds sing the praises of Steven, giving us a short history lesson in case you’re new to the franchise. The sound like a harmony trio from the 1930's and I promise you that is intentional.

For the sake of not making a review that’s 50 pages long, I’m gonna assume you’re up to speed here, if not you ignored the spoiler banner and things may not make a lot of sense from here on. The diamonds are broadcasting an announcement to say that Stephen is now going to take Pink Diamond’s throne after 2 years disbanding the gem empire. Clearly something they didn’t discuss with Steven, who’s had a decent redesign, he now even has a neck, as he announces that he plans to head home.

Looks like Blue and Yellow Pearl are running the broadcast, and in the gem square, gems are scattered about a bit more. White tells the pearls to cut the feed and is that sass I hear from Yellow Pearl? Huh…

The Diamonds beg him not to go, citing all they’ve done in his name. Ie. Being polite, not killing or being emotionally abusive, and not waging war against the universe and enslaving people, you know, those little things. 'Let Us Adore You' is the harmony song I was referring to. They sound really good together, I wonder if they knew this when casting them.

Steven gets a reunion with Connie, she doesn’t get a lot to do this film, but nice that she got a line anyway. She’s off to Space Camp, as her parents want to support her interests. You get free ice cream, which is a bonus. She gets a call and has to get going so we can get to our next song ‘Here we are in the future’ and I just want to praise Zach Callison for a minute. He’s 22 years old, and been voicing Steven for the last 8 years (lines were likely recorded the year before) his singing voice has improved a lot.

The song itself serves as more recapping, but also a nice bit of foreshadowing for a major element for the plot later. So, is Lars just OK with Steven just popping out of his head whenever he likes? It’s never really brought up. Steven heads to Little Homeworld, a small gem colony on Earth for gems that choose to live there, home to our favourite reformed trio Bismuth, Peridot and Lapis. Amethyst is also there because it’s her portion of the song next, Garnet and Pearl return to finish the song and the 4 lay together on the field above the temple. Steven is content and doesn’t want things to change (yup, this is absolutely not gonna be the crux of this conflict or anything) and wants Garnet to see if that’s what happens.

She doesn’t have to look far, and hey, it’s been 30 seconds since the last song and we’re thrown into the next one, 'Other Friends,' as a giant injector lands and begins pumping something into the ground. The pilot’s gem is a heart turned upside down, which is fairly obvious imagery but something else you might notice is her animation, which is clearly based on 1930's rubber hose animation. It’s something that’s used to her advantage as the flexibility of her limbs and ability to go off-model allows her to run rings around the others.

Making matters worse, she has an energy scythe that poofs Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl in a single shot. It doesn’t seem to have an effect on Steven though as he doesn’t poof. He manages to take the scythe off her and uses it to poof her instead, but finds he can’t bubble her. His gem seems to be blinking.

Steven returns the gems to the house where Greg arrives to console him. He says that the gems will be back so and be able to explain things. But you can already tell something’s wrong when it’s Pearl who reforms first, especially as she begins to ask about customisation. As Greg is the one to answer, Pearl now belongs to him. And we get a song, which means we get more of Deedee Mango Hall singing, which we can’t complain about, especially since the song itself is quite funny

Sapphire and Ruby reform next, but they now act like they did before they fused for the first time. Ruby says she’ll protect Sapphire with her life, and Sapphire predicts she won’t last the day. Amethyst reforms next, lacking even basic communication skills, having to mimic others. Next up is our villain, who we find out here is named Spinel. She introduces herself as Steven’s best friend, and her heart is back up the right way.

And yeah, she doesn’t remember any of it, which means she’s no help in stopping the injector. So, with Spinel and the fam unable to provide help, his next stop is heading back to Little Home World to talk with the B-team. Spinel comes along happily and Sapphire predicts her and Ruby will come along but Pearl is more interested in Greg and Amethyst is shape-shifting into Greg, so they stay behind.

There’s a nice little joke about how it took most of them so much longer to not try and kill Stephen. Peridot asks to see the weapon; lucky Steven couldn’t store it in Lion earlier. Anyway, Bismuth identifies it as a rejuvenator, a weapon that resets gem development if gems were getting out of line. Quick question, if this is a thing, why would diamonds want gems shattered?

Steven works out from that that whilst he didn’t poof, the rejuvenator still had its intended effect, his gem powers are back to the level they were as a child, in that he can barely use them. It’s put him a little down, despite Spinel attempting to cheer him up. Our next song begins, starting with a more down-beat reprisal of ‘here we are in the future.’ It gives a chance for Bismuth, Peridot and Lapis to get a chance to sing. Bismuth takes the lead, making it her first musical number of the show. Props to Uzo Aduba for making what’s essentially a filler song sound amazing

Spinel suggests that if they rebuild experiences that made these gems, we might be able to bring them back, which is what Steven is going to try. Hoping to recreate the dangerous scenario that got Ruby and Sapphire to fuse, Steven attempts to threaten them with a buzz saw. Sapphire of course foresees that he won’t actually hurt them and this plot fails.

Ruby is impressed enough by this that asks Sapphire for more predictions, and she describes a series of events that will lead to Ruby’s shattering as they begin to come to pass. This time it’s Sapphire that comes into save Ruby, causing them to fuse. But whilst being Garnet is part of the puzzle, it’s not the whole. We get a short musical number ‘Isn’t it Love’ demonstrating her confusion of being.

Greg arrives with Pearl giving his introduction, Amethyst has gone missing and Steven heads off to find her, Spinel offers to go with him and when Steven asks her to stay behind, she briefly shows an angrier side. They search the boardwalk, where we see a few redesigned Beach City residents and Onion, who looks exactly the same. They head to funland and ride the roller-coaster, they head into the big donut where Steven gets some donuts (was this actually about finding Amethyst).

They eventually find her in the Vidalia’s garage with her art studio, she’s shape-shifted into an abstract picture of herself. Steven tries singing and dancing to try and trigger Amethyst’s memories, I don’t remember them having many song numbers together. Of course, it’s Steven leading this one anyway. The song allows them to fast track Amethyst’s memories, eating fry bits, cheating at the Arcade. It also allows Ronaldo to get his maximum allotted 5 seconds of screen time (I think they finally got the message we don’t like him)

They head off on the train like in the runaways episode, where Amethyst is able to sing along a bit more, they check out her birthplace, the Kindergarten. The song ends not far from the drill where everything started and it seems by the end of the song, Amethyst has regained her memories. It’s a nice touch that as she reforms back to her usual self, we see touches of all her previous forms.

Back with the injector, the damage is getting worse. Nanefua asks what’s going on, Steven recommends opening the shelters again in case things escalate. It seems Peridot has plug robonoids again, and they’re scanning the injector. She gets a sample of the decayed soil and using a crude scanner made from a microwave deduces that it’s bio-poison. At the rate it’s escalating, they have 41 hours before the poison covers the whole Earth. It must accelerate quite fast, because it’s barely covered more than that hill and must have been several hours now, at least judging by the train journeys.

Steven attempts to lift the drill out of the ground, but with his strength barely working, he fails. Making matters worse, he finds out afterwards that disturbing the accelerator increases its rate of release, they only have 37 hours now. Also, it might explode. Spinel is their only chance to stop it and to do it she needs her memories back. The problem is that they really don’t know who Spinel is, but Pearl might, so it’s time to restore her memories.

Greg is busy preparing for the Sadie Killer and the suspects concert, which is happening in the shelter. Good job Greg’s rich, because dropping the cover charge without consulting the band is… *shudder*. Steven isn’t particularly interested until Amethyst reminds him that the rebellious nature of rock music might awaken Pearl’s rebellious spirit.

You know, given the look of the place, I’m not sure what this shelter would shelter you from, it doesn’t even have a roof. Sadie is another character that really doesn’t get enough credit for the musical numbers, good job Kate Micucci! Also, since when is Amethyst a member of the band? Despite the song, 'Disobedient' it doesn’t appear to work, even when Amethyst shape-shifts into Rose Qwartz. But then Steven remembers that it’s not just rebellion that defines pearl, Heartbreak is the next piece.

Steven has an idea. He and Greg head on stage and fuse into 'Steg', come on, you can do better than that! He has 4 arms, and mesmerism, quite a bit of that. Time for another song, Independent Together, Ted Leo has a voice perfect for this kind of song, and it’s one of the top tier ones in this film.

So, apparently Steg can not only float on his own, but he can make other people float too? The pink aura is new too, but something that’s later explored in Steven Universe Future. The song eventually works and we get a decently crafted recap of Pearl’s origin during a guitar solo as Pearl shifts back into her normal form. She and Amethyst fuse to form Opel so Aimee Mann can do a duet with Ted Leo, they’re a band known as The Both.

Garnet and Lion get in on the flying, and the only person who’s left out is Spinel and whilst it hadn’t seemed to bother her much up to now, it clearly has. Steven and Greg unfuse and it’s clear the fusion took a lot out of him, and making things worse, Spinel runs off, crying. Pearl explains that Spinel was Pink Diamond’s playmate, and they used to play around in Pink’s garden. Steven suspects that’s where the last pieces for Spinel lie.

As he leaves on Lion, Nanefua warns him there are people missing from the shelters. We see a flash from the house implying that Spinel is in the warp room in the house. Steven sends Lion after Connie as he heads inside. Spinel is distraught and she’s not 100% sure why; upon hearing about the garden she activates the warp. After not being tended to for 6000 years, it’s all decayed and dying.

The next song, 'Drift Away' explains Spinel's backstory. She was Pink Diamond’s playmate but as Pink finally received a colony, Spinel was deemed too annoying to serve at her side, so she tricked her, telling her to stand still as part of a game, and Spinel did, for 6000 years. She was discarded like a toy no-one wants and this is why giving her animation from the 1930's, that isn’t commonly used anymore is thematically relevant as well as being a good visual aesthetic.

Steven seems to be able to tone down her anger with another song, with an amusing remark that now he can totally believe Pink did that to her. They return to Beach City and Spinel removes the injector, saving the Earth. She does seem a little downtrodden that after a brief thank you, Steven’s right back to saving Garnet. And the thing is, it’s hard not to sympathise here. Steven has ignored and at best tolerated her for much of the film, and it’s understandable under the circumstances, but it’s clear that she has abandonment issues and this attitude could backfire spectacularly, which it does as she gets paranoid and eventually discovers that Steven still has the rejuvenator.

Assuming that Steven plans to use it on her now, she puts the injector back in that ground. Steven and Spinel face off, with Spinel grabbing Garnet to try and convince Steven to attack her. Steven instead breaks the rejuvenator, and the truth restores Garnet’s memories, allowing her to escape. It’s a bit of a stretch but it had to happen eventually.

The next song is ‘True kinda love’ incidentally it’s as much about having to keep it together in the face of hardship. The song very much rings to the core of Spinel. She’s not mad at them, she’s mad at Pink, but she’s gone, now she’s looking for someone else to blame. During the fight is also the next action scene, and whilst Stronger than You is still my favourite, it’s nice to see them working together.

Spinel realises that she can’t win and instead decides to empty the injector and speed up the process. It sends catastrophe down to the people below, so Steven sends the gems, now plus Bismuth, Lapis, Peridot, Lion and Connie, to help them whilst he faces Spinel again. I guess Garnet can foresee it working out, as she gives the go-ahead.

Steven jumps up the injector but doesn’t make it all the way up and has to climb as Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl form Alexandrite to help the citizens. I imagine the portion of the injector is glass, can’t imagine it’s particularly easy to climb. Greg helps a couple of people out, who were already at the shelter? But his arm gets hit with bio-poison and goes dead. In one awesome thing for Connie to do, she slices a car in half with her sword. I won’t question the physics of that but…

Steven confronts Spinel but at this stage she has no interest in talking, she grabs Steven and holds him over the edge, slowly releasing her grip. Without his powers, there’s nothing Steven can do but hasn’t this journey encapsulated pretty much the entire journey of Steven Universe? A gem he barely knows is trying to kill him, his powers aren’t working, he’s facing up to something his mom did that he didn’t know about. This is exactly what happened in the show. But then he sees there’s one thing, his desire to have things stay the same is contrary to his being. He has changed, it’s one of his best features. He matured, he became more able to express his empathy and gained control of his powers.

Him acknowledging this is enough to restore his powers, allowing him to heal himself and face Spinel on a more even footing. And what’s missing from this, another song of course. This one, 'Change' is another showstopper from Zach Callison, who’s been on fire for the entire movie. The fight is good and it allows for Spinel to work out her anger, and begin to realise the folly of her actions.

So yes, we’ve got another villain being redeemed, I don’t think that’s ever going to stop with Steven Universe, it’s part of the show’s DNA by this point. In my opinion, it’s one best done redemption arcs they’ve ever done, and that’s especially impressive considering that they had a lot less time than they did with Peridot.

Oh, and thanks to the damage done in the fight, the injector explodes, Steven gets himself and Spinel to safety just in time. And we see already that Spinel is regretting her actions. Steven acknowledges that there’s no such thing as a “Happily ever after” and he’ll always have more work to do, I’ll get back to this.

Stevens friends all arrive and seeing them makes Spinel feel even worse about what happened. Steven uses his healing powers to restore Greg’s arm, and a quick jibe from Amethyst gives Steven an idea, maybe his healing spit can save the planet. It actually works, pity they don’t have a fountain full of the healing essence to help or anything. Just sayin.

Spinel recognises that she’s done too damage here and being constantly around someone like Stephen who can trigger her anger so easily is probably a bad idea. The diamonds arrive, bored from all the 5 minutes they’ve been without Stephen. Yellow Diamond brushes off 6000 years as nothing, you’d think they’d have a bit of patience.

I do love how White Diamond says “Judging anything based on appearance is wrong” in a way that sounds like she’s reciting it and believes absolutely none of it. It’s why I said the Diamonds have been pacified as opposed to redeemed. Incidentally, why did they use the ship when they can just use the warp pads?

Stephen introduces them to Spinel and she seems to entertain them with her little musings, they take her back to home world. Whether you think this is a good thing for Spinel, at least it makes her happy. At this point we get a lot of song reprisals, and they’re all great! In time, Beach City rebuilds and the effects of the bio-poison are mitigated. Humans and gems working together as the movie closes the curtains.

That was Steven Universe the movie. And I absolutely love it. As a way to top off all of Steven Universe it does a great job, focusing mainly on the core cast of characters and demonstrating how far they’ve come over the series. The musical numbers are fantastic, both in writing and performance by exceptionally talented voice actors. Vocal direction is top notch too, props to the team there

There is a step up in quality of animation over the series, though they still use some of the show’s budget saving techniques. The use of rubber hose animation for Spinel was a stroke of genius, allowing her to move very differently from what we’re used to in the show.

It critiques the notion of a Happily Ever After, as things change, new challenges emerge and there will never be a time where nothing changes. Something that interestingly is handled very differently in Steven Universe Future, which offers the opposite perspective. Steven’s fulfilled his purpose, now what does he do? The back half of the season is a fascinating introspective on the character. 

I do wish some of the other gems, and Connie got a bit more to do, but I do understand time and budget constraints may have made that difficult. Spinel is one of the best written antagonists of the show to date, and this show has very well written antagonists in general. When they want to be funny, it works and serious moments work too.

The ending might be seen as a little too convenient but then that’s something that encapsulates the show too. If you’re not a fan of Steven Universe, this likely won’t change your mind (ha), but it’s a rewarding fan experience that’s not entirely inaccessible for newcomers.

Rating -5000%