“Onward”(2020)

A few days ago I saw this movie and I thought it was really interesting. It is very symbolistic and it expresses how the world has evolved since its early years.

The movie starts with a magical scene. Fairies are flying everywhere, the unicorns are jumping up and down with their beautiful hairs and big horns. Magicians make wonderful spells and bring joy to the citizens all over the town. The elves have a kind heart and make good deeds and help the poor.

Everything is absolutely wonderful and…

Present day…

In this part of the movie… a lot has changed. The unicorns have started eating out of garbage and acting like a bunch of raccoons. Fairies have forgotten how to use their wings and started moving around with planes and motorcycles. The mermaids don’t swim in the ocean anymore. And the centaurs, which were the fastest beings in the world, are now using cars.

This scene shows the viewers how the world has evolved. Unicorns. The prettiest magical beings in the universe are suddenly acting like a bunch of raccoons eating out of garbage. And the fairies. They now have gone lazy and stopped using their OWN wings to fly. And centaurs are now idle and can’t run like they used to. What does this mean? This means that all creatures have stopped using their magic and their talents and started relying on technology and vehicles. This is the world today. Humans have become lazy and stopped using their talents as their ancestors used to.

Moving on.

In this movie the main character is Ian (Tom Holland), a shy 16 year old boy, good at science. He has a really loving mother, Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and a big brother, Barley (Chris Pratt), who is obsessed with history and ancient monuments.

Unfortunately, Ian and Barley lost their father, Wilden (Kyle Bornheimer) when Barley was really young, and Ian was not even born yet. Ian lived his life imagining his father from his family’s stories about him, photos and a tape recording.

On the day he turned 16, Ian’s day started normally. He had breakfast, his dragon pet jumped on him, his mom’s boyfriend, Colt Brono (Mel Rodriguez), came to their house to have breakfast, and got ready for school. His mother also tried to convince him to have a birthday party that year, and have his friends from the science club come over. But the boy only wanted to have a normal anniversary with his family.

On his way to school, he met with one of his dad’s old friends and had a talk about his dad. Ian found out more about how great his dad used to be and how bold he always was, and started to want to be bold himself. So he began to make a list of things he should do in this new bold stage of this life and decided to invite his friends at his home for a party. But, this plan was ruined when Barley came to pick Ian up after school, with his van named “Guinevere”, and embarrassed him (not intentionally) in front of his friends.

When they got home their mother remembers about a gift that the boys father left to them and went in the attic to get it. When they opened it, they found a big scepter, a phoenix gem and a paper with a magic spell written on it. According to the spell and the drawings on the piece of paper, the boys could’ve brought their father back for 24 hours. Barley immediately tried the spell (he was waiting his whole life to do one), but nothing happened. He tried again, again and again but nothing appeared. They eventually gave up, but their mother tried to cheer the boys up by saying that this gift showed how much their dad wanted to see them, and that he could’ve tried anything to see them.

The boys went to their room, sad, and Ian took the scepter. After some moments of looking at the magic object he said the incantation, and suddenly the scepter turned blue, the gem started to shine. Ian’s room turned into a complete chaos, because everything started flying around. Ian began to hold the scepter and as soon as he touched it, his father’s body started to appear. Barley, hearing all the noise rushed into the room and when he saw everything he started to freak out.

In that moment, the phoenix gem, the source of all that magic, started to shiver, stopped shining and blew up! The two boys looked around the devastated room and they found out in horror that their father was there… but with only half of his body.

The boys tried to figure out where they could get a new phoenix gem, and Barley, thanks to his history board games, knew the right place where they could go and get a new one. They soon left their home and wrote a note to their mother where they said that they were are going to be back soon with a surprise for her. Their mother, obviously, followed them worried.

The boys had a long journey throughout the movie. After they put some pillows, a hat and some sunglasses on their father, to look like he had all his body, they met with The Manticore, also known as Corey (Octavia Spencer), at her Tavern. The Tavern was the place where they thought they could get the new phoenix gem. The Manticore was supposed to be one of the fiercest creatures in the world, a true warrior! But instead, she dropped the warrior business and opened a restaurant at her Tavern. So, the boys had to go further in their trip, and after they stole a coloring sheet for kids from the restaurant, they find out the next place where they should go: Ravens Point Mountain.

They also met with a gang of fairies that were up to no good, Ian shrank Barley (temporarily) while trying to do a growth spell on their gas can. They also went to a mad race on the highway with the gang of fairies (which rode big, fast motorcycles), Ian finally confronted his fear of driving, thanks to Barley and they pretended to be Colt with the help of a spell when they ended up meeting with two police officers. When they left, one of the police officers saw the footsteps of “Colt” which were clearly not from a centaur and decided to call the real Colt.

In the meantime, their mother met with The Manticore, who realized what a mistake she made when she left the warrior title. Laurel found out that if the boys took the phoenix gem from its place a curse would be put on them and the dark spirit of a dragon would appear. So, Laurel and Corey stuck together, robbed the antique store where the sword, that could have killed the spirit of the dragon, was. Soon, Colt ended up searching for the boys too.

Ian and Barley ended up at the Ravens Point Mountain and Ian created a magic, invisible bridge to get to the other side of a big canyon. He succeeded after almost dying two times.

After this, Colt appeared after he found on the road Barley’s car number from the back of the van. He tried to stop the boys from continuing their journey, but Ian and Barley ran away with the Guinevere. More cops started to come after them while they ran like maniacs on the field around the mountain. Unfortunately, they stopped at a dead end. While the cops were approaching, the siblings tried to figure out how to get a down a big rock from the mountain to fall between them and their followers. Barley made a big sacrifice in this scene and made Guinevere fly into that boulder and got it down on the road. Guinevere’s last moments are kind of funny because the unicorn painted on it made an “ehaa-aaw” and fell onto the ground, saving the boys.

The boys continued to look for the place that had the gem and ended up in a canalization where they floated with their improvised boat. They eventually got to the finish line and went up from the underground and found out that the place where they were was… Ian’s school??? Whaaaat??? The boys were confused and Ian started to get mad at Barley for wasting their time with his theories that they had to go on other roads than the right ones. The siblings went separate ways, Ian went to watch the sea with the rest of the time he had left with his dad (or at least the part of him that he had), and Barley went to an ancient fountain he saved a few times from demolition.

While Ian and his father watched the sea, the boy started to cross everything on his list of “Things I want to do with dad for 24 hours”. Then he realized that he had done all those things with his big brother, throughout their journey. He suddenly saw that Barley was always there for him, helping him get over his fears, and making him happy. He immediately went back to his brother to apologize for what he had said earlier.

In the meantime, Barley made an incredible discovery! He had found the phoenix gem in the ancient fountain… but with a cost… The curse had been set, and the dark spirit of the dragon was risen from the dead! Luckily, the boys weren’t alone in this battle, because their mother appeared with Corey and the sword. In the battle the boys were trying to figure out who should stay with their father when he got there. I thought that Ian should have be the one who should have talked with their dad when he appeared completely. But Ian made a big decision and let Barley stay with their dad, to have more than four memories with him.

After a hard battle, Ian, Laurel and Corey destroyed the spirit, and they got to see from afar the boys’ dad. After a moment of laughing and a big hug between the father and son, he disappeared into thin air.

When he got back to Ian, Barley said that their dad was really proud of them and that he sent him a hug.

The boys had finally realized that they had each other’s backs. This journey was not only made for them to meet their father, but to bring the siblings closer together.

I really liked this movie because it was really funny and sad at the same time, and because, as I said earlier, it has a lot of symbolic things.

I hope you enjoyed reading my review! 😄🦄🦝