Man, I love Adventure Time. It’s such a cool, fun cartoon and it teaches people all sorts of valuable lessons about life and acceptance and trauma. I wish cartoons like that had been around when I was a kid. Instead, I had Scooby Doo but really he just taught me the values of binge eating and cowardice. Also, that ghost pirates are really scary which is a pretty valuable lesson, but still.
Anyway, I’m a little late to the party on the Adventure Time movies but in all fairness they’re on HBO Max and paying for all of those subscription sites is dumb and I’m not gonna do it. Lucky for me someone gave me their password. So, of course I watched Marceline’s movie. It’s called Obsidian and I loved it.
The main deal of this one is that there’s this glass kingdom, see, and a long time ago it was just terrorized by an angry dragon. He was breathing fire and melting folks left and right. Until a great hero showed up and defeated the dragon with the power of her super awesome song. That hero was Marceline. So every year the glass kingdom has this ceremony where they wear moderately creepy Marcy masks and sing what they think are the words that helped to trap the dragon.
Glass Boy is Marcy’s very biggest fan. He loves reading and he’s really sweet but he has a crack on his face and the most of the other glass people are real jerks about it and tease him. It brings to mind the old saying “People who have glass bodies shouldn’t be dicks” or also throw stones because of safety. But these glass people are, in fact being dicks, and it sucks because it just a scar. We all have ’em and scars are cool because they tell stories about who you are. Some stories are more fun than others but they’re all valuable.
The dragon is threatening to escape and so Glass Boy goes on an epic journey to find the brave warrior Marceline. Surely, she’s out fighting bad guys still and is just a rarin’ for a fight. Except she’s not. She’s all cozied up in domestic bliss with Princess Bubblegum. Just making pies and putting together bookshelves and being happy. So, when Simon (not Ice King but Simon!) brings glass boy to their house Marcy and PB aren’t really down to fight a dragon. They broke up in the Glass Kingdom and that’s bad memories that they don’t want to revisit but Glass Boy is all cute and needs them so they load up on a super rad motorcycle, ( I know. Motorcycles are dangerous and I can’t have one), and they journey over to the Glass Kingdom to put the smack down on this dickhole dragon.
But the song doesn’t work anymore. Marcy wrote it when she was all hurt and angry at PB and while it’s catchy as hell it’s truly hateful. It’s what ended things. Which just goes to show that sometimes you can be standing right next to the absolute love of your life but you still need to do some work before you’re ready to be together. Anyway, it doesn’t work because Marcy is truly happy now. PB and Marcy get each other and balance each other out and they work as this flawless team now.
So Marcy has to revisit her very tragic past to find the song that will defeat the dragon and it’s beautiful and sad. We get to spend some more time with Marcy’s mom, who is great, but we also cry a whole bunch because she didn’t make it and Marcy thinks that her mom left because she was bad. And that must be why PB left too. She is a monster after all.
Except she’s not. Marcy mom and PB and lots of other people love her just the way she is and Marcy finally realizes that. So she comes back to fight the dragon with her girl. I don’t want to spoil too much but Marcy comes up with the perfect song.
King Princess, who I also like, does a cover of it but Olivia Olsen’s voice is really pretty so this is the clip I’m using.
I really needed some heartwarming Adventure Time time so I’m glad I waited so long to watch it. If you get a chance you should watch it too. It’s funny and sweet and full of good music and everybody needs a reminder about how to slay dragons every now and then.
Holland + Harper Productions 