About my response directly at you, yeah, little uncalled for.. Sorry for calling you out but this wasn't helping lol
It felt like a direct insult at me when I was so sleep-deprived at the time I made the comment. All I read was "Your positive review means you gotta be a dumbass to like it" .. that's obviously not what you meant, so again, sorry lol
Anyways.. context and interpretations! Yeah, it's all perspective and subjectivity. And on that front, as a film it works really well and this is a stand-alone movie, the recaps are clearly meant for audiences who've never watch Steven Universe before, and the story's easy enough to get into, characters are.. decently established..? I feel like it should've shown a little more after Happily Ever After instead of throwing us into the plot like "everything's perfect- haha nope" but aside from that, the message is clear and positive to me
As a show.. special, within the context of the series anyways, I think it does a fine job of falling back on to what it's already established. For example, we don't extensively hear about the political climate of Homeworld and.. I expected that. Every episode so far needed Steven to be there, right? All he saw were the "off-colors" and a few others at the ball. That's as far as his actual interactions went there. We're definitely not gonna focus on the gems affected by the end of the Diamonds' tyranny or whatever now and if they're gonna explore that, it'd be done in the show alongside fillers bc of course there'd be fillers
And the character continuity is still there, unaffected by this movie as it's a stand alone. The only one who changed was Spinel, a character made for the movie. My interpretation of the show's themes boils down to self-love, forgiveness, and acceptance. All of these things were touched on in the film (coulda been better though), and the moral/message in Spinel's character arc was ultimately about acknowledging the power of making changes, and how being too dependent on others can lead to toxic decision making.
Yeah, hence why I haven't changed my stance at all lol I'm not saying the movie's perfect! I like watching garbage sometimes! You ever watch Insatiable on Netflix?? That show's a dumpster fire and I actually legit enjoy it for that reason xD This movie however.. it's not as bad as these divisive points of analysis could lead someone to believe, and that's why I'm defending a lot of it