Ruby Gillman’s story follows a fairly standard plot: an adolescent girl longs to go to prom but must overcome both her overprotective mother’s objections and conflict with a new popular kid at school. Oh, except the girl is actually a kraken. And her nemesis is a megalomaniac mermaid.
When you think of a kraken you probably think of a sea monster of enormous size, lashing out to sink ships that sail too close to it. It belongs to Norwegian folklore and written descriptions of the beast can be dated to the 1100s. But the new animated film writes a different narrative for this legendary creature.
The kraken has been portrayed as monstrous throughout literary and movie history. Hans Egede, a Norwegian missionary, described a kraken as covering the whole sea when it surfaced and capturing victims with its claws. Erik Pontoppidan, the Lutheran Bishop of Bergen, described it in 1753 as a giant octopus with long arms whose descent to the bottom of the ocean to feed caused a whirlpool in its wake.
