So, I haven’t been very active lately, due to college and personal mental health issues, but I just watched Onward and that hit me so hard that I was reminded that I sometimes do movie reviews on Tumblr.

Onward follows the story of two brothers trying to magically bring their dad back from the dead so that the younger can meet him. Onward takes place in a modern, fantastical world, where magic was replaced by technology. 

First off, this movie hit me hard. Harder than say, a van that sports a unicorn on it’s side. I have never seen an older sibling depicted like this before. Older siblings are usually made out to be “perfect.” They’re the smartest, have the best jobs, have their life together, you know what I mean.

But Barley, the older brother in Onward, is so different from that. He dresses like a punk, is basically a huge history buff who plays DnD, and he does whatever he can for his brother. In the first half of the movie, I was a little upset, I’m not gonna lie. Because it looked like they were setting Barley up to be a failure, to just be a side character that gives the main character an opportunity to grow. 

And to go more in depth about that, I’m going to talk a little about the younger brother, Ian first.

Ian is a timid high school kid, and is embarrassed by his brother. He is desperate to meet his father. And he has this quirk of making lists that we see on his birthday morning, where he writes down how he should act and what he wants to do.

After the brothers bring back their dad’s legs, we see Ian develop a list of things he wants to do with his dad. And through the rest of the movie, we slowly see that list change as they run out of time. And towards the end, Ian realizes that all of those things that he wanted to do with his dad, he’d already done. But with Barley.

Barley took up the father figure role in Ian’s life due to their father’s death. And maybe that took so much from him, that he didn’t have it left in him to pursue being that “perfect” first child that we normally see in the media.