Slumberland

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Slumberland is a 2022 movie that premiered on Netflix. It was based on the Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland comics by Winsor McCay.

Nemo lives with her father Peter in a lighthouse. By day she hears the horns, and at night she listens to bedtime stories about his best friend, the outlaw Flip. She resolves to take over her father's job when she is old enough. But then one night, during a storm, her father doesn't return.

In the city, Nemo struggles to adjust living with her estranged uncle Philip. Philip represses his grief about losing his brother, in favor of trying to make space for his niece.

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Tropes used in Slumberland include:

Adult Fear:
- Why Counselor Arya calls Philip after realizing that Nemo has been skipping classes to sleep her days in the boiler room. As she puts it, no one knew where Nemo was all day, and she could have been hurt. Philip also admits that he doesn't know how to parent a child, while dealing with the grief of losing his brother and angry at Nemo for not giving him a chance.
- The scene where Nemo runs away. Philip can see it's pouring rain outside and he has no idea where she would go. Then Carla tells him Nemo would most likely return to the lighthouse. Which means she's on the water, in a thunderstorm.
Alpha Bitch: Subverted. When some of the kids gossip about Nemo, they sound very sympathetic on hearing that her father died.
Armor-Piercing Question: A variant; Nemo tells both Flip and Philip that they're not her father. Philip responds that he knows he isn't. But he wants them to be family regardless.
Bittersweet Ending: Eventually, Nemo has to accept that her father has died, and he's not coming back to her. Even in dreams, she knows that it's not real. Philip also comes out of his shell to save Nemo from drowning. But because Nemo helps Flip wake up and reunite his personality with Philip's, Flip remembers who he is and resolves to enjoy life while processing his grief. After time passes, they're happily sailing together and planning adventures for their dreams.
Break the Cutie:
- Happens to Nemo at the start of the film, where her father dies. She becomes withdrawn and refuses to sail anymore, or interact with anyone.
- Philip reveals that this happened when his brother Peter got married. Even though he knows that Peter was an adult and free to marry the woman he loved, Philip still felt abandoned, and gave up his dreams of grandeur and adventure. His sleepless nights also led to Flip being unable to wake up and forget who he is.
Cool Uncle: Philip wants to be this, but he knows that he is a boring person. He's also not equipped to take in his preteen niece. When he does lose his temper at her, he admits that he is at a complete loss on how to handle her grief, and his.
Face Your Fears: Philip is revealed to be afraid of the water, or sailing, which makes his buying a boat for Nemo a sweet gesture. That his brother drowned at sea didn't help. He dives into the stormy ocean, without his life jacket, to rescue his niece from suffering the same fate.
Reasonable Authority Figure:
- Counselor Arya is sympathetic about the fact that Nemo is acting out on her grief, {{spoiler|complete with her sleeping in the boiler room. As she puts it, Nemo is not in trouble for lying about going to school, but she's worried about repressing her feelings. She knows that Philip is doing the same.
- Agent Green is not a bad guy, despite what Flip says. When she arrests Flip and Nemo, she gives the latter a succinct explanation about how the dream world works, and why it's a bad idea to go to the sea of nightmares because as far as the Bureau knows, the pearls are a Snipe Hunt and a myth. She wakes up Nemo, telling her that she's dreaming and facing nightmares for a reason. When Nemo uses her pearl to save Flip by making him wake up and merge with Philip, Agent Green commends her for it when Nemo makes it to the safety of the lighthouse, and implies that she's proud of Nemo for restoring Flip to his original person.
Relative Button: It's revealed that Flip's button is the night that Peter left him. When Nemo innocently suggests that he could use the pearls to return to the real world, Flip says he doesn't want that. It was Peter leaving that caused Philip to stop sleeping. The thought of returning to that pain causes Flip anguish and he says he needs to go find a bar with a dream in it.
Shoo the Dog: Realizing that he can't enter the Sea of Nightmares and Nemo will die if she goes in alone, Flip tosses away the yarn on his hand and makes her wake up, telling her not to come back to the Sea.
Tomato In The Mirror: Flip refuses to believe that he is Philip the doorknob seller. While he's very muted about it, it's the realization that he didn't wake up because Peter left him, in the real and the breaking world. He goes to an apocalypse dream to party.