NiGHTS (NiGHTS (film))

NiGHTS is the main protagonist of Pixar's full-length live-action/CGI-animated feature film, NiGHTS (film). She's an amnesiac dream jester who lives in and protects a dream world called Nightopia.

She is voiced by Sarah Stiles.

Appearance
NiGHTS' design takes clues from her NiGHTS into Dreams... original design. The major differences are a more fluffy collar, her pink and yellow jacket becoming a shirt-like attire, and her sock boots becoming baggy.

During the flashback revealing her origins, she had a widely different design. She had black eye makeup, a high collar similar to a jester hat held by a pink jewel, a solely pink jacket, a purple swimsuit, ragged and transparent, lavender sleeves, and boots similar to Reala's.

Personality
NiGHTS is usually a curious, adventurous, friendly, brave and cheerful figure, ready to help the dreamers she meets defend themselves from Wizeman's forces, and fighting against them whenever she can. She doesn't hesitate to have a good time with dreamers and loves finding out about new things, especially from the waking world.

However, she has a mysterious side, as she frequently tries to find out her past and where she came from, as it was a question that left her more curious than anything. She also can be mature and calm in the necessary situations, creating a plan able to save herself and her allies.

Once she finds out who she used to be (an evil Nightmaren not unlike Reala and Jackle), even after finding out she's related to her enemies, she refuses to join them, showing that she prefers her morally-benevolent adoptive "family" (Owl and the Nightopians) and friends than her true, evil family.

In the film's post-credits scene, she sympathizes with and decides to give a chance to her twin "brother" Reala, who received a shard of Claris' Ideya of Wisdom, granting him a chance to live without Wizeman's influence but erasing his memories, a similar scenario that NiGHTS went through.

Powers and Abilities
NiGHTS seems unusually powerful and battle-active for an inhabitant of Nightopia, as pointed out repeatedly through the film by Claris and Elliot. This is justified when it's revealed she is a Nightmaren, and also hinted to be one of the most powerful Nightmarens created by Wizeman.

When the red Ideya shard connected with her, she also obtained new powers that made her get one step ahead on empathizing with Nightopia and the human visitors.

Innate powers

 * Flight: NiGHTS can graciously fly through the sky, with the same ease as a fish swimming on the water. Depending on the situation, she can accelerate her speed.
 * Superhuman Strenght: Despite her graceful composure, she can carry beings and objects four times bigger than herself. When Claris expresses her worry of NiGHTS carrying both her and Elliot on her arms, she jokes and brags that they tickle next to what her strength can do.
 * Paraloop: With the magic, cyan dust that comes out of her hands, she can create vortexes in circle shapes that suck anything. The fates of living beings sucked by them are unknown, but it's hinted to be extremely negative, as NiGHTS makes sure she doesn't use it near a Nightopian.
 * Drill Dash: During mid-flight, NiGHTS can spin fast enough to act like a powerful drill that can dig through solid stone and iron surfaces. It's one of her main offensive attacks to deal with the weaker, 3rd class Nightmarens.
 * Shapeshifting: NiGHTS is suggested to be able to shapeshift into virtually anything she wants. In the film proper, she transformed into animals, objects, and other characters without breaking a sweat.

Powers granted by the red Ideya shard

 * Immortality (formerly, Reliant Immortality): In the past, like any other Nightmaren, her existence was bound to Master Wizeman's life; if he died, so would she. However, receiving the red Ideya shard granted her independence from Wizeman's existence, and allowed her to exist after his death.
 * Empathy: Thanks to the red Ideya shard, an object of Nightopia, she can empathize, communicate with and understand it's inhabitants, the Nightopians.

Unknown origins

 * Dualizing: When NiGHTS connects hands with a human, they share her body and abilities, and it can work to free her from a cage that'd be nigh-inescapable for her. It's shown she can also dualize with two visitors at the same time, creating two clones of her. It's unknown if it's really an innate ability, or one granted by the red Ideya shard, as the flashback showing her backstory doesn't demonstrate her former self using it.

Backstory
NiGHTS was created by Wizeman to be one of his soldiers. Specifically, she was created to be a righthand alongside Reala, and used to blindly follow his orders.

One day, while performing her duty of stealing Ideyas from visitors that unwittingly stumbled on Nightmare, she came across a boy that pleaded for mercy after having his Ideya of Courage stolen. At first, she mocked him and didn't understand why he wanted something she thought as useless. However, he countered this statement by sincerely asking why she did this. After explaining Wizeman's goal to destroy Nightopia, and learning from the boy that good and evil had to be kept together for a balance to exist, she decided to protect his Ideya, by sending it and the boy back to Nightopia before Reala and Jackle (who realized their fellow Nightmaren was taking longer than usual to steal Ideya) could catch up.

But suddenly, a diamond-shaped shard from the Ideya attached itself to her chest, causing an (initially) painful reaction, morphing her form and deleting her memories from working under Wizeman. Confused, and only remembering her own name, she couldn't recognize her "twin" Reala and fellow 2nd class Nightmaren Jackle, and she assumed they were assaulting her, while they were trying to get an answer to why she took so long and what happened for her to look so different. It resulted in her attacking them in instinctual self-defense, interrupting the ceremony of draining power from Ideyas that'd happen.

Furious about the betrayal, Wizeman decided to banish the amnesiac Nightmaren to Nightopia, under the threat of death if she dared to come back with violent intentions.

She wandered around the dreamland, eventually meeting with Owl, who took her under his wing and raised her outside her species' influence, making her become cheery, friendly, kind and truly heroic, and so she vowed two goals on her head: defeat Wizeman if he decided to truly attack Nightopia, and find out about her past.

NiGHTS (film)
After discovering the news of Wizeman's planned attack on Nightopia and, by extension, the real world, she and her adoptive father figure Owl are hoping to find humans that can help them on their journey. Soon enough, a pair of humans from the Twin Seeds city appear in the Dream Gate: Claris Sinclair and Elliot Edwards, who got recently disheartened with their dreams.

The jester presents herself to the pair of human teenagers by singing, and right after, she and Owl explain to them about Wizeman, and his plans of conquering Nightopia, convincing the somewhat reluctant teens to join them. However, before they can fully face him head-on, they must recover all the Ideyas they lost.

More coming soon!

Quotes
See page: NiGHTS (NiGHTS (film))/Quotes

Trivia

 * This version of NiGHTS has a couple of differences and some inspirations from the other adaptations of the character.
 * Instead of being referred to as having no gender (they/them) or being a male (he/him), she's referred to a female (she/her) in the film.
 * Like in the Archie Comics version of the character, her backstory redemption involved her receiving a shard of the Ideya of Courage that got stuck on her chest. However, unlike in the Archie Comics version, it had the collateral effect of wiping out her memories.
 * While most of the character's other versions fall more under the allignment line of Chaotic Neutral despite doing heroic deeds, in the film, she's stated by official sources to be on the Chaotic Good field.