Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast

Plot

Fawn (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) rescues a baby hawk with a broken wing. Once it recovers, she, with the help of Tink, attempts to hide it from the others fairies on their trip taking it back to the forest, as grown hawks eat fairies and everyone is afraid of them. However, their hiding attempt fails and the baby hawk is revealed. The adult hawks hear its calls and arrive to attack and to reclaim the baby, but the scout-fairies are able to fend them off. Fawn is reprimanded by Queen Clarion for following her heart and not her head. After helping the baby hawk return to its rightful home, Fawn hears an unfamiliar roar and decides to fly to the depths of the forest to investigate. She finds a massive, hideous, strange creature that has never been seen before, laying in a cave beneath the earth. It has a thorn stuck in its paw and Fawn tries to get it out for him, but he "blows" her out of his liar with a powerful snort of air. Fawn is determined to get the thorn out, and later when the beast emerges from its slumber, she manages to get it out. She realizes the beast isn't vicious, it just simply goes along with its business: a strange behavior of moving rocks and boulders into a pile formation. Fawn stays to observe its behavior, and she surmises that it has traits similar to many different animals she's encountered, such as thick legs for digging and wide, powerful jaws for carrying heavy weight. Eventually she names him Gruff. She helps Gruff as he builds four identical, giant rock towers, one in each season of Pixie Hollow. All the while Fawn tries to figure out why he's doing it.

Meanwhile in Pixie Hollow, an ambitious scout fairy named Nyx (voiced by Rosario Dawson) also heard the roar, and decides to investigate. She too happened upon the beast and does research in the fairy lore library to find out what she's up against. Using some pieces of information gathered from several torn pages of an undisclosed animal-book, she discovers that Gruff is a creature that awakens about once every thousand years, where it will transform into an even more ferocious beast that could destroy Pixie Hollow with a mysterious series of events that leads to a deadly storm.

Fawn reveals Gruff to Tinkerbell, Silvermist, Vidia, Rosetta, and Iridessa and explains how he isn't aggressive, but friendly. She wants to show him to the Queen and demonstrate that he isn't a fairy-eating monster. Her plan goes wrong when she approaches Queen Clarion, because Nyx got to her first and already presented the information of how this gigantic animal called the NeverBeast appears every 1000 years with a massive storm that could destroy Pixie Hollow. Fawn decides not to tell the Queen about Gruff. She is horrified of the legend but is confident that it all is just a big misunderstanding.

Queen Clarion urges both Fawn and Nyx to work together and "do the right thing" regarding the protection of Pixie Hollow. Each fairy takes this edict to mean different things: Fawn sets out to relocate Gruff so he'll be safe from the Scouts, while Nyx is determined to capture him and prevent the impending storm.

The next day, before Fawn could move him, Gruff disappears and indeed transforms into the monster depicted in the fairy lore. growing wings and horns. Fawn and Tinkerbell set out to find him before the Scouts do. Tinkerbell finds him first but he doesn't seem to recognize her, and she tries to urge him to that she is a friend, not a foe. He knocks Tinkerbell away with his tail so hard she passes out. Fawn finds Tinkerbell and is heartbroken to discover Nyx was right about Gruff. So she lures Gruff to her, where he is captured by Nyx and the other Scouts and taken away. Fawn breaks down crying. Tinkerbell wakes up and explains that if Gruff hadn't shoved her out of the way she would've been crushed by a falling tree. Fawn realizes she misunderstood the whole thing, so she and Tink set off to free Gruff.

They successfully free Gruff and though he is weak from the ordeal of being captured, he and Fawn start the ritual that will save Pixie Hollow. The rock towers Gruff built have collected lightning and he flies through each one, where the lightning then redirects to his horns and the towers crumble. The last tower is destroyed by Nyx before Gruff can get to it. Thus the plan has failed, and the lightning strikes and starts a fire all around Pixie Hollow. When lightning almost hits Nyx, Gruff catches it in his horns and saves her, and Nyx finally understands that Gruff is good.

There is no time to rebuild the towers, so Fawn comes up with an idea. She has Gruff fly high into the sky where he absorbs all the lightning strikes. Then he flies directly into the eye of the storm, and with a large blast, it ends. Gruff falls to the ground, where the fairies catch him with pixie dust before he lands, softening his fall. Gruff's wings are burnt off and his once-long horns are now small nubs. Worst of all, Fawn is seemingly dead. The Neverbeast mourns her along with everyone else. His chin fur is touching Fawn's body when after-lightning sparks through him and into her. This revives Fawn and all is well again.

For the next few days, Gruff helps around Pixie Hollow by moving large things and such. He begins to feels the urge to go back into hibernation, as he suddenly becomes very tired. The fairies sadly send him off to his cave in a gentle, respectful ceremony of honor. His cave has been given a pillow made of cotton and a mattress made of straw for him to sleep on, as well as a trickling pool of spring water that emits of a soft glow of light. The fairies give their good byes, and leave the content Gruff to sleep for another 1000 years. His legend is retold as the Guardian and Hero of Pixie Hollow.

Release

The film was released theatrically in selected markets including the United Kingdom on December 12, 2014. In the United States, it had a limited theatrical release, opening on January 30, 2015 at the El Capitan Theatre for a 13-day engagement, and was released direct-to-video on March 3, 2015.

Box office

Overseas, the film grossed $31,178,525.

Critical reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 74%, based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 5.6/10. Metacritic reports a 52 out of 100 rating, based on 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Cancelled sequel

In addition to Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast, Disney also had plans for a seventh film. In 2014, The Hollywood Reporter stated that the seventh film was cancelled due to story problems.