So I did finally watch Equestria Girls... · 11:06pm Nov 23rd, 2013
And it wasn't bad. It wasn't very good either, but it had enjoyable parts. Anyway, I liveblogged as I went (resulting in it taking me something like 4 hours to finish a 75 minute movie--which is why I do not liveblog things because I can't watch and write simultaneously and I refuse to not pay attention to either), so for anyone who is interested, please see below a compilation of my most funny and/or pointed remarks:
To start with, everything prior to the opening credits was awesome, especially Twilight trying to sleep with wings. That was exactly the kind of joke I would do.
Also OH HELL NO SOMEONE BESIDES TWI CAN SPAM TELEPORT IT IS ON NOW. Like I knew Sunset could do it before going in, but I didn't realize how direct a slap in the face it was for Twilight until seeing it in context. Very cool, and almost enough to make me willing to like Sunset until she actually opened her mouth and revealed herself to be an incredibly shallow villain who wasn't even clever to make up for it.
Anyway I'm going to do some direct quotes now so--
On sending Twilight into the mirror
Jeez Celestia if you want to talk about Twilight behind her back with her friends while she’s gone, just say so. Don’t make up excuses.
(“It could cause a disturbance in the other universe” seriously that was the best they could do?)
Also, Meghan McCarthy seems to have issues with repeating phrases to the point of nausea. Here it’s “your crown.” Whereas in A Canterlot Wedding it was “SAY FOALSITTER ONE MORE TIME, MOTHERFUCKER, I FUCKING DARE YOU!” (“The greatest foalsitter in the history of foalsitters?” / “You tell me, she was your foalsitter.”)
Upon Twilight's discovery of her human body
Spike: Your muzzle is really short.
Twilight: OH GOD NOT MY MUZZLE IT’S MY BEST FEATURE!
(We are through the looking glass. There is no turning back.)
Then...
Aaaas Spike casually reminds Twilight that she’s getting mutated an awful lot lately.
The horror/despair version of this story contains insomniac Twilight whispering that it’s been four months since she’s felt at home in her own body. Being turned into a human just pushes her over the edge.
Also Twilight stalker montage song I am okay with this.
A Wild Fluttershy Appears!
Yeah Fluttershy looks horrifying still.
Although I appreciate the implication that, having never met Twilight, Fluttershy is still unable to introduce herself above a squeak-whipser.
Also Twilight WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR ARMS AND LEGS OKAY THAT WAS CUTE.
(Like she tries to paw the ground and also do the macarena or something I don’t know)
Wild Fluttershy ran away!
Fluttershy! Fluttershy YOU FORGOT YOUR ROBIN!
Nooooo!
(Some say he’s still flying the halls, looking for a way out)
On Principle-lestia:
God Celestia, that suit with your complexion?
Actually, wait.
God, Celestia, that complexion?
(As Twilight shakes herself in an effort to dispel “Oh god she looks so weird but I still kind of want to hit it”)
And then Celestia slammed the door on her right after telling her it was always open. She is playing SO hard to get right now. I don't think Twilight is ready for this level of gamesmanship in a relationship. Which would explain Flash I suppose.
Also nice and not at all creepy collection of Sunset Shimmer photos you’ve got there, Principle Celestia.
Then Twilight went to the cafeteria and also met some other people Idek.
Is Twilight... ever going to attend a class? I feel like someone should notice if there's a student who's just following people around in this high school where she obviously doesn't belong. It seems just the slightest bit unsafe.
Also I am amused that that human-world Twilight apparently lives someplace else. I mean obviously CHS is not up to her academic standards. They don't even notice if students cut class all day.
Also how is Sunset Shimmer a backstabber, human Applejack? She is totally a front-stabber. She even shows you the knife first! I know AJ is not big on subtlety here but come on.
TO THE LIBRARY!
OH MY GOD TWILIGHT SLEEPING IN THE LIBRARY SHE IS ACTUALLY A HOBO. ALSO THERE IS NO SUPERVISION AT ALL IN THIS SCHOOL.
Fashion for girls:
YES, RARITY, GIVE TWILIGHT A MAKEOVER PLEASE.
NO, RARITY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING GREEN DRESS AND BLONDE HAIR ON PURPLE SKIN? FOR CRYING OUT LOUD TAKE A DESIGN CLASS!
A brief history of Friendship...
Okay so now we know what happened between AJ and RD. I’m okay with that explanation.
Fluttershy tried to stage a silent auction for an animal shelter? But… but Fluttershy trying to run a not-silent auction! That would be so adorable!
Also Twilight Sparkle: helping friends overcome their differences by pointing out that it helps to ever actually mention why they're mad at each other in case the entire thing is some sort of convoluted frame-up. Truly, she understands friendship well enough to be made a princess.
The real lesson here? Cyber security is important.
I'm looking at you, Pinkie Pie. Your password is your birthday, isn't it?
I say something unreservedly positive about Equestria Girls
I actually really sort of dig the shot of the others watching AJ make up with RD because those two would insist on working out their problems away from everyone else, but everyone else would totally try to spy on them anyway.
And then I ignored the entire time Brad Sentry was on screen.
Pfft Rarity’s solution to Twilight’s image problem is “Let’s get out there and try to move my overstocked school merchandise!”
The... Cafeteria Song? Seriously Ingram, Hasbro, whoever decides this stuff, name your songs after an iconic lyric, not "The Song About X." It just sounds awful.
God Big Mac looks so wrong with a normal skintone. I bet they tested it out with him still being red and were like “We are going to offend SO MANY NATIVE AMERICANS” so they stopped. Or else he just looked like a fucking demon.
…I would watch a show about Demon-McIntosh.
Also Fluttershy cannot wink she is not capable come on guys who directed this musical number?
You know, if I was a kid in this cafeteria, I would be slightly suspect of how these five girls are fanatically devoted to Twilight after 1 day. Like… has she inducted them into some sort of cult?
(No, foolish child, she has merely won their eternal loyalty by pointing out that friendships work better when you actually speak to each other ever rather than letting misunderstandings go unresolved for months)
Okay but the blue guy with the wispy mustache is the hero of this film.
As we move into a more different musical number to resolve the problem that was created and fixed in about 4 minutes vis-a-vis destroying the school decorations:
Yeah this song is better but still kind of eh. But! Fluttershy pulling a George Michael (flinching and getting hit by the broom instead of trying to catch it) still cracks me up.
They really need to focus on athletics in that school.
And then a bunch of stuff happened that didn't really make a ton of sense...
Wait what they get fucking pony magical girl transformation sequences this is super bizarre. I mean, I said that I would get on board with EqG if it had magical girls, but this is a bit late, y’know.
Oh god Twilight’s speech is just a little too precious I’m sorry even “My love will give you strength” was not quite this on the nose. McCarthy, you need to work on your badass speeches.
So um… are the human-versions of Twilight’s friends stuck as freaks with ears on top of their heads and (optionally) wings for the rest of their lives…? I mean I realize that Sailor Scouts growing spontaneous wings is not without precedent but um…
“I didn’t know there was another way,” oh come on Sunset, you were such a horrible freaking person, don't give me that.
Alternatively, now that she knows friendship is superpowers she'll actually become a two-facedly nice person and exploit the power of friendship to build an even more horrific empire than she had ever dreamed of, one built on a cult of personality where every person believes she is their best friend and would willingly give up their lives for her.
...Anyway. I knew Twilight’s dancing was still awful but I really appreciate it in this finale full of blah moments and overwrought speeches.
I didn't really like Twilight supposedly being okay with her new body because she spent some time in a weirder new body, but whatever I guess. It has a certain amount of elegance to it--she spends the movie dealing with even more bizarre appendages and when she's finally hit her stride she gets her wings back and now they are no big deal. Really there was just no space to do the sort of character work I would have wanted to see.
That, and I think a permanent change to the body you know is probably still more mentally damaging than being in a completely foreign body for what you hope to be a pretty short period of time.
Incidentally I am, on reflection, a bit surprised that the portal to Equestria wasn't destroyed and finding another way home the true test of Twilight and her human friends' awesomeness. Or even a way to show her human friends what Equestria looked like as Celestia pulled some sort of an emergency measure, that made Twilight choose without the full chance to say goodbye or something. I mean I suppose Twi faced the possibility of never going home again, but there's a big difference between not backing down in the heat of battle and living with the sacrifice you made for what you knew was right, even if you only have to live with it for a short time. I dunno that would have been more emotionally real to me I think but that was obviously not something the film was great at MOVING ON TO MORE NONSENSE QUOTES!
Denouement? More like Dey... know... YOUR ma!
Awww, poor Rainbow Dash. Able to fly for a few hours, no more. That’s not gonna be emotionally scarring.
Maybe the brief moment in the sky inspires her to become a badass female pilot who moves to Alaska and meets a doctor from New York and hates his big city wimpyness and sarcasm and they have awkward sexual tension.
… Did I just turn Rainbow Dash into Maggie from Northern Exposure okay seriously back to the film…
Also wow Rainbow Dash, “What are hands?” Um, racist much? You know at LEAST three species with hands! (Diamond Dogs, dragons, and Minotaurs, although I guess she was conspicuously absent during Iron Will’s visit to Ponyville. Come to think of it, do we have any evidence that Iron Will wasn’t Twilight, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash standing on each other’s shoulders? There is precedent!)
Okay I am never going to top that mental image so I think it’s time to wrap this up.
God moving back to Equestria made me realize how fucking much more appealing everything about this show is when it is actually about ponies and not worryingly-skinny humans with weird faces and very big hair. Aesthetics suddenly jump about 30 points.
Maybe that’s why this movie exists. To make us appreciate what we have.
A sentiment that I get more and more behind as time goes on, especially since the S4 opener exceeded my expectations so wonderfully.
But yeah, overall verdict... better than watching the Equestria Girls music video promo for 75 minutes straight, but not by much. So much of the film was based on the juxtaposition of pony characters/characteristics against the new setting that actually a lot of the good stuff is self-referential rather than "new," which I think is a pretty significant flaw for a movie. Mostly though, it was just too much, too fast to really dig into anything very well. I still think Flash Sentry in particular was a mistake (although ironically, he is something for which the show has no parallel).
Anyway it was probably worth my time (maybe not the extra time I spent liveblogging unless there are people out there who are tickled by my ranting). I didn't really dig what it was trying to do as a way of getting Twilight to feel like more of a leader (she does like, 2 good deeds for the whole film and demonstrates the power of friendship by not being a complete idiot and actually asking any questions about the conflict between her friends), but the show seems to be walking its own path with regards to that, and so far it's doing a much better job of it.
But I guess I should stop accusing my friends who got me the DVD of trying to torture me.
Maybe, anyway.
I enjoyed Equestria Girls, but in more of a "so bad, it's good" kind of way.
Half of that rant was said in my own head while watching the movie off of Netflix....
I don't like this guy...he reads minds...
Also, Sunset Shimmer is just another terribly thought through and under-developed villain. Think about Sombra.
1536371 Well, the difference being Sombra was a borderline anonymous malevolent force who basically existed to be a fancy "ticking clock" (in film terminology) for the premiere. I.e. he just put a time limit on the heroes' quest.
Now not HAVING a true antagonist did hurt the Crystal Empire episodes, but as bland as Sombra was, his screen time was so slight that his blandness didn't bring down the episode. Would it have worked better if he had been an anonymous blob of evil (ala the S4 premiere) so we wouldn't feel the wasted potential? Yeah probably. Although it was kind of nice to have a bad guy who was once a normal unicorn, since the show has a tendency to run the heroes up against godlike superbeings. Actually, I guess the same could be said for Sunset... maybe the show really is biased against "normal pony who turned to the dark side" characters.
Anyway by contrast, Sunset steers the movie in really predictable directions by not having an interesting or unique spin on "alpha-bitch queen of the school." When you have an antagonist who features prominently, their machinations usually shape the plot to a large degree, so you almost have to make them clever or at least unpredictable for the story to be either of those things. Nightmare Moon wasn't brilliant in that regard either, but she was at least menacing (and had a forest of evil at her disposal), and Chrysalis held all the cards by the time we realized she was a thing, so that worked out too. Here, Sunset didn't add a ton to Twilight's unpopularity... it was already the case that nobody was going to vote for her because they'd never heard of her. Sunset just preempted Twi's attempt to get to know the student body (which probably could have self-destructed on her in way sillier ways if she'd ever actually tried). Honestly a sabo-montage could have been more interesting from both perspectives (like if Twi had actually started to win people over and then Sunset stepped in somehow), because desperate villains do crazy, extreme things, and it would be a very natural reversal where we think Twi's hard work is going to pay off and then it blows up in her face.
I mean the best thing of all would probably have been if Sunset's jealousy of Twilight had manifested in a more tragic or broken way but that's not entirely in keeping with ponies' main thrust. Or if she were more properly Twilight's shadow--like if she were believably a dark version of what Twilight would have become without friends. More evil/amoral mad scientist, perhaps. Because I think a Twi who never learned about friendship would have a diminished life, and might well be a worse person for it, but power-hungry alpha-bitch isn't the path to darkness she would take.
Of course that villain would hardly fit into the high school "win a popularity contest" plotline, so that idea is probably no good for the film anyway (although I think that plotline may have been a mistake from the outset).
Also, I will not accept any insinuations of mind-reading/brain-twins or what have you unless you also thought about a future timeline where human-Dash becomes Maggie from Northern Exposure. I will also accept "Iron Will was secretly the three main ponies who weren't in 'Putting Your Hoof Down' standing on each other's shoulders."
1536703 Makes sense.