Drink the Kool-Aid. · 6:32pm Sep 30th, 2014
Because why not, have some thoughts about Rainbow Rocks. I'm not going to structure it as a proper review because there's plenty of other people who will do that (or try and miss the mark by spending most of their words recapping the plot, which is like a review cardinal sin). Spoilers, obvs.
I like Equestria Girls. It does some things wrong but overall it could be a lot worse. One thing I think it does poorly is not cover familiar ground fast enough, both from a perspective of within the universe -- Twilight turns the clock back to zero with her friends and the section where she connects with their human counterparts is pretty loose in terms of knowing where things are going to go before they get there -- and from a meta perspective about being an alternate universe story, where it's fairly slow to establish first the base universe and then the ways the new one differs. Rainbow Rocks doesn't have that problem: it's very swift at setting up the new villains, the stakes, the focus. It all comes very quickly and smoothly so there can be more time spent on the important stuff, like the characters interacting with each other. This was another area where EQG falls a bit short; aside from Twilight and Spike (where the hell has that Spike been in the series, by the way? and even here, even though he doesn't have much to do, at least he doesn't embarrass himself every time he opens his mouth) there's not that much in the way of interpersonal... stuff, it's all mostly Twilight dealing with her princess thing. If you removed, for example, Rainbow Dash from the first film, what would change? RR comes back to the Twilight princess stuff -- although there's a little more meat there, too, after she's had a season to get comfortable with her role as Princess of Friendship -- but in a way that gets some proper interaction out of the rest of Mane 6 + Sunset, so big points for that. The ensemble episodes feel like they're rushed for time, but with 70+ minutes to use there's enough space to give everyone a little something to do and to touch on it as the film moves along.
The way that time works in the mirror universe is wonky to the point of it being intentionally wonky, I think. Film starts with the Dazzlings witnessing the Mane 6's friendship beam that stops demon!Sunset. They then show up at the school and begin meddling. Unless it's one hell of a long walk from wherever they were to CHS, that would mean that no time passed between the two films in the human world, while there was a whole season (however long that is -- I don't quite hold to the popular idea that each season = 1 year, but obviously some time went by) of stuff that happened with the ponies. And then to really hammer the thing home, the Dazzlings were banished by Starswirl the Bearded, who's most likely been dead for a millennium at least if Luna was able to recognise Twilight dressing up as him for Nightmare Night, and yet they're... well, alive and still teenage girls within the mirror. I have this idea that the mirror universe isn't a proper, fully-formed thing, that it draws on the main pony universe to give it some order. There is no graduate and go to college, because the little universe is all about the high school; it's blank once you go a couple of blocks away. The stinger at the end of RR undercuts this idea somewhat, but maybe a potential third film could be all about human!Twilight discovering and coming to terms with being a shadow of the real Twilight Sparkle.
I'm not a big fan of Rainbow at her worse moments -- not when she's meant to look bad, but more just little throw-away things like how she completely throws Pinkie under the bus when Cheese Sandwich shows up and is the shiny new party planner in town -- but her possessiveness and selfishness makes absolute sense for her in the context of being in a band. In fact, the whole band dynamic as mapped to the Humane 5 was perfect; I was even wondering just how Twilight was meant to fit in since she looked like she was the lead singer from the promo material, but she's not really a proper part of the band so that nicely solves that. When everyone's airing their grievances about what's been going wrong, that hit most of the points you'd expect to see in a band gets big/breaks up/gets back together narrative. I was hoping for a bit more music-related stuff, but I guess there was enough with Trixie pulling some Misfits-esque shenanigans to ensure that Jem... sorry, the Rainbooms didn't play. Mostly I think I'm bummed that Twilight didn't seem to have that Bowie-ish thing over her eye in her stage makeup; I was promised Ziggy Stardust dammit.
All the fandom shoutouts were great, because the majority of them weren't egregious. Background ponies get popular but there's a feedback loop with the show staff putting more nods towards characters the fandom likes, so they show up over and over, and then they're a running joke of the show even if you're not a heavily-enfranchised fan (Bulk Biceps would be the big example). So, like, Octavia talks, Vinyl Scratch saves the day with her convertible bass cannon, hey look there's Maud, that's all stuff that's on one level. And then there's Lyra and Bon Bon, who seemed like a half-step beyond all of that. Like... you can tell who's the butch and who's the femme in that relationship, you know? I mean, you can make all the jokes you want about how Rarity and Applejack fight so much, why don't they just kiss already, or that Trixie was just shoving Brad out of the way because she wants Twilight all to herself, but most sane fans know that when they see shipping fuel that it's mostly unintentional, and even if it isn't that it will never amount to anything. But if you're FiM staff and you're aware of the mountains of fan content we all generate -- and we know they are -- then they have to know what we think of Lyra and Bon Bon. It's like the one thing that shippers almost all universally agree on outside of canon established ships. So is it possible there was a covert nod to all of that, by having them not just sing a duet together but having them look like a lesbian power couple? Or am I just high on paint fumes or something?
I don't know which cringe moment was worse: Snips and Snails breaking it down like the worst tribute to Run DMC ever, the lyrics to Twilight's musical counterspell, or Twilight completely underestimating what it takes to fire off a friendship cannon. People who wonder where dorky Twilight went after she got her wings, she's here in spades. The little details that show how she never got completely used to a human body were great and subtle, and the pressure she puts on herself to come up with the right solution because she's a princess now and she's not allowed to fail was much stronger than any of the points during season 4 when that was an issue. And this is all with Twilight not even being the main character! She's treated like she is, like she's going to deus ex machina all over the place and fix things, which is a really clever way of obscuring for a little while that it's Sunset's story the whole way through; you also get a sense, seeing how Sunset lets herself fade into the background among the Mane 6, of how she might have turned away from friends while being Celestia's student. Sunset's very sympathetic and easily the best reformed villain -- white hat or black hat, Discord is still going to cause chaos whenever he's on screen, so there's not much change with him -- and I would be all on board for an Equestria Girls series that focuses on Sunset's continuing adventures at Canterlot High.
There's not a person in the fandom who didn't instantly think Sonata was adorable, right? I wish she'd gotten a scene where she could have told Adagio off, to show she's not all bad, just misguided, but I guess that's what fanfiction is for.
I'm not sure enough appreciation is given to the subtle differences Nicole Oliver gives to Princess and Principal Celestia, because while most of the other characters are straight ports, there's a little bit of difference between being the undying absolute authority of an entire nation and head babysitter of a bunch of goddamn teenagers, and that difference is there in her performance. Princess Celestia is wise, regal, warm; Principal Celestia is a little bit bored. Princess Celestia might be thinking a thousand other things about how to keep Equestria under control, but she's giving the main part of her attention to whoever she's speaking with; Principal Celestia is clearly trying to remember if she needs to pick up some milk on the way home from work. Also on the subject of differences between ponies and their human counterparts, I can take or leave classic Trixie, but there's something about the human version that makes her way funnier than she should be. If someone actually went through high school with the same kind of grandstanding she does, they'd have enormous titanium-alloy balls, which might have something to do with it. She seems like a bit of a dork, like a benign Gob Bluth, who the other students have gotten used to and just leave her to do her thing, which is mainly make outrageous statements in third-person.
This is a thing you won't see written many other places: I wish there was more Flash Sentry in Rainbow Rocks. He's there to hit the same beats at in the first film: Twilight likes him, they're awkward around each other, uhh, the end. It's a big missed opportunity, we could have heard his band play, there was potential to show him more hung up on Twilight, to give some actual weight to him rejecting her under the Dazzlings' spell and to give him some actual personality, because from the brief slivers we get he seems like a bit of a dork too, not the guitar-playing quarterback dudebro everyone feared he would be. So let him be a dork! And not a second generic male figure to fill a role in Twilight's life; she's already got the least interesting brother in the universe (#shotsfired), she doesn't deserve the least interesting potential boyfriend too.
Final thing: making reference to not just playing the musical saw but the theremin too? All kinds of perfect.
I really enjoyed Rainbow Rocks.
I thought the songs were great, especially the villain songs. I've also decided I'm a complete sucker for any halfway decent villain song, but whatevs.
On the subject of villains, the Dazzlings were great. And unlike you, I'm actually generally unhappy with the idea of redeeming them. I think it's important to understand that some villains are just that: villains. The Dazzlings fulfill that role excellently.
My only real complaint is that Twilight was pushed too far in her characterization. Like, I get that they wanted her to be entirely focused on the counterspell and therefore mostly oblivious to everything else that was going on. But given her development up to this point, I don't buy it. In the show, she's been shown to be incredibly aware of everything going on around her. Even when she's distracted by things, she's aware of the going-ons (goings-on? goings-ons?
) of her friends. So I find the idea that she was entirely unaware here to be quite unbelievable. Normally, when it seems like Twilight is unaware, she says something or acts in such a way that it's obvious she knew what was going on all along. There was no such assurance here.
Beyond that, though, I really enjoyed the movie.
Sunset Shimmer is best human.
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I don't know, they don't have to all be reformed. I just wanted Sonata to yell at Adagio for being mean to her and, I dunno, go take singing lessons from Sweetie Belle or something. If I could art at all, I'd totally make one of those ask things on Tumblr with that as the premise.
I didn't mind that Twilight wasn't on the ball when it came to finding the solution for things -- she often doesn't always take the shortest, most logical path to a solution (Lesson Zero, It's About Time), and she's not great at small detail stuff either (Bats!). Her getting locked into fixing things herself (and everyone else backing her up on it) showed that she's not the flawless character people were grumbling about all through S4, and it gave Sunset the opportunity to come through with a fix from the sidelines and remind everyone that, potentially, she's just as capable as Twilight is at this friendship stuff. It's kind of obvious to the audience what's supposed to happen, yeah, but you can also see it not being obvious to Twilight, which is hard to write and the reason most of the episodes where the main character is their own worst enemy rankle a lot of people, but I thought it was pretty solid.
And those songs are catchy -- I've had the Dazzlings' leitmotif in my head on and off ever since the preview clip went up, and the big musical showdown where the Mane 6 invert the Dazzlings' song was pretty epic. The music's way better than the first film, which had Win the Crown and then a bunch of filler. The benefit of basing your plot around a music competition is that music can be tied to major events with relative ease, so the songs all do something to push the plot along rather than just be montage music.
Personally, I feel that the only way Derpy's band could be improved would be if she were playing a theremin. Still, best band.
The idea of that universe existing solely as a narrative archetype is interesting, especially since that means that Star Swirl literally banished the sirens to high school. Truly, there is no worse fate.
Personally, I see the sirens as resurrecting themselves like phoenixes. Just enough magic available for them to pull that off in the human dimension.
Like a polyp bud? Such a cool idea. Reminds me of the movie (haven't read the book) Coraline.
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Oh, no, that wasn't my issue at all. Her drive, and continued failures, to solve the problem herself seemed pretty in-character to me. No real complaints there.
This is where I disagree. In the episode where she's giving lessons to the CMC (can't think of the name), it appears on the surface as though she's oblivious to the fact that the CMC are abusing their position as friend to a princess. But when I looked closer, it became quite obvious that was actually quite aware of what was going on. She just wanted the CMC to come clean about it.
I could have easily seen a similar situation working in Rainbow Rocks. She sees that the "EQG 5" are having issues, but she also wants Sunset Shimmer to take action on it. If Twilight keeps doing /everything/, no real progress will be made. By allowing Sunset Shimmer to take charge, the group can really progress as friends. That would have been entirely in character and pretty awesome to see, honestly. Instead, they mostly ignored that development they'd already given to Twilight, and that made me sad. It would have fit quite nicely into the movie. And all they would have needed to do was add a bit of relevant body language.
I'm probably just nit-picking, but meh. Movie was good. Do want to watch again.
...And again.
...And again.
My friend is telling me I have a problem.
Hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, but I think you're right on the money here. Bravo, Nicole Oliver!