Liveblogging MLP:FIM:EQG:RR · 10:18am Dec 29th, 2014
About half an hour into Rainbow Rocks, it occurred to me that I'd been entering this movie in the wrong mindset. I've been starved of canon Pone for too long, delved too deep into my own parasite universe, and forgotten the true spirit of FiM. That's the reason my fics have hit a brick wall in places; I've become better acquainted with my own, twisted Shimmer than with the original. As such, part of the reason I'd put this movie off was because it had started to feel like a research project. Like work. But something like a third of the way through (I haven't counted) I realized that all that had stopped mattering to me. For all the flaws and fic material and the inner editing that I just can't turn off, I'm having fun. So screw all the rest. I'm just gonna have fun. And I'm gonna have fun my way.
Rainbow Rocks is very similar to its predecessor, in that I frequently find myself pausing the movie in order to explain things to my computer. This time, instead of laying it all on Tina, I'm going to explain things to you. I know, this is months out of date. I don't flippin' care. I'm having fun and you can't stop me. Here we go.
TIME: 1:21 AM
Impressions so far: Rainbow Rocks appears to be an improvement on the original in every way. Which is to say, the parts that I like continue to make me all giggly and bubbly, and the parts that I don't like suck less. Even at a glance (literally, I noted this out loud in the first minute) the animation has improved greatly. Movement is more abundant and natural, there's plenty of what I can recognize as S4-level lighting, and the designs have gotten better across the board. My initial complaint about Sunset Shimmer was that she looked like she was designed like a pony first and a human later; even in RR, if you take a random sampling of students, even if you don't know what characters they're modeled off of you can usually tell which universe they originated from. Every part of the Dazzlings looks gorgeous, but I've gushed about them already. Every character is more dynamic, has more moving parts, and has more differentiation in their designs. I love Twilight's little flippy bangs. I also think her eyes have changed size, but I'll have to check to be sure.
Some things never change, of course. What is up with Celestia's legs?
In terms of plot, I'll say this: Meghan McCarthy doesn't waste time. She's used to having 22 minutes to wrap things up and she gets straight to the point. When it comes to pacing I usually have to go with my gut, and this far, the plot feels like it's barreling full steam ahead, certainly faster than my normal fare. I appreciate the efficiency, and unlike EQG1, there hasn't been a point (yet) where I've demanded that the movie stop and explain itself. I'm just hoping for a scene soon in which we can stop, take a deep breath, and have some well-paced character interactions before moving on. We'll see how big a curveball the first confrontation throws.
The movie does have my usual gripe about exact words of exposition, though. I get that things have to be simplified so that six-year-olds can follow along, and certain deeper implications have to be skimmed over. That I don't mind. The repetition's fine and the deeper stuff can be left for us to explore. But every so often I stop and say "That could have been phrased better" or "that line could have been changed for more clarity." Like, the Dazzlings seem to be contradicting themselves about what their actual plan is, when it seems to me that it should be crystal clear by now.
I remember being unimpressed during most of the preview clips, and even in retrospect, it's hard to see why they chose those clips to represent the film. The comedy's forced, the characters are static, and everything's extremely straightforward. The moment we go out of material that I've already seen, suddenly things liven up and everyone's back to their usual, entertaining selves. Is it just the atmosphere? I dunno. I also noticed that Battle of the Bands has been remastered, and I'm not sure I like it. There's a stronger baseline and all those "whooshy" background noises that just dilute the clear vocals from the original, and that's coming from someone who knows nothing about music. But then, my position is most often "the fewer instruments, the better."
Also, long-distance text copying is canon. Score another one for predicting the future.
Now let's get back to the show.
(Twenty seconds later)
Twilight they told you the magic only comes out when they play music, come on you're supposed to be the smart one.
TIME: 1:49 AM
My high school was also a CHS and whenever anyone uses that acronym I get majorly confused.
I want to know more about these other bands. The universe is expanding rapidly.
TIME: 1:58 AM
Yep. Kitchen scene is exactly what I was looking for, on multiple levels. I'll bookmark that one for research. (Yay Maud.)
I'm starting to feel like we're just biding time, though. We all know where this is going. In fact, I suppose I'm the last one to know where this is going, and I still know it twenty minutes in advance. Well, back to it.
(Twenty seconds later)
Oh look, they're biding time in-universe as well. My timing rocks.
TIME: 2:06 AM
Snips and Snails rapping is the sort of thing you never knew you wanted until it happened. Fun fact: When musicians drop microphones in real life, they always hold it high and horizontally as the universal signal to the sound tech to "Cut the sound, because I'm about to drop this. Like it's hot. Yo." They don't just do it to look cool, they do it to avoid blasting your ears off with feedback. Snips and Snails are clearly amateurs and also now I'm wondering who CHS's sound tech is. I was friends with a couple of sound techs back at my CHS and I can tell you, all that is not as easy as it looks. And it doesn't look easy. There's probably a story there. But back to the bands.
TIME: 2:15 AM
Writers, you did that on purpose.
Okay, how many rounds are in this battle of the bands? Is this a tournament-style thing with brackets or are they just having auditions for one big showcase? For that matter, when is the final battle? I know they've had a date set since before the film started, but I can't for the life of me recall when that date is. See, this is what I'm talking about about clarity. A deadline only works to drive tension if we have some idea of when that deadline is.
The fact that the Crusaders (I suppose in the Fidelityverse they're the Crest Crusaders) are in their rock outfits makes me wonder if this is their first time trying this. Yet more questions about how the timelines of the two universes sync up. Curiouser and curiouser. How old are they? No, wait, I'm not having that unanswerable debate again.
TIME: 2:21 AM
"We're like sharks right now."
TIME: 2:24 AM
Ahhh. That's good montage. I'm gonna watch that a second time.
...gish. Internet cut out. That's been happening lately. Is this temporary? Guess I'll just ramble for a few minutes while I wait to see if it comes back.
Basically, by this point all's forgiven. All the plot's on the table, so there's not much left to do except sit back and enjoy character scenes and musical numbers. The first half was basically a big jumble, with big rises and dips in quality and the plot falling over itself in an attempt to be efficient (Ah, that's too harsh. I'm a nitpicker by nature but I don't dislike it.), but now we're comfortably coasting along through a well-written second act. As is the case with many FiM stories, even if it's predictable, you still want to know what happens next. The journey doesn't matter so much as the friends you take on it with you, as the saying goes. I'm the sort of person who can't turn off my inner editor, but never let it be said that I can't understand why people can appreciate more nonsensical stories than this. I've heard good things about the finale, too. I guess after this I can finally stop avoiding spoilers.
I love what they're doing with Sunset. Again, predictable, but it's something the series was pretty much made for. Redemption is a really profound subject and FiM has always hit a lot of snags when trying to tackle it, but it feels like by S4 they've finally got the method down. The more I see of this Sunset, the more I want to know about her. I was worried that my Sunset wouldn't fly for all her guilt, but the canon one's got a great blend of being her old, arrogant self with a friendship twist, but also taking her exclusion really hard when no one's watching. She's exactly what I wanted from the character, and I hope that when her big moment comes she'll be able to cut deep into what it means to be a reformed villain. And not, you know, "friendship literally rewrites your identity."
Oh hey, net's back. Back to Plan A.
TIME: 2:52 AM
Ahhh. That's good montage.
Seriously, I can't stop staring at their legs. That is some high-quality leg animation. I'm going to have to go back to EQG1 and compare. Everyone ignore the fact that I admitted to staring at cartoon teenagers' legs.
TIME: 2:59 AM
Bah, forced conflict. And it was going so well. Yes, Sunset was out of line, but that's laying it on kind of thick.
(One moment to calm down later)
If there's a good side to this, I like how effectively this is driving home that this is really Sunset Shimmer's story. My issue here is really a show/tell one; I wouldn't mind this scene so much if we'd had more reminders that everyone still hates her. She hasn't interacted with anyone outside the main cast since the very beginning. Yes, exposition efficiency, but God is in the details. All you need is someone throwing a beer can at her head or a "finally somebody said it!" line and the whole facade of being one of the girls comes crashing down around her.
Also, I'm digging how well the Mane Six are working in the EQG universe now that they've had one movie to figure the dynamic out. They've basically had their character development dialed back two seasons, so they're dealing with each other's faults all over again. Watching this makes me wonder yet more about S5. Once you've achieved Maximum Friendship, where do you go from there?
But that's a pondering for another blog. Snack time.
TIME: 3:26 AM
Okay wait, I'm confused. The Dazzlings used their magic to ensure that the Rainbooms would be their rivals in the finals, only for them to immediately recruit Trixie to lock them in a conveniently inconvenient stage basement? That seems superfluous. There had better be an explanation for this in the next few minutes or I'm coming back and complaining about this some more.
TIME: 3:31 AM
Okay, I get it now. What I don't get is how hours have passed and Applejack hasn't managed to kick down that door. Or how no one's noticed that they're missing. (I'm expecting a "they got scared and ran away" line, but the girls have families, right? And cell phones? And loud voices?) Or how Spike has apparently done nothing for the past several hours. Okay, I'm extending my deadline for some explanation until, say, after they get out.
I want to know Trixie's story. And Photo Finish's story. And Derpy's story. Heck, I just want to know where everyone's getting all their henchmen from. I wish it was that easy to recruit followers at my CHS. (Although I probably would have been a henchman myself. A damn good one, but the point stands.
TIME: 3:40 AM
Here's a line I whip out a lot: Was that the plan?
What would the Dazzlings have done if Trixie hadn't interpreted Adagio's suggestion in exactly that way? Or if the Rainbooms hadn't been completely incompetent at getting out? How much of their plan was contingent on that? And what happens next? And... and...
...okay, Vinyl showed up in the background enough that she gets a pass. Barely.
Now, hush. It's the finale and I'm going into this with a clear head. I'm just going to ignore the absence of amplifiers. Let's do this.
(Literally five seconds later)
DAMMIT VINYL THAT IS NOT COOL
TIME: 3:54 AM
Ahhh. Kind of a smaller Ahhh this time though. Was a bit overhyped. Maybe I needed to turn the volume up more.
I'm wondering why these kinds of endings have soured for me over time. My usual answer is because the villain's defeated with a sparkly OHKO every time, but that's a tradition that goes back forever. Besides, I don't watch MLP for the fight scenes. (I'm probably the only person who dislikes the Twilight VS Tirek battle. Don't get me wrong, the scene's amazing, but it also feels incredibly out of place.) In the name of Science, let's run through them.
Nightmare Moon: OHKO. Worked because we were learning about all this for the first time, seeing brand new sparkly effects and raising profound ethical questions that we spent the next four years arguing over. Enjoyed.
Discord: OHKO. Even though we all know what's coming, Discord is set up as a terrifyingly powerful villain, and it takes most of Part 2 to build up the power to defeat him. He's evil and there's a real struggle, so seeing him get turned to stone in one blast is incredibly satisfying. (Of course, later episodes would prove him to not be as omnipotent as he made himself out to be. Hmm. Actually, hold that thought.) Enjoyed.
Chrysalis: OHKO. Worked, but is considered a step down, even if it's a small one. It's a different sparkly magic and Chrysalis is another lovably competent villain, so seeing the changelings get Team Rocketed over the horizon is still satisfying. Also "Love Conquers All" is the best instrumental track in all of FiM and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. But the ending is tacked on with little explanation or preamble, and even though they defy tradition by not just using the Elements of Harmony again, it's not hard to feel that this is just a copy and paste. (Hmm... hold that thought.) Enjoyed.
King Sombra: OHKO. Sombra has grown a lot on me over time. He wasn't what we expected, but he serves great as a sort of "force of nature" villain, just hanging out in dark ominous cloud form, waiting to swoop in and devour everything. But the Crystal Empire episodes were kind of patchy, and waiting was just about all that Sombra got to do. In this case there was lots and lots of buildup to his defeat, but the Crystal Heart macguffin never managed to get the same allure or mythology that the Elements of Harmony did. It got lost in the episode's other themes and neither it nor the villain really got to shine. Didn't enjoy.
(I have hope for King Sombra, though. Uniquely, he's the one villain who's never been confirmed as dead or captured. As far as we know, he's still out there. That gives me little shivers. Fingers crossed for Season Five...)
Sunset Shimmer: OHKO. Annoyingly, this almost worked. Sunset works as a villain, or should have worked, and she puts the Humane Six in a legitimately tense and hopeless situation which they manage to overcome with sheer friendship, the very essence of a FiM conflict. But EQG1 had a bad habit of rushing over its plot without explaining anything, so Sunset only earns her competency card in the last ten minutes, and her lack of a motivation gives no weight to Twilight's speech at the end. Bah, I've ranted about what EQG1 could have been many times before. Didn't enjoy.
Plunder Vines: OHKO. Worked, purely because it got with the program and ditched the Elements of Harmony. Enjoyed.
Tirek: OHKO. Yes, he had a great big fight scene before that, but all that was completely irrelevant to how he was ultimately defeated so I'm not counting it. And this, I think, is where things finally lost me.
This is one of those things that's so minor that I don't bother to bring it up, because come on, it's a show for little girls. I analyze these things because I want to learn to be a better storyteller, not just for the sake of complaining about shows I like. But since it's the keystone of my argument here, here we go. End of the episode, the girls get a new superpower, they blast the bad guy and it's over. Which doesn't make sense, since Tirek absorbs magic. It's his whole shtick. Now, if I were writing this (Ugh, I feel slimy just thinking that) there would have been a confrontation of "Haha! Good, more magic! Make me stronger!" and then "You can't steal friendship! The more you take, the more we have to give!" and then he overloads and explodes and then gets captured. You know, make it fit the situation. Because otherwise, we've got this situation in which we've been told with a straight face that Rainbow Power is magnitudes stronger to the magic of all the rest of Equestria combined. Power creep.
The Dazzlings' defeat was unsatisfying because friendship is OP.
To their credit, this time it's barely a OHKO. The Dazzlings fight back and get a few hits in - I got really hopeful when that rock beat started - but we all knew that they didn't stand a chance. This wasn't a fair fight. The sirens had no leg to stand on (was that a pun? Meh, I'll take it) in terms of combatting friendship; there's a popularity vs true friendship thing that is, once again, completely unexplored, and we don't know what their actual power level is. They're ghostly spirits with sound waves, and the Rainbooms just wheel in a pony colossus who completely obliterates them.
They don't even have to try any more. Every villain in the series has worked harder and longer to achieve their power than these six/seven, but they're easily swatted down with something that small children accomplish on a regular basis. Which wouldn't bug me so much if they didn't keep making friendship look so easy. Friendship means sacrificing parts of yourself for others. Friendship means making difficult decisions and encountering frequent grey areas. Friendship means forgiving people even if they don't deserve it. But nope, pony colossus. No Elements required, no mythology or constraints; just whip out a mic and you can summon the obliterator whenever you feel like it. The only reason the Dazzlings are a threat at all is because everyone's friendship level has been nerfed by about two seasons, which allows a bit of discord to settle in. But if fixing everything is literally that easy...
This leads me into my final thoughts.
Objectively, Rainbow Rocks is a better movie than Equestria Girls. However, I also felt like it didn't have to try as hard. There was a clear and morally unambiguous villain, an incredibly straightforward plot, and all the usual hooks and bonuses that you'd expect. It did a fantastic job with Sunset Shimmer, and while I'd hoped for more than her, that would have been true no matter what they came up with, so take that as a positive. But if this really was meant to be her story, then these weren't the right villains for her, and I'm not even sure that these are the right friends. For all the growth that she does on her own, Sunset rarely interacts with anyone unless the plot calls for her to. There's a reason the kitchen scene is the best part of the movie. (And also Under Our Spell, because montaaaaaaage.)
Equestria Girls gave itself a severe human handicap, set the bar high, and missed. Rainbow Rocks had a much easier running start, lowered the bar a couple of notches, and cleared it with flying colours. There's a lot to like in Rainbow Rocks, and I'd recommend it to the zero of you who haven't seen it yet. But I still finished Equestria Girls feeling happier, because it tells a much more original and profound story, even if I had to rewrite most of it in my own words to uncover it. Despite her bizarre origins, Sunset Shimmer is one of FiM's best characters, and strong contended for the highest ratio of the interestingness of a character Vs how much of that character we actually get to see.
I guess the events of Rainbow Rocks are canon in the Fidelityverse. I don't see why not. I'd barely have to change anything.
So that was the story of what happened if Twilight Sparkle succeeded. I'm at peace now. I can continue writing the story of what happened if Twilight Sparkle failed.
(inb4 Sunset's barely in the Fidelityverse either)
That's... better than some fics I've read recently...
I liked the final battle exactly bacause it was something more than a 1 hit KO. And I could probably write theories worthy of Dissonance saga on how the magic of friendship works in the human universe.
I don't think there's anything else I could add here (except perhaps the fact that the authors gave us a canon sleepover involving 7 girls, a talking dog and a fridge full of whipped cream. But there have already been fics that adressed that issue)
Have not seen RR. That said, I enjoy the fact that the various villains, with an exception of Tirek, are one shotted without a fight. Every single foe is defeated not through pure magical power, but the acknowledgement that 'Friendship is Magic'. So the end of EG1, with Sunset telling Twilight she didn't have any magic, was simple to predict, because that very first episode explained that friendship IS magic. It's not some surprise that we keep getting hit with. It's presumably an actually calculable translation between the strength of a friendship and the amount of magic generated. (Twilight probably has the numbers.)
So being able to smash their foes in one shot is a simple matter of having enough friendship.
As for Tirek, I'm sorry but the fight was too epic to miss. I just can't not love that. But once again it showed that no matter how powerful Twilight is, she's still not as strong alone as she is with friends. As for the Rainbow Power... my personal feeling is that it's not specifically stronger. Instead it was exploiting the inherent weaknesses of having stolen all those disparate magics. He's got Earth Pony, Pegasus, and Unicorn magic. Okay, fine, those can work together, as evidenced by Alicorns. However, he's also snagged alicorn magic, which is for different specialties. And then he grabs Discord's Chaos magic.
So the Rainbow Power isn't specifically stronger, but it's exploiting the difficulties in containing those disparate magics and letting them break themselves apart.
Ah, but have you seen the post-credits scene? I assume you must have. Where is you canon now?!