Why I Think Friendship Games is the best of the EqG series so far

I've gotten a lot of crap for saying this, ranging from strange looks to people calling me blasphemous on forums, but I'm sticking by this. I'e watched each movie at least 5 times and my order is fixed:

1. Friendship Games (I gave a 9.8/10)
2. Rainbow Rocks (I gave a 9.6/10)
3. Equestria Girls (I gave 7/10)

And there a few reasons for this. I won't talk any really about the first movie because we all know that it was clunky and not as well received as the sequels, but it still has some standing in my rant. The thing I want to focus on is why I find Friendship Games better.

First of all I will say where the movie fails is the music. Overall the music is nowhere as good as Rainbow Rocks from a movie standpoint (since the soundtrack included Friendship Through The Ages, My Past Is Not Today, and Life Is A Runway but they weren't movie songs I am not counting those). Friendship Games had 2 standout songs:

1. ACADECA
2. Unleash The Magic

Compared to Rainbow Rocks that had:

1. Under Our Spell
2. Welcome To The Show
3. Awesome As I Wanna Be
4. Tricks Up My Sleeve
5. Battle

The thing I wanted to focus on here was the story. While not as well written as Rainbow Rocks, it gets all of it's story lines tied up in a good knot where Rainbow Rocks left me with a few questions. First off you have the Games as the setup, you also have the random pony-ups, Twilight academic plans, Sunset's frustrations at understanding the magic, Cinch's plans to keep her reputation and blackmail Twilight into helping them win, and the Twilight stealing magic plot. It seems a lot to be taking on considering the movie's run time (which I believe is actually shorter than the first two movies), but it works and the song "Unleash The Magic" sets the wrap up into motion. Twilight gets corrupted by the magic that she stole, transforming into the awesome looking Midnight Sparkle. I've heard a lot of people complaining about how she was just there to have a magical villain, and while I can see that it makes sense that she is there.

Think of this in two ways: magic as energy and magic as a symbol for huge amounts of power. Energy likes to move away from places where energy is the highest to where energy is the lowest. When she releases the magic, it latches onto the first thing that isn't charged with magical energy, her. Sunset and Spike were also in close proximity, but both had some form of magic running through them so it wouldn't be easily attracted to them. If you think about it symbolically, Twilight is curious about the strange power and when she finally gets to see it in action it goes to her head. As the saying goes:

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Not only is that sudden increase in power enough to corrupt her mind on it's own, but her own interest in what the power can do leads her to be consumed by it. She is also weak from the peer pressure the other students placed on her about using the magic to win when they themselves had no idea what to do with it.

In the climax of everything, Sunset Shimmer finally comes to understand the magic that is inside them. Not only have the pony ups been coming from their special talents coming forward, but their own friendship has helped to make them more powerful. When sunset finally realizes this a spark is set off inside here just as it was for Twilight back in season 1. She takes control of the elements and her own element (Which I still believe to be the element of Friendship) and since she knows how to use it, it doesn't corrupt her as it did in the first movie. She finally comes full circle as a character and ascends to what I am going to call the fifth alicorn. Let's face it everyone, she is an alicorn. The two duke it out for a few moments before Spike's cute face snaps Twilight out of it. When they enter the plane between planes, Sunset sees that Twilight isn't power crazed but just as frightened and saddened as she herself was after she was defeated. Midnight Sparkle is a parallel to Demonic Sunset, and with her defeat it marks Sunset's journey to continue Twilight's work in spreading friendship.

The other story lines get wrapped up pretty well and Cinch leaves in defeat, everyone wins and the two schools bitter rivalries are turned into friendly competition.

I also liked the animation, and just like Rainbow Rocks they took a lot of liberties to pull it off. I also thought the use of a main villain that wasn't magical made the movie more believable. That kind of blackmail and reputation based advancement BS is very true about the world today, especially among elite colleges. For example, I attend the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Back a couple of years ago, it was found that SDSMT had a higher out of college job acceptance rate (which was around 89% I believe) than Harvard (which had closer to 70%). A few people I know who go to Harvard had that hung above their heads that they were losing prestige to a school in bumfuck South Dakota (which it isn't it actually a leading STEM school,especially in my field of study), so it really makes the CHS vs CrysPrep rivalry on reputation believable and possible.

I know I am not the best at explaining things but i'm just going to say: I like the story better, I enjoyed the villain more and I enjoyed the overall plot of the movie far better than Rainbow Rocks.