Top Five Things The Equestria Girls Franchise Could Improve · 1:54am Dec 25th, 2015
With the likelyhood that the fourth Equestria Girls film will come before Season 6, now would be a good time to look at a few things the franchise could do to be even better. "Rainbow Rocks" managed to improve over its predecessor in some ways, and "Friendship Games" managed to convince me the series could stand on its own. But all three movies still had some problems that should be considered when making the next one.
You know the drill by now, I mean no disrespect to the DHX staff or Hasbro. Let's begin.
5. Move Away From the High School Setting
"Equestria Girls" at first glance seemed to be little more than a fairly sterotypical high school drama that only really appeals to a teen audience, but offers not much else. "Rainbow Rocks" upped the stakes a little, but still heavily depended on high school drama for Twilight's subplot since she had nothing else to do. "Friendship Games" thankfully kept much of the action focused around the tiltular games, but Crystal Prep still was a bit of a cliched upper class school. With the fourth movie possibly being called "Into The Everfree" and the likelyhood that Equestrian Magic will continue to play a key role in the movies, hopefully there will be less of a need to have the sterotypical high school drama situations that people have gotten bored of. You can still have a high school, but it should used sparingly for the movies. A television series could better benefit from the high school setting, if they could explore the real life problems of high school, and not just the glamor that high school drama films potray.
4. Less Juvenile Behavior From The Rainbooms
The Rainbooms may be the human counterparts to the mane six, but I'm pretty sure no one likes to see the sterotypical high school drama behavior, and juvenile antics. Season 1 suffered from treating the mane six too much like children and not young adults, and while teenagers will inevitably face different problems from young adults, there is definitely more to them than just complaining over trival things that could easily be resolved with social media, or simply through setting aside time to talk it out. "Friendship Games" did a pretty good job in that regard, though Pinkie Pie's humor and dialogue still weren't the greatest compared to her pony counterpart (and considering what we were getting in Season 5, human Pinkie's behavior felt unimpressive. She did get a good moment during the party scene, but otherwise she was just "Lol, random" or the exposition fairy. Something that wasn't very funny the first time they tried to use it). But hey, at least they aren't spouting outdated fandom lingo every five seconds anymore.
3. Explain How The Equestrian Magic Works
"Friendship Games" offered a fairly good start to the explanation, suggesting that the transformations of the Rainbooms was linked to their greatest definining traits, and that the transformation process occurs when they're displaying such traits. But there are some other things in regards to the magic that don't make much sense, particularly in regards to why the transformations previosuly took place with the musical instruments in "Rainbow Rocks" (though that seemed to flip flop from the magic of friendship to just being able to play music well). And an explanation would go a long way to clearing up one of the biggest flaws of both "Rainbow Rocks" and "Friendship Games", which weren't really addressed. In fact, it seems like the first "Friendship Games" short was written entirely so the writers wouldn't have to try to explain the magic. But at that point, it feels like a hasty attempt to avoid having to provide an answer. Any answer's better than no answer at all.
2. Stop Shoehorning in Characters That Don't Belong, Or Contribute Nothing of Substance
"Rainbow Rocks" had a pointless subplot with Trixie that really didn't amount to much and probably should've gone to Flash Sentry (would've allowed him to get some development, even if just for a little while), and tossed in so much fanservice and fan pandering that it's easy to forget that's not the focus. "Slice of Life" could get away with, seeing as that was an occasion where being over the top and fanservicing was intentional, and not just an attempt to cover up flaws. And considering how choppy the pacing was for "Rainbow Rocks" the fanservice felt too distracting and seemed to eat up time that should've gone to more important things. "Friendship Games" cut down heavily on the fanservice, but it still tried to fit too many characters into the story with the amount of time given to it. A good rule of thumb for characters, especially in movies that don't even run for an hour and a half, is to try not to include a lot. Unless your primary protagonist or antagonist is a group, the more characters you have, the harder it becomes to properly juggle screen time between them. Principal Cinch probably should've taken a back seat to The Shadowbolts, especially if it meant Lemon Zest and Sunny Flare would get more love.
1. Work On The Pacing
I think it goes without saying that all of the Equestria Girls films have suffered from not getting enough run time to really utilize the ideas and concepts tossed at them. "Rainbow Rocks" especially would've benefitted from being extended to an hour and a half, or at least close to that time frame. "Friendship Games" probably could've been extended a bit as well, to give more screen time to characters that were neglected. I have seen SOME movies that can do well and develop everything properly, without coming closs to an hour and a half, but those movies largely came out two decades ago, and came about before people could really tell how much time a movie would last. It's important to make every minute of your movie count, but sometimes if you try to do too much at once, it will leave your audience feeling unsatisfied.
And there you have it.
Interesting. By the way, the next movie is titled "Legend of the Everfree".
Honestly, I didn't mind the juvenile behavior of the human counterparts, since they're essentially the early series versions of the mane 6. It would be nice if their behavior moves closer to the development their pony counterparts have received, but it won't make or break the next movie for me.
My theory for that is that is wasn't just them playing well, but them playing with passion.
I mean, RD seemed to play pretty well in the "Bad Counter Song" bit, even if it's not an "official song". Yet she was only able to get the ears to appear for a few seconds.
Honestly, I'm also glad that Cinch received more focus than the Shadowbolts. Sunny Flare's design was just... bland. And for Lemon Zest, I think she's much like Pinkie: Too much of her character could quickly have gotten annoying.
As for the length of the movies vs pacing, I'd honestly love for the next one to be closer to an hour and a half than the others, but at the same time I kind of doubt that it will, since I doubt that the EQG movies will get theatrical releases now, even though I think that trend should have continued.
3641247 Agreed, "Friendship Games" deserved a theatrical run.