Equestria Girls 3: The Best One · 5:11pm Jan 11th, 2016
Opinion piece inbound. Spoilers go unspoilered, but are hidden after the break. tl;dr Friendship Games was best EqG, and Sunset is new waifu.
So a couple of days ago, I decided to watch Friendship Games. I'm not averse to EqG as a whole, and think that it's fine for what it is and what it sets out to do.
Rainbow Rocks, the second one, was better than Equestria Girls in technical aspects - art, animation, directing decisions - though the huge High School Musical vibe was hard to shake off, and the heavy, heavy reliance on the cool factor of rock hurt its ability to stand on its own feet. When you took it apart, the plot was very pony-esque - teamwork is friendship is magic - it's the sort of lesson that we on Fimfic would nod solemnly at, agree upon, in the way of people who have "graduated" past that stage. Also, the whole ponyfication thing didn't help - it's more than likely that it triggered cringe alerts in the more proper of the community, and is the reason for EqG hate in the first place.
But now here we are, ridiculously late, at the third of its kind. Canterlot High, where Sunset Shimmer and the M5 are at, must engage Crystal Prep in the Friendship Games, a competition of brain and brawn held once every four years. While Sunset Shimmer tries to figure out what to do about the remnant magic energy from the first two movies, the local Twilight Sparkle - a brilliant but lonely student at Crystal Prep - tries to find what's missing in her life.
The first five minutes of the movie won me over. Right from the get go, it's establishing a clear conflict, a clear stance on how the characters currently are, and a whole lot of OMG suspense when it's revealed that Humania's Twilight Sparkle is coming into the fray. It's in the dialogue, the shots they chose to display it - I was never quite so hooked as this one got me.
What really sealed the deal was Twilight's and Sunset's dilemma. Maybe it's just where I am in my life right now, or maybe it was because I was watching it when I should have been sleeping, but I've never sympathized with the characters as much as in this one, period. All that high school worry about being alone, being trapped by an uncaring establishment, the freaking future - not the timey wimey stuff, the foreseeable future - it got me. i wanted to see what happened. I wanted to see how they solved it. I wanted them to be happy. ;_;
Humania!Twilight is a great exploration of what she'd be like under a less kind tutor, if she were to be allowed to just study like she wanted to in S1 - she doesn't go full "hiss, other ponies" Moondancer, she just becomes really miserable and wants to go on pursing knowledge because it's all she has, and she knows something's missing. The feelings of yearning for more in life, not knowing where to go, and just following the flow - in her case, taking the Everton program because duh, learning - is something almost anyone can relate to, and it's cathartic to see it handled, even if it's in the form of a flash figure the colour of grape Fanta.
Meanwhile, Sunset Shimmer has to be the realest character in the ponyverse - stranded as a virtually magic-less human in a world she doesn't come from, writing letters and begging for advice from a power figure that just isn't there to bail her out, this whole inferiority complex that drives her actions and perspectives since the last movie - she doesn't get any help from the world, the plot, or her friends. Did you see her horrified reaction when the portal's powers were vanished into Twilight's compact? That was some serious despair going on. You can tell from that that Sunset's still holding on to the hope that someday she might return to Equestria. She still feels like an alien cast away from home, and that is completely understandable. And through this, Sunset Shimmer has to find the solution the hard way, by herself and by overcoming her insecurities, and it's so liberating to watch.
I won't lie, watching the movie made me feel like I was in high school again. And I loved every bit of it. I loved the nostalgia, the regret, the feelings of sympathy and resonance that it gave me. I properly enjoyed myself, in a deeper way than I've ever experienced the rest of pone outside of fanfiction. Yeah, I've given the hype a couple of days to die, and I still feel this way - perhaps it will wear off at a later time - but the fact that it got a connection out of me means that it will hold a special place in my mind, if not heart.
Does this make it a good movie objectively, though? No. Hardly. Let's ignore the lack of the usual methods of analysis and go straight for the intended audience, which are the little girls who are fans of MLP. Friendship Games moves from "basic lesson via teenager activities" to "teenager problems via Harry Potter activities", putting focus on issues that the kids won't feel for a long while - "What do you want to be?" "I don't know" "It's fine, you've got all of high school to think about it" - and that the brony population would have passed, or at least shrug off - "Yeah, I know what I am/going to be but it might not be what I want to be". It's free - disconnected - from the viewers it's meant for, and the ones who would receive it probably aren't watching MLP. For the few left in the subset, they'd have to open their minds to accept it speaking to them.
But I feel that this gives it its strength, sets it apart from the rest of the episodes or movies, in that when it was written, it was no longer tied to requirements, and all the staff had to do was make a great teen flick. It felt less pony, and more human.
And really, this blog isn't even about trying to convince you that Friendship Games is the best, or even worth watching. It's nothing but an opinion piece, sharing thoughts and feelings because, well, this is my blog. In the Malay language, the word for "expressing [feelings]" is "luah", or "meluahkan", and how that sounds is pretty much what all the other blogs feel like.
Well, it does also serve a second purpose, and that's to give you good followers some inspirational context for my next fic. Hint: it features new best pone Baconhead Glistening.
Which just makes me think "The Bacon's Last Gleaming" would be a great title for an EQG fic. :V