Does It Have A Pulse? · 8:13pm Sep 26th, 2016
So are we just collectively totally unexcited for this new Equestria Girls film? It's amazing to me that it was leaked and I haven't seen a single thing about it here. The only reason that I know is that Seether00 saw it yesterday. I was only vaguely aware that there WAS another film coming.
It seems like telling evidence. I thought Friendship Games was a really big letdown after Rainbow Rocks, and I'm wondering if a lot of other people are thinking the same thing. It seemed like people were pretty hyped up for a third EQG movie, but after what they got, the enthusiasm really died down.
Or maybe it's a lack of advertising. I dunno. It's on Netflix, so maybe people have less access. However, I don't think I've seen a single post about the new film on this site from anyone that I follow. No new groups. No character excitement. No speculation. That's pretty worrisome for their brand, I think.
I've seen one or two posts about it, but it won't be on Netflix until October 1st.
4227959 But what I'm getting at is that before the last two movies, people were speculating on characters, debating possible plots, wonder how the girls were going to handle things, etc. I haven't heard a peep about this. There are no trending groups. No blog posts. Nothing but total silence about the film. That seems strange to me.
Some people haven't seen it, some people (like me) are waiting until the official release to make their opinions known, and others have already posted reactions. I've seen more than a half a dozen blogs on the subject. Heck, Derpibooru's just about exploded. (Also, you only follow 61 people; it's not the biggest sample size out there.) Give it until the first before you declare it dead on arrival.
I think it's because people ARE waiting for the official release to say much.
Having seen it, I rank it: 2 > 4 > 3 > 1. It was really quite good, but there are a few moments I feel rather face-stabby about.
Personally, I just don't care about the Equestria Girls universe much; I am vaguely aware that a new movie's coming out and figured I'd see it sometime on Netflix to kill some time, but, eh.
It's not bad.
Hmm..... Where exactly have you looked for it? Except for in the new groups section and blogs of your followers/the people you follow?
Derpibooru is full of screenshots and stuff, although unusually few art for the fact that a new movie came out.
If there's really so few stuff about it here on FIMFiction.net, then it does line up with recent developments regarding EQG. Last year in Fall, Hasbro reported a strong decline of EQG toy sales, I noticed a stronger opposition against EQG on Equestria Daily in the comments lately and there was this poll just recently:
http://www.equestriadaily.com/2016/09/poll-results-cancel-drama-causing.html
It didn't make it on #1, but that it got second place, even higher than Flurry Heart and Starlight Glimmer, who both get their bag of hate in certain circles of the fandom, is impressive and says a lot about the mood regarding EQG in the fandom.
Also, EQG is, from what I heard, not getting aired on Discovery Family this time and it also does not get a limited cinema showing. It will get straight to Netflix, so if that's true, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of trust into EQG anymore from Hasbro's side.
It does seem like the hype for EQG, if you can even call it that way, is slowly dying down.
I expected the second movie to suck and it turned out great, so I expected the third movie to be great but it sucked, so I expected the fourth movie to suck but it turned out to be almost as good as Rainbow Rocks imo.
Then again from what I have seen on forums and blog posts most people's reactions so far were negative? Dunno, maybe I'm just weird, or it takes a while for my initial euphoria to wear off before I notice all the flaws that seem so obvious to others. I was pretty sceptical during the first third of the movie until (very mild spoiler but better safe than sorry) Sunset started singing. That scene triggered something in my brain that washed out all the cynicism and pessimism and turned me into fully invested mush. One might even say it turned off my critical thinking skills, seeing as something that someone else called out as painfully obvious in their review was a genuine surprise for me. On one hand one might count it as a point against the movie that you can apparently only enjoy it with your brain turned off, but on the other hand, isn't it a great achievement for a movie to make me emotionally invested enough to tune out the hypercritical nerd that overthinks everything in me and just go along with the ride? All I know for sure is that this movie, for whatever reason, brought me hours of joy and made me feel genuinely happy, something that most Season 6 episodes aren't able to do, and that matters more to me than all the intellectual fanboy arguments in the world.
You might think this movie reignited the spark that Rainbow Rocks had, or you might think it's the final nail in the coffin of the Equestria Girls franchise, you won't know until you watch it yourself, but I for one enjoyed it.
I wonder how big the "I'm just in fandom for the fandom, I don't watch the show anymore" contingent is. That certainly seems disproportionately popular among the earlier FIMFic adopters, and if you haven't been real active around here you're probably not reading blogs from the newer fans with higher enthusiasm levels.
In terms of fandom health barometers, though, more comprehensive data is better; the fimfic statistics page has always felt like a good one for me. There's a pretty clear peak around Season 3-4 that we're a good ways past, and the trend downward is obvious, but the fall-off has been remarkably slow and we've got a good ways yet.
I saw it yesterday and thought it was very good. Pinkie Pie really stood out in this one!
I've seen a bit here and there about the movie on EQD and a small amount on the Facebook page but I don't have Discover on cable so it's difficult for me to say how much promotion Hasbro has done.
I'm not going to bother with it until the official US Netflix release, but I'm planning on watching it more or less immediately once we get there.
Texts Between Gems was completely blown away, if that counts for anything.
To be honest, I didn't even know the 3rd one was coming 'till it was out and I only heard about the 2nd through Youtube adverts. Hasbro really doesn't advertise very well in the UK.
It's okay. It passes the time. I liked some bits and not others. Rainbow Rocks is still the only one of the four I'd actually make time to watch, but this new one's all right. See how enthusiastic I am. I've noticed quite a few other people have much the same reaction to it.
4228209 Fimf is a weird place anyway, with its prominent bloggers frequently turning in quite different opinions of episodes to the wider fandom. Obvious recent(ish) example: "Crusaders of the Lost Mark". I was at a con during that, and I don't think I found anyone who disliked it. I was really quite startled when I got home, logged in here and discovered that feelings were much more mixed.
The first graph on the stats page depresses me a bit. The overall numbers are fine, but the day isn't far off when M-rated submissions will be more common than E-rated ones.* The M/T crossover may not be that far behind. Not that I have anything against M-rated fics in themselves, but I'd hate to see this site become primarily a clop community. I think that crossover might be the point at which my interest in this place began to wane just a little.
* Zooming in, it seems we may already be there, in some weeks at least. Sigh.
Honestly, having now seen the film, I think the issue with EQG4 is not that it's inferior in quality as such; I think fan reaction is subdued because it does not follow the series's own cliffhanger/hype sequence. EQG1-2 we were all wondering what was going to be up with Sunset Shimmer. EQG 2-3 we were all wondering what was going to be up with Science Twilight. The natural cliffhanger progression (as we can see by the post-credits scene in EQG 3) is "what is going to be up as the two universes start to combine." I'm pretty sure you would have seen greater degrees of hype if the premise of EQG 4 followed this progression by having its premise being about, say, the Mane 6 meeting the Humane 6 on either side of the portal. Instead, we have an installment that ups the ante significantly less. After 3 movies that tried to successively raise the stakes each time, we have finally found what an EQG rank and file episode looks like. This is basically That One Episode that you don't actually hate but doesn't really go anywhere or do much for you. (YMMV; my examples for this are something like "Swarm of the Century" or "Castle Mania.")
Also, both Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games had original animation promo shorts in advance of the main film. EQG4 did not particularly bother, which does not help the matter any.
Personally, I liked it better than #1.
4234443 Hmmm. That's an interesting take. I wonder how often we do get disappointed because of deviation from a subconscious pattern. I'd never really thought about the cliffhanger nature of the movies, but I can see where they would hook me like that. I'll have to sit and let that sink in some.
Those promos were one of the things that I was talking about with the advertising. It seemed like Hasbro was trying a lot harder with those movies than this one. I'm not sure what they says about their confidence in their brand. Are they pretty sure they've hooked people at this point, and therefore don't need to advertise, or are they just not spending more money on what they think could be a low-view movie at the end of things? I dunno.
4230182 I've also been watching with some sadness as the mature stories slowly take over. Not that I'm helping in that regard...
I feel like this is emblematic of where MLP is as a whole these days. The product is just hard for me to get excited about. I still like it. I still watch the episodes the day they come out, but I'm rarely super pumped to do so. I don't get up early to watch the streams. If I miss it for some reason, I don't really care.
To me, it feels like the fanbase is doing that to this movie. No one is all that excited about it. Maybe it's projection, though.
I still blame Josh Haber. Why, oh, why is he in charge of things? His episodes are so meh.
4229895 It doesn't seem to me like they advertised it at all anywhere...
4229495 I... I'm not sure what this comment means.
4229359 I'm sure I'll watch it, but to be honest, I don't even know what it's about. The Everfree Forest must feature somehow, but that's really all I know. That's how little advertising/word of mouth I've received about it. I knew the plot of the other three without doing much research because people were talking about them. No one that I know has been talking about this film.
4228382 As far as I can tell, they've done very little promotion, but I'm also not the most connected person. I've gotten most of my news about the other three movies via word of mouth. Not too many mouths talking about this one, it seems. Not in my circle of friends, anyway.
4228209 Well, I wasn't really speaking about MLP as a whole, though I could draw parallels there, too. I just meant for EQG as a franchise.
It's definitely true that I may be tilted toward the older fanbase since I rarely put anything out anymore. That's certainly a possibility. It's just that there was always so much chatter about the other movies. People would be making groups and shipping characters before we even got to see or know who they really were. I haven't seen any of that this time around.
4228144 Well, I think Rainbow Rocks is the friggin' best, so anything that returns us to something like that is welcome. The Dazzlings were so amazing!
I'm certainly going to watch the film, but I'm not that enthusiastic about it. I don't know anything about it, so it's hard to be excited. In the past, I've always had that excitement brought to me because people that I knew were excited. No one that I know has been excited in the least. It's been total silence.
4228042 In the past, I haven't had to look for it. People that I knew were excited enough about the product that I got all the news I needed through reading their blogs. I also would see things on EQD and on sites like MLPforum and the like. I do visit outside sites less often, but the times that I've been to those sites, they haven't been covering the film. Hardly comprehensive, but it was sufficient in the past.
4227979 I haven't really made a decision about it as a movie. I just think it's weird that literally know one that I follow has written a single word about the film. I don't go to EQD or the other outside sites as much as I used to, but the times that I've been there, they haven't been talking about the film. I haven't seen any groups about the characters. It's just odd.
4227985 That looks like it's the case. Several people here have said they are waiting.
But we didn't really wait before. At least the people I follow didn't. There was a lot of talk about the other movies before they came out. Is that an indicator of decline in interest? I'm not sure.
4228034 As I universe, I don't really care about it all that much. Rainbow Rocks is pure, uncut awesome, but movies one and three? Not so much. I just think that it's strange that the other three movies had a lot of excitement around them, be it good or bad, but this one is almost here here and I've seen very little enthusiasm around the fandom at all.
4235104 It's interesting that the rate of submission of M-rated stories has remained almost constant for so long. Of course, as the total number being submitted declines, they become a progressively larger percentage, but even so.
I think it's fairly clear that we're not far from the end of FiM as a series. I imagine we'll get S7, if only because there'd otherwise be a stupidly long gap before the movie, but I'm increasingly of a mind that there won't be S8. Maybe they'll even go the Star Trek route thereafter: produce more films based on the original series (ie G4) but take the TV show to the next generation (ie G5, or at least G4.5).
It's hard to decide about the movie from this side of the Atlantic. Being the first EqG film not to get a UK cinema release is really hurting its appeal here, as is not having it available in any official HD format (it's not on UK Netflix and the channel with the UK TV rights is SD-only). We don't get it at all until 15 October, either.
As for Josh Haber... yeah. I've never felt particularly enthusiastic about him, from "Castle Mane-ia" onwards. I don't hate his episodes, but they're nothing special. On the showing of his episodes this season, I really wish Michael Vogel had taken on the job of showrunner.
4235108 Texts Between Gems. It's a Tumblr. They absolutely loved it.