Present Perfect vs. Equestria Girls · 11:18pm Jun 23rd, 2013
So I got my hands on a camrip with decent audio, thus fulfilling my pledge not to pay money to watch Equestria Girls, and now I can grease the hairy crevasse of the vast man-ass that is the internet with my buttery opinions.
First, the quick and dirty, zero spoilers summation.
You remember when the fandom was frothing at its collective mouth over the first EQG trailer and the show staff were like, "Um, well, we did the best we could with what we had pleasedon'teatus"? They did the best they could with what they had. For what it is, Equestria Girls is pretty okay. I'd rank it with some of the more controversial, mid-range episodes like [FIGURE OUT CONTROVERSIAL, MID-RANGE EPISODE TO RELATE EQUESTRIA GIRLS TO]. It's not great, it's not awful, I've got one of the songs stuck in my goddamn brain, there are a lot of laughs to be had. Crowd scenes are a veritable who's-who of "Holy shit, is that who I think it is?" The villain is better than Sombra pretty not-bad. It's unlikely to light up most bronies' eyes with delight, but I didn't want to claw my eyes out. That said, I don't want to laud too highly, because in the end, I did not like it. But it was not with the hatred of a thousand suns, as was expected by many; more a "2/5: meh".
General spoilers from here on out. Actual spoilers will be blackboxed.
Here is where you hope I know the difference between the two. I'm assuming people are familiar with the basic setup at least. So.
The opening scene (which I missed the first I-don't-know of) is full of ponies. It lays down a lot of really interesting things centered around Twilight's newfound Princess status like, "What if Celestia wants me to rule shit?" and "How the fuck do I wings and sleep?" This is all sadly thrown into the dumpster by the end of the movie, getting mere lipservice in the post-victory scene.
This is where we get our first stumbling block: why can't the mane six all go through the portal? Lampshading occurs; it is weaksauce. Yet it is not as weak as the other awkward question: why can't Twilight just take the crown and skedaddle on home? There's a moment where she can just tell Principal Celestia, "Actually, the crown is mine." And if she doesn't believe Twilight, okay, then we have our conflict. At least it would have been a lampshade attempt. It would have saved us a lot of dumb stuff, anyway.
So after seeing the opening of every Equestrian in Humania story ever, we get to enjoy the first of many crowd scenes. But you know what I realized quickly? I was enjoying the hell out of them, but they were in no way relevant to the plot other than to say, "Yup, this is high school between classes!" They were window dressing. Lots and lots of window dressing that the cynical part of me says exists only to placate bronies. Because I mean, there's a ton of characters that show up, not to mention lots of Vinyl Scratch, but it gets to the point where you're just searching for characters and ignoring the movie (and you can't exactly do that at 360p). That's behavior for the second viewing, not the first. Also, Trixie's double cameo felt pretty egregious.
Another thing I'll point out here that went wrong was the comedy. There are lots of hilarious moment, genuinely good jokes (the "talking dog" gag from the second trailer is but the tip of the comedy iceberg but they're spaced very far apart. The comedic pacing is really off, and I found myself wondering why I wasn't laughing more often. Tension is one thing, but so many scenes were just boring, filler taking us from one plot point to the next. Needed more comedy, yes.
One more thing before I get off this topic: there's a scene that mimics "let's play dress-up!" scenes from Suited for Success and The Best Night Ever. And you know what? I liked it better with ponies. I was literally sitting there going, "This is Suited for Success, but I don't like it because not ponies." I would really like to kernelize that feeling and study it, especially considering how much I like humanized and anthro ponies, but that is for another time. Still, it's a weird feeling to find oneself up against.
So let's move on to the plot: it's about as thin and uninteresting as we anticipated. If you are not a high school girl (or maybe boy), you will probably not find yourself too involved in this movie. And honestly, that was about what I expected.
How about dat love interest? Completely tacked on. And thank your lucky fucking stars that the mane cast didn't go through the portal, because that means the Flash Sentry in Equestria does not have any memory of what happened. I mean, McCarthy said he won't be in S4, which is great, thank you McCarthy, but even if he was, there's no chance of chemistry crossing the portal.
I thought the songs sucked. There are three, they're all montages, and the one had really cringe-inducing lyrics (why in the fuck do they say "stomp your hooves down"? WHY? It's still catchy as hell, because Daniel Ingram is a great pop musician, but that's all we got this time around. Nothing really notable.
Okay, let's change tack and talk about things that did work. Mostly, it was the little stuff, the comedy, things like Twilight adjusting to being human (most of which we've seen in the trailers already). Fluttershy was brilliant. There are two scenes where someone throws something to her, and both times, she reacts by turning away and letting it hit her in the back. I HAVE LIVED THIS. Fluttershy is best pony once again. Seeing all your favorite characters as humans is of course lots of fun. Spike really dogs mans the fuck up and is totally best sidekick all throughout. Best joke: Twilight cannot fucking dance no matter what form she's in. That was seriously fucking brilliant. Also, Sunset Shimmer is voiced by Rebecca Shoichet, Twilight's singing VA, and she did a great job. And on that note, I was also surprised to note that Principal Celestia doesn't sound like Princess Celestia until the very end. Let's hear it for Nicole Oliver!
The one problem with all these things? They are, again, not important. And it really felt like one of those movies that's meant to be an homage to an older movie or a style or something, but can't stand on its own legs and is basically just a load of shout-outs to better movies. Not least of which is the highly pilot-like "collect friends for make magical victory" plot and Fluttershy's introduction being exactly like it was in the first episode. Equestria Girls feels like a continual shout-out to My Little Pony, and it is severely overshadowed by its own series. That's another feeling that's weird being left with.
Okay, I can't stay positive long. Let's get down to the worst part of the movie. The short version is "the final battle". The long version....
Let's face it: G4 MLP villains suck. Nightmare Moon was probably the best; Discord was decent too. Chrysalis's plan was incomprehensible and Sombra had no personality. They all died like bitches (and then Discord came back like a bitch). I did not expect anything less of SS, and though she has a pretty awesome "demon" form (also demon Snips and Snails, holy shit <3), she took it like a bitch and then started crying. As a villain, I guess she was all right. The "former student of Celestia" thing was a neat angle that was not explored in the least, and her plan was win the crown so... I guess so she could have magic in Humania. Which is really fucking weird to see, let me tell you. It's intriguing to consider how things would have worked out had she actually marched that "army" of a few dozen teenagers into Equestria, although considering how well the changelings fared despite their far more overwhelming numbers, it may not have gone so well. Still, dozens of mind-controlled ponies!
But that's not the worst part. I was ready for the villain to suck. No, the worst part is this: you remember those early designs we saw, when they had ears and wings and horns and hair-extension ponytails? That is their magical schoolgirl uniform. I am not fucking kidding. The moment that happened with Applejack, I said, "Fuck this movie, I am done." Given how much a sigh of relief the fandom breathed after the "corrected" versions, the ones actually appearing in the movie, were released, that was just... Okay, I want to say it was a slap in the face, but you know what? This wasn't made for us. Let's all repeat that to ourselves and we will not raise our collective blood pressure. But I did think it was stupid. Granted, it's no more stupid than anything else in that place, considering it's an Earth-analogue where people have multicolored skin and hair and actual names like "Rainbow Dash" and "Celestia". Suspension of disblief is a must. It still killed the movie for me.
So there you have it. I think that's all I can say about it and I'm kind of drunk now and probably forgot a lot of shit. Is the movie worth seeing? Yes, if you're involved in this fandom. At least so you can save yourself from having to hide from spoilers and/or not understanding references to it. (There have been some hilarious memes created already, and I expect that will only expand as time goes by.) See it somehow (I recommend not paying money for it if you can), just keep your expectations low.
So basically what I'm getting is "meh, still better than "over a barrel" at least," right?
What I took away from this:
"So... keep searching for it online? Alrighty then, was kinda gonna do that anyway."
Win The Crown just reeked of High School Musical, yet it refuses to leave my brain as well. INGRAAAAM
Same here, and my suspicion is this: Y'remember when you got into your first argument about which pony had the prettiest Gala dress, and then you have that surreal moment of "oh God what am I doing with my life? Eh fuck it, ponies rule" yeah? The fact that these were talking ponies helped you to disassociate any feelings of demasculinity or whatever. With EQG, you've got the double-duty of teenage girls doing this (triggering that "wow I can't believe I'm watching this" feel), doubled with it being a heavily cliche high school trope. If FIM had been a human series all along, we'd likely feel nearly as caustic about Suited for Success.
Yes. Fucking yes. As loathe as I am about Brad, the fact he joined in was painfully adorably sweet.
Dude, were you even watching the movie? She wanted the crown so that she could use its well-documented powers of mind control, so that she could invade Equestria using the most powerful force in the multiverse: an army of human high-schoolers. Obviously.
Someone on Twitter summed it up best: Twilight saves the world by turning her and her friends into furries.
Overall, agree. It did some good things with the premise, but there was a very disjointed feeling of peaks and valleys (AWESOME shit shit shit AWESOME), and I fear that much of my enjoyment was brony pandering.
EDIT: Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't bitch and moan about That One Line:
"I didn't say no! Well, I mean, I _said_ no, but I didn't _mean_ no."
Yes, PP, but you are more or less on record as not liking anything.
For what it's worth (not much I assume), I found a local showing earlier today. While there were some things I'd criticize about about the movie, overall I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it.
I agree with all your points, and I enjoyed it.
1163633
hey! I'm the (ex) pre-reader who hates everything. I haven't seen it and absolutely nothing i've heard from anyone has made me think it's going to be the least bit good. Even people who liked it haven't managed to make it look likable.
1163974 Whoops, my bad, yeah you're clearly the one who doesn't like anything.
1163491
And Double Rainboom!
1163555
I wouldn't even claim avoid emasculation (I've never been tightly bonded to my masculinity :/), just "I don't give a damn about fashion except, oh wait, cute ponies and making fun of fashion at the same time yay". Whereas I really don't give a damn about is teenaged girls' high school drama (and didn't when I was in high school either) and oh, I just realized it lacked the "making fun of high fashion" thing, no wonder it sucked. :B
And yeah, pandering liek wut. Also oh shit rape culture what. D:
1163633
Shit, my reputation precedes me. :|
Actually, kits is right. I'm the one who likes dumb things. D:
1164116 That's right, that story a few weeks back with the Trottingham Twins idea. Though to be honest I didn't think it was that dumb, so I may be right there with you.
1164144
Don't remind me. ;_;
There is absolutely nothing in this review that does not make me more interested in this movie. I now wish I had gone to see the Saturday morning showing at my local theatre. Fuck.
1164368
What part of "don't pay money to see this" did I not make clear? c.c I'm not kidding here.
1164976
I already did. Thankfully it was only five dollars. Whatcha gonna do about it?
Honestly, the fact that Twilight and Spike actually decide to blow their cover, and the fact that Spike can talk to the humans but doesn't until that moment made me like the movie a lot more than I really should. For me, the funniest joke in the movie was Spike asking why, after the student body saw the demon and furry metamorphoses and the demonstration of honest-to-God magic, they draw the line at a talking dog.
But you're right. It's a funny trifle that wasn't good for much besides base amusement. The high school world and Sunset Shimmer's plan make less sense the more I think about them, and it leaves me with a whole bunch of nitpicky questions in retrospect. But I am very thankful that they at least played up Twilight's difficulty in a human body, even though this is well-trod ground in fanfiction.
Also, even though I really liked that joke above, it brings up something I have cause to think about. Essentially, it hangs a lampshade on a potential plot hole, bringing it to the attention of viewers who might not have noticed it otherwise, and is a tacit admission that the writers didn't have any better ideas than to make it a joke. Same goes with that lampshading on why Twilight's friends couldn't come with her. At best I can interpret the "we can't disrupt the balance of the other universe" thing (And Twilight ends up having to do that anyway!) as some sort of meta-commentary to the effect of "we gotta do the high school drama thing, just try and roll with it"... but that's a pretty pretentious interpretation, right? This habit as a whole kind of worries me, and I don't think I want it catching on any more than it already has.
Ultimately, Equestria Girls has one more thing in common with the show, which is the ability to get me swept up in the experience and not realize where the cracks are until I have a few hours to go over everything again in my mind. But I'm too nice for my own good, so I'll give this thing three points out of five, rather than two.
...seriously, why were the CMC even in this movie? Or at the high school for that matter?
(I just figured out how to work the spoiler tags on my own. Go me.)
I tried watching a recording. I didn't even get to the humanized bit.
Just... no. This is about the level of writing I have come to expect from S3, and why I have no hope left for S4 to be anything but shit.
That said, I don't really view it as a complaint. It isn't made for us, and while I do think it grossly underestimates the target demographic's intelligence, it's not meant for us. *Shrug*
-Scott
1165369
Be warned, arguing just to argue ahead.
I've made this same statement myself. "It's not for us." It helps, a bit. At least it makes the whole experience less infuriating.
But there are issues with that. MLP itself wasn't made for us, but we like it just fine. In fact, and others might say this more than me, episodes where the show staff put in little shout-outs for us tend to be viewed with less regard than the episodes from S1 that existed before the fandom was really a known thing.
Furthermore, given the severe number of things put into the movie just to please bronies, I have to wonder just how much water that statement can hold in the first place. This is, of course, assuming that things like numerous Vinyl Scratch and Trixie cameos are just there to please the adult fanbase, and I could be wrong about it. But the cynical part of me says they are. My face lit up at the character inclusions, and sunk into dullness during the in-between parts. I know when I'm being pandered to, and despite the fact that I don't mind, it's painfully clear to see that they wanted us to like it, but end up just with a string of things we like peppering a big thing that we don't like. (Here I am taking a LOT of liberties with the "we".)
My girlfriend was watching this when I cam home from work tonight. I saw the demon Shimmer and Snipe and Snails and I was like "well this isn't so bad" and then Twilight and company transformed and I was like "IS THIS FUCKING SAILOR MOON? WHAT IS THIS"
Apparently I'm seeing this in theaters with her and my friend next week. Ughhhh
1173820
Be strong :B