I'm late to the party, here, but Rainbow Rocks... · 7:51pm Oct 18th, 2014
I just finished watching Rainbow Rocks, and I have to write down my immediate reaction.
That reaction is: I just watched Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny's kid sister movie. It was freaking amazing.
Actually, let me backtrack and bit and get the nitpicks out of the way. As much as I love the Mane Six, the story here almost seemed hampered by them having to be the stars. Sunset Shimmer was the heart of the film, and I think some of the screentime devoted to Pinkie Gags(tm) and Rainbow Dash being Rainbow Dash could have gone to her, and would have made the story stronger. She was the most compelling character on Team Good Guys by a long stretch; in an ideal world, the writers would have been free to focus on her while relegating the primary girls to a secondary role.
That said, the most compelling characters overall were indisputably the Sirens, who may have just unseated Diamond Tiara as Best Villain. Kazumi Evans turned in a great performance as Adagio, coupled with her constant, awesome, "everything is going to according to my evil plans" expressions and body language. Sonata was fun in the same way Brittany from Glee was (back when I could still stand that show); funny, oblivious, dumb as a rock and yet still kind of evil. Aria... well, okay, maybe they weren't all memorable and compelling. But I really liked her mane.
But the music! Especially the Sirens' songs. Holy crap. Maybe I'm just a sucker for female rock vocalists (one look at how my Pandora station has evolved will tell you that), but every time they started singing, they brought the house down. Dark, sinister, creepy, yet kinda sexy. (They're ancient succubi banished to an unsuspecting mortal realm by history's greatest wielder of the eldritch arts, so it's not weird to use that term. Right?)
I hope some intrepid writer's been giving some thought as to how the Sirens would have fit into the history of EQG-Earth. They'd have been around since the viking age, after all. I wonder what they got up to? I'm already picturing a musical montage set to "Sympathy For the Devil." (You can pick which version it is; I always preferred the Guns N' Roses cover; the Devil in that one sounds like he's having so much more fun.) "I rode a tank, held a general's rank, when the Blitzkrieg reigned and the bodies stank... "
And the ending? Well, that's what primarily drew my comparison to The Pick of Destiny. Because it was gloriously, goofily metal. It would have fit right in with Brutal Legend. I'm not sure that words can do justice to its glory, and so I'm not going to try.
Anyway. Done rambling now. If you've been on the fence about checking the film out, let me give you my hearty recommendation. They're showing it on the Hub Discovery Kids now, and it probably won't be long until it's out in retail form. It's also, undoubtedly, available from other sources. Go check it out!
I'll be checking back in in about a week with another announcement. See ya then, folks.
Hahaha, yeah pretty much.
Good thoughts regarding the sirens, those are some interesting possibilities.
Yeah, it really was surprisingly good. I actually kind of felt like I was watching an unconventional episode of the show, instead of a cringe-inducing toy commercial like EqG was. And yes, the Sirens have some very interesting backstory potential.
I can't help but be confused as to how they were there for a thousand years and are still teenage girls, but whatever.
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The same reason that fully-grown, young-adult mares are teenage girls in that dimension, too. And why prepubescent fillies are high school Freshmen. It's the Dimension of Eternal High School. Starswirl was one malicious dude.
But really, I got the impression that the Sirens were kind of generically immortal, IE, they could pass as anywhere between their late teens or mid 20's depending on their dress. They clearly weren't students at the beginning of the movie; my guess is that they'd been vagabonding around EQG-Earth for awhile, and just happened to be in the area when the first film ended. They also appeared to be a little bit taller than any other girls at the school.