G4 Tirek: The Rant · 4:08pm Apr 6th, 2015
Unless you've been living under a rock for a couple of years, Tirek was brought back for the season 4 finale. After the masterpiece that was the season 5 premiere, I thought I might take a moment to have a little retrospective on this villain, what this means for the future of this show, and whether I think revamping old villains is a good move.
Now the sad thing is that when most people went into Twilight's Kingdom, they had to idea who Tirek was, and still don't know other than the fact that he was a G1 villain revamped. Saberspark in his video about Tirek said "not much has changed about this character," which is completely false. It's sad that for most people, the G4 Tirek is simply who Tirek is, because he was a significant downgrade from the original. Corpulent Brony uploaded a video showing all of his scenes from G1. I've posed it here. Take a good look at it, and compare it to the G4 version.
As you can see, G1 Tirek was probably one of the most threatening, evil, and dark of all MLP villains. He actually doesn't show his face until half way through, and his castle keeps a very creepy atmosphere. His design was satanic, and he relied on his minions to do the work for him, only mounting the chariot when he had to. He also, like most good villains, had a moment to show just how evil he was. In his case, it was separating Ember from her friends and threatening to cut Spike's head off.
Now, unsurprisingly, people had been wanting to see him and Grogar return to MLP in Friendship is Magic from the very beginning. I saw fanfictions, fan art, and suggestion videos dating back as early as 2011, and nearly all of them were pretty damn good. Some imagined Tirek as a Frollo like character, convincing Scorpan that he is born to be a monster, so he should join his side to fulfill his purpose. Others imagined him killing Scorpan's family at day due to them being gargoyles, giving him no choice but to work for him.
I'd like to post to you some of this amazing fan work that re-imagined Tirek superbly.
A suggested G4 redesign of Tirek.
So out of all that amazing fan work attempting to revamp this character, you'd expect that the people actually getting paid to write for the show would do an as good if not better job.
That turned out to be false, because G4 Tirek WAS A FUCKING JOKE.
Now don't get me wrong, some of the ideas they had were cool, and I'll even admit, at the start of the episode he was in, they looked like they had captured the dark and creepy spirit of the original character.
I'm glad they decided to change him a little bit. If they had made him exactly like his G1 counterpart, it would have been boring. I'll take an example of a villain who was a good revamp in both of his movie series's: The Joker.
Jack Nicholson's Joker and Heath Ledger's Joker are quite different in their execution, but both capture the heart of the character. Both are crazy, chaotic, anarchic, fun loving, and homicidal. They also of course have that trademark maniacal laugh.
However, both actors took that character, and separated themselves quite a bit from each other.
Nicholson's Joker was more like a classic comic book villain, with a comic book style of crazy. He was still homicidal, but he tended to crack jokes more often, and had more goofy instruments.
Ledger's Joker on the other hand was more realistic. He was still the fun loving trickster everyone loves, but gone were his goofy instruments, and he brought his own form of comedy to the table which was quite different from Nicholson's.
That is how you reboot a character. Keep the core of the character the same but bring something new to the table.
Back onto the subject of Tirek, in his first couple of scenes, they seemed to have got that right on the mark. Sure, he was a little different than his G1 counterpart, but they still captured the character pretty well. However, the moment the cloak went off, they began to screw up a lot.
First off, this magic sucking thing. It's not Tirek. I could sort of buy it at the start because he needed it to regain strength, but this whole growing larger and larger thing was really stupid. He completely wipes out everything in his path, just drains magic everywhere, and in turn, is bombastic and boring.
I also want to point out that this was the power of a different G1 villain named Arabus. Seriously writers? You're too stupid to work out the difference between Arabus and Tirek? What's worse is that if they had used Arabus it would have been instantly fitting, and a lot of the complaints I have wouldn't be valid anymore as this is basically how Arabus was in G1. Hell, it would have been an improvement on the original Arabus.
Even his fucking horns they stole from Arabus. Though he's a red centaur like the original Tirek, he's big and muscly like Arabus, and has large curvy horns, as well as a similar kind of voice. If they had just done Arabus I would have said it was a definite improvement over the G1 version, but it's Tirek.
Why did you decide to slap on the name Tirek? If your going to use Tirek, do Tirek, not Arabus. I feel so pissed off that they feel they can freely mix and match the personalities and powers of any G1 villain they god damn wish, because it shows they have no respect for them. Almost everything about G4 Tirek is a throwback to Arabus, so I'm going to give him a very fitting nickname when I refer to him in future blogs.
Red Arabus.
Either way, this is Tirek. I'm not going to be judging him as Arabus, because he's not Arabus. They said he was a revamp of Tirek, and that's exactly what I'm going to treat him as.
Tirek would never do most of stuff he did in this episode, because he's not a barbarian like he was portrayed here. Tirek has class, integrity, and wit. He's the kind of villain who will wait until the right moment before he reveals himself, and likes to keep his identity as hidden as possible. The fact that we couldn't see his face in G1 until halfway through, just a bonechilling voice with an echo, was what made him so effective. It is an insult to the character to have him be this upfront all the time, because that's not what Tirek does.
We also need to talk a little bit about the redesign....
IT'S HORRIBLE.
Just fucking look at it. The redesign for when he was in his weakened form I thought was actually pretty cool, and I liked the hood as well as the fact that he kinda looked like a half horse/half monkey. But his final form was just awful. I'm going to break down in sections why this redesign was not good. He basically has 4 redesigns. Number 2 we don't see much, and I've already discussed that number 1 looked pretty good. I'm talking about 3 and 4, (4 is the one I showed you.)
So with 3, the horns are too long. That's pretty much it, apart from that, it looks okay.
With 4, where do I begin......
1. The arms are too thick
2. The horns are too long
3. The beard is too long
4. The mohawk looks stupid
5. He's badly proportioned
Ignoring the fact that this whole magic draining/get's larger thing was stupid and did not fit Tirek AT ALL from the very beginning. His final form looks absolutely stupid.
Also, there's the matter of his voice. The minute he turns red, all of his lines are basically him shouting at an extremely high volume and low pitch. Gone is the intellectual dialogue, gone is him being anything remotly close to the original character, he just shouts at a barbarically while he obliterates things.
FUCK....
So after that rant, I suppose I better tell you what I think of revamping more villains. No, I don't want more. In fact, I would have much rather Tirek had been left alone as an awesome villain than to have this shitty revamp, because at least then the amazing fanwork and ideas would have continued. I'd much rather the others be left to fanon to be re-imagined truthfully and properly than see another shitty cannon revamp.
If another revamp was done well... then good... fine... that would be great. But you ruined the most iconic of all of the G1 villains, no matter how much you do the other villains well, you will always be remembered in my books as screwing them up. Just create original villains from now on, leave G1 alone. That's my advice. If you want to do one well, than good for you, but it won't redeem how you handled G1 villains here.
Wow. When i first saw Tirek in Twilight Kingdom i thought that he was the best villain ever. But after seeing how he was in G1... G4 Tirek is a joke. G1 Tirek 4Ever!
Couldn't have said it better myself. Think you'd be interested in joining my anti-Tirek group?
I would agree on that I was disappointed on the revamped g1 to G4. it maybe the way they change Tirek was because they don't want to be yelled at the soccer mom when they child would have a nightmare about him. Same goes for Smooze he was just a green blob who eat gems and diamonds to get bigger did do anything bad just ruin a party but it would may foreshadowing for future events because look like he was magic made.
I have mixed feelings about him. The biggest thing I miss is Victor Caroli as Tirek's voice. He's just SO evil, I love it! The guy they got has his moments, but most of the time, he sounds too much like Iron Will. I could even forgive the other changes if they at least gave him a better voice actor.
In G1, his plan was to bring on eternal night, and I guess they figured that they couldn't do that now since that was Nightmare Moon's agenda. Reasonable, but they could have done something else. Like, maybe the reason he's stealing magic is to recreate the Rainbow of Darkness, a mysterious magic super weapon he used against the Princesses the first time that almost let him win.
I kind of like the bigger horns, cause it reminds me of the Lord of Darkness from Legend, who in my mind is the gold standard for the image of the big red devil.
Also, minor point, but Arabus didn't have horns, those are his eyebrows.
3263389 Yeah, the voice is very bad. They should have got Mark Hamill to do him, that would have been awesome, as he's shown he can do straight villains with characters like Firelord Ozai.
Imagine Ozai's lines coming out of Tirek.
As I said, they should change him up a little bit, so I don't think Victor Caroli should have reprised his role, as good as he was. I did like him at the start when he had the cloak and looked like the emperor from Star Wars, if he was like that all two parter with Mark Hamill voicing him then that would been awesome.
3263398 Yeah, that would have been awesome! Or, since we're on an Avatar kick, maybe Steve Blum or Jonathan Adams would have worked.
3263456 Yeah, Steve Blum certainly has a deeper voice than Mark Hamill. Who did the other guy play? Was he Zaheer?
3263600 No, he was Vaatu, the Spirit of Chaos and Evil.
3263652 don't you think he'd be better for Grogar?
3263665 Actually, when I think of Grogar, I think more along the lines of Michael Ironside, or Clancy Brown.
3263723 Well, Mark Hamill's the top guy for these kinds of roles. So I'd pick him.
I was thinking the guy who played Rasputin in Anastasia would be a great Grogar.
3263787 Christopher Lloyd? Yeah, he might be pretty good.
I agree with you in most points, but despite it all I still enjoy Tirek´s character.
His weaker forms were my favorite, undoubtedly. He was intelligent, manipulative and really damn creepy. The way he reasons with Discord is one of the best monologues to join to the Dark Side I´ve ever heard, because every word he spoke was true. And he didn´t even know what the nature of Discord´s relationship with ponykind was; he just freaking guessed it and nailed it. That was pretty admirable.
When he turns more powerful he stops being as interesting, but he was still enjoyable. He is the first action baddie we´ve seen in this show and that was pretty refreshing. Sometimes, as a YouTube analyst pointed out, all you need is a big enemy target and not a greatly complex character.
I still find his backstory pretty fascinating, and I would love to find out more about Scorpan in a future episode.
As why his behavior shifts I have two theories.
1º: The more powerful he becomes the more brutal, because he knows he can afford it. He doesn´t need to deceive anyone and let go all his rage now that there isn´t anyone to stop him. Actually, during the fight with Twilight when he finds out about Twilight´s new power (the moment she flies by him before crashing against his leg) you can clearly discern a "Oh Crap" expression on his face. He is afraid of seeing his new position on top of the pecking order compromised. However, he quickly reassures himself after seeing he was able to survive Twilight´s first attack. From that moment on he enjoys every second of the fight, to the point of throwing Twilight against a mountain when he could have easily finished the fight then and there.
2º The more power he absorbs, the more insane he grows. Maybe all that magic within him is slowing consuming his sanity, as if it were a potent drug. This is my favorite theory, and it´s my own.
So, despite the fact that seeing him grow more and more felt kinda dumb (I would have stuck to his third form, before absorbing the mane six) and not having the best final design, I really enjoyed his character.
The sad thing is if I had not watched CR's MLP retrospective on his Familiar Faces videos, I would've likely been checking this new Tirek out first.
Come to think of it, I wonder where he stands with the show now after his scathing criticism of Season 3...
3263389 Looks the part of Iron Will too, thanks to that upper body design and that freaking nose ring. Just... The nose ring. I don't get that.