G1: Rescue At Midnight Castle: Review · 6:03pm Jul 24th, 2015
You've probably noticed that I pay attention to previous generations more than most brony reviewers, especially G1. I've talked about My Little Pony n Friends favorably when talking about revamps and stuff like that. You may have even noticed I'm a member of the G1 fan group.
So am I a G1 fan? Well, I like some stuff from the show and I like things to be kept truthful to it when using elements from it. However, that doesn't mean I think the show is completely perfect. The thing about G1 is that you have to view every episode as it's own thing, because there is such diverse quality in each arc and special. Escape from Catrina and Return of Tamberlon are both excellent, but episodes like The Glass Princess are just awful. There is also very little continuity between each one, ponies will just disappear between episodes, and things won't be followed up on. For example, Spike is a major recurring character in the show, but never again is Scorpan mentioned, who was very close to him.
You may think I love this episode because I love Tirek and he's the villain of this episode. But no, just because I absolutely adore Tirek doesn't mean I necessarily like the special as a whole. Yes, there are things I do love about it, but overall there are too many factors that hurt my experience from it so much that I would call it overall bad. Let's go through it.
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So basically the main plot of this episode is that Tirek has sent Scorpan and his Stratadons to go and capture the ponies of Dream Valley. He then takes them to Midnight Castle and turns them into these demonic creatures using a bag with dark magic inside called the rainbow of darkness, in hopes of creating eternal night. Firefly get's Megan to help them stop Tirek and rescue the ponies and destroy Tirek. However, Tirek and his minions just keep on capturing more and more ponies. Eventually Megan and the remainders go to find Mr Moochick who gives them a rainbow of light, whilst Scorpan get's sick of Tirek's ways and rebels against him after he threatens to cut Spike's head off. Scorpan helps the ponies escape, and long story short, they defeat Tirek with the rainbow of light.
Now, let's talk about what's good. As I said, Tirek is an absolutely awesome villain. He is sheer, pure evil and darkness and I absolutely love every second he's on screen. Victor Caroli does an absolutely amazing performance playing this character, managing to come off as both creepy and imposing, as well as nailing the "satanic archetype" side of the character. The animation is also fantastic for it's time and is still nice to look at today, even though it is choppy. The backgrounds are all very detailed and vibrant, but I like how it's not too colorful like a lot of My Little Pony stuff is. The designs for all of the creatures and the gothic feel of Midnight Castle is also very good, and it doesn't feel like My Little Pony in a GOOD way, in that it's not afraid to be dark and edgy. And that's also another thing I love, the dark tone. It seems to completely ignore the fact that it's My Little Pony, which at the time was strictly for 5 year old girls, and decided to go full out there with a really quite creative storyline which I completely admire.
All of the songs I also love. Call Upon The Sea Ponies is the one that everyone remembers, but I also like Dancing on Air very much so as well. I do like the personalities of a lot of the ponies, especially Firefly, and the orchestral score is very atmospheric and fitting to the dark tone of the special. Feeling exciting at times, sinister in others... etc, and managing to give a classic serial feel to it all.
Unfortunately, the large amount of songs for a 22 minute special contributes to the main problem with this special even more, and that's the pacing. Now, people just toss pacing aside, saying that it's a minor thing, but it REALLY ISN'T. This special proves that bad pacing can absolutely RUIN what would have been a decent and fun if not good and memorable 22 minutes. It goes at an extremely fast pace, yet it slows down for songs which don't move the plot forward in any way aside from maybe Dancing on Air. I've already mentioned how the songs really make the pacing bad for this special due to their placement, but the main problem is the RUNTIME.
This should have been 44 minutes at least. Especially since this is a pilot episode and we're introducing the protagonist of the series, which by the way, Megan contributes absolutely NOTHING to this episode. I have genuinely no clue why she was shoehorned in, in fact, the pacing of this special would have actually have been considerably better if she'd been left out completely, because it would give more development for the ponies and time to create actual drama. In fact, I'm not even sure if she is the protagonist in this special. I mean, she doesn't learn anything, she doesn't go through any kind of arc. Also, where the hell does she live? I'm sure it isn't in Dream Valley, because she seems to be completely alien to the idea of ponies talking. Is it our world? Well how the fuck did Firefly get there then?
I think Ember would have been a much better protagonist to have for this episode. It's established at the start that she's essentially going through the same thing as Apple Bloom was in G4, trying to find her worth and identity. Why couldn't she have been the hero and prove her worth? And then she would have gone through an actual arc in this episode. The special just throws all these characters at you, but none of them go through any kind of arc or change (well, except Scorpan but his, like everything else in this special, is rushed), and are just kind of... there. And the episode has this incredible randomness to it, partly because of the awful pacing, and partly because it sets up main characters but never does anything with them, leaving this special completely convoluted.
A minor thing, but another thing that is bad about this special is the comedy. There's this one slapstick joke near the beginning where Firefly bumps into Applejack and covers her in the apples she was holding in a basket. Now this has the potential to be funny, but it's ruined by Applejack's immense positivity to the situation, saying "applesauce anyone" giving the impression that she doesn't care and it's fine and robbing the scene of it's humor, making it completely and utterly unnecessary.
But the ending is just..... UGH!!!
After a admittedly really fun to watch and engaging action scene where Scorpan, Spike, Megan, and the ponies all try to get the rainbow of darkness off Tirek. Tirek throws the rainbow of darkness at the good guys, however, Meghan's rainbow of light overpowered it and it streaks across the rainbow of light and destroys Tirek in an awesome scene.
But then... everything except for the good guys, including the CASTLE and the SKY, turns bright and colorful as the rainbow of darkness has been destroyed.
But how the fuck was the castle corrupted by the rainbow of darkness? And I thought that it was midnight? Why does it suddenly turn to daytime when the rainbow of darkness is destroyed? Because the rainbow of darkness had absolutely nothing to do with the time of day it was, and it was night time so it makes no fucking sense. I also don't get how the castle turns into a tree. Like, why? How does the Rainbow of Darkness work? Does Tirek command what he wants with it, so if he wanted a castle it would turn a tree into a castle?
It's the same with the meadow and the moat. Tirek didn't make any commands to the rainbow of darkness when he turned the ponies into dragons? I don't understand this one bit, it makes zero sense and it's just there to make it cliche and to tell the stupid little kids that everything is bright and happy and colorful again.
Also, Scorpan, who originally had an awesome design, turns into a stupid cliche prince, who's apparently not called Scorpan because he says "Tirek turned me into Scorpan when he took over my kingdom," implying he was called something else. I almost take offence by how he changed into a prince, because it's basically saying that people like Scorpan who look a certain way can't be good without changing their appearance into someone handsome. First off, Scorpan didn't look ugly, he looked cool, and making him a human prince once the rainbow of darkness was cliched and stupid, and completely destroyed what would have been a character just as awesome as Tirek.
So, I've decided that I'm going to be giving this a grade just like I do with G4 episode's, so here it is.
Whilst Rescue From Midnight Castle has splendid animation and music which make it an absolute spectacle of a special, as well as a truly unforgettable villain. It's awful pacing, lack of a consistent narrative for the characters throughout the special, and lack of common sense drag it truly down to deeply low levels.
E+
Good review. It's so sad when a great villain is wasted into a weak movie.
3266260 This wasn't the movie. The original G1 movie, was so horrifically painful to sit through that it's even worse than Equestria Girls in my eyes. The songs are ear bleeding, the plot is boring, the villains are the absolute worst! And I've only seen half of it, I realized by about half way that I was wasting my life watching this garbage.
I hope you review more G1.
It's a fair review, thank you for sharing your thoughts and opinions.
Well as far as bizarre, nonsensical plot points go, cartoons are for kids and the creators can use their creativity without explanation because of kids ability to suspend disbelief. All cartoons are guilty of this, from Pocahontas and John Smith being able to understand each other's language perfectly, to Aang and Appa miraculously not starving/freezing to death in a giant piece of ice for 100 years.
I guess Megan comes from Earth and maybe Dream Valley is in a neighboring dimension. IDK
Megan's role as a hero is mostly non-existent, but looking at this from an adult perspective, all heroes need to have a place to start and they're gonna bungle things spectacularly unless they've had training prior.
What does she do? She opens the locket because she's got hands, which gives her an advantage over the ponies who use their mouths to do stuff. So why not ask Mr. Moochick? True he has powerful magic at his disposal and hands too, but he's err, possibly going senile and doesn't seem like a fighter, while she's younger, stronger and braver and she does develop into a smarter, more capable heroine as the series goes on.
The animation is good, I don't care much either way for the voice acting the animation does occasionally have problems, which is a funny quirk with older cartoons, but being an 80s/90s child myself, I'm used to it and shrug it off.I do like one of the songs and its not a bad special, or a bad start, its not my favorite episode though.
Not criticizing or arguing with your review, I read through and decided to share some of my own thoughts with you guys too. ^-^ Cheers!
3266383
I like My Little Pony the movie. I think its a lot of fun.
3370800 What is there possibly to like about that piece of shit.
3370798 In Pocahontas and Avatar things were unrealistic but I don't care one bit about that, both were great. My problem here isn't that it it's unrealistic, it's that it doesn't make any sense whatsoever and where Megan is is not explained, and no we can't just accept it, because it's a very important piece of information for the character and the plot.
Oh, and saying things don't need an explanation in stuff for if kids is an insult to kids. Just because it's for kids doesn't mean you don't have to try.
3370809
Oh I agree with you, Pocahontas is still one of my all-time favorite Disney films and ATLA was the most spectacular and intelligent cartoon I've ever seen in my life. I'm not saying treat kids as dumb, I'm just saying that's probably how some animators may think. Even adults can suspend disbelief for various forms of media. but that's alright. A lot of people enjoy speculating about things that don't make sense.
3370807
I think the witches are hilarious, I like the songs and say what you will, but some of them actually did advance the plot, the smooze is a definitely a force to be reckoned with, if you think about how horrifying it would be to get trapped underneath it. It didn't wipe out an entire kingdom for nothing. I liked the introduction to Danny and Molly, I love the Flutter ponies, because they can kick some serious ass. The Grundles were not pretty in any way shape or form, but they were very helpful and kind.
3371651 My biggest problem with it was the pacing. It moves so ridiculously slowly that it becomes brain rotting to watch when you have to see the witches trying to find the parts for the smooze for ages and ages and ages, which is really just to set up the main conflict that doesn't start till very late into the movie and the rest is just boring information that we don't need, and the witches I think are some of the most cliche and over the top villains of all time. It's so fucking boring, nothing happens for the first like... 40 minutes.
Also, the foal that runs away, I forget what she's called, is a little brat, and I hate how she runs away and then the other ponies feel "upset with themselves and saying that it was there fault" when all they did was tell her off for being selfish and rude.
The smooze is cool I guess but nowhere near on the same level as Tirek. Sure, it's like an apocalyptic surge of concentrated chaos, but as it doesn't speak and has no personality, It's just not very memorable in my eyes.
Also, I found the songs to be absolutely ear stabbing. The vocals were basically people screaming incredibly out of tunely so that your not even sure what the tune is to the song. The best of the worst is Nothing Can Stop The Smooze as it's easily the best sung one, but the actual song is still horrible.
So, yeah, I hate it.
I haven't actually gotten around to watching this whole thing, but Tirek struck me as such an interesting villain that I looked up his scenes on Youtube. And his voice... The first time I heard it, I literally got the chills. As far as I'm concerned, the original Tirek is superior to the modern Tirek in virtually every way aside from background, because the original essentially had none. But that was a common problem of 80s cartoons, so it's easy to overlook. I should probably get around to watching this from start to finish sometime.