The Disappointment Games · 4:08pm Sep 27th, 2015
Ignore this blog post if you want to wait and see my full review later. At the request of one of my followers, and for the desire to at least review the movie in its more complete form before destroying it, I'm going to wait and do a full review of the movie on October 13th when the dvd version releases.
Pretty much my face through the entire thing. This movie was bad. Like, I couldn't believe this level of writing actually made it into a movie bad. There were glimpses of good character arcs and what could have been interesting scenes, but the entire thing played out like bad fanfiction. I was extremely excited for this movie too. I came home yesterday wanting to enjoy this. I had high hopes for the movie after Rainbow Rocks, which I thought was really good. I guess that's what I get in my naivety.I can honestly say that watching this movie was a waste of time.
Anyway, discuss if you want. I'll be around fimfic sparingly today since I'm out of town.
Well, it's good to finally find somebody who agrees with me that this movie is nothing but a shitsicle of bad writing, and a boring plot. The villain was nothing but a retarded excuse for an antagonist and the writers made it a point to make everybody but Sunset, her friends, and Twilight unlikable.
what is this talking about?....
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upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/01/Friendship_Games_DVD.png
3426261 what they fucking made another one? and anyone was expecting it to NOT be shit like the previous ones? come on....
They didn't introduce the New characters like they did in rainbow rocks I mean they made a mark for that one everyone was great in the second movie this they didn't get to the characters of crystal academy the dazzlings had a reason to take over the world and this come on they pulled a sunset on the ending it was great in rainbow rocks but this blackmailing your student just to win a game well at lest we have the dazzlings
The movie has its problems.
The villains are under developped, forgettable, badly desinged, one dimensional jerks and I just don't see the point in them.
I was hoping to see One-on-One competitions between the Wondercolts and the Shadow Bolts, with characters from the show, like Rainbow vs Lightning Dust (I know that she wasn't in the trailer, but come on. Indigo Zap looks like a recolored human Lightning Dust), Rarity vs Suri, Pinkie vs Cheese Sandwhich (he wasn't in the trailer either), Fluttershy vs Coco Pommel, etc.
But frankly, what I got was a movie that should have focused more on ONE story, rather than jumping from one story-line to the other. Either human Twilight's quest to understand magic OR the Friendship Games. When I think about one of the story-lines, all I can think is: "Was that other story necessary?"
The climax of the movie, I find, is extremely rushed.
I don't like the songs, but that is just my opinion.
And Flash doesn't even give us a reason to hate him in this one, so he's even more useless than in the other two movies.
But there are good things.
The animation is even better than Rainbow Rocks.
The fact that they actually TRY to do research on magic in their world.
The Rainbooms transforming by living up to their pony versions element. That's a cool idea.
Sunset Shimmer got more character development.
The climax, while rushed, is still pretty entertaining.
All in all, I guess it's the second best of the movies, though the first one wasn't that good to begin with.
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).
I've heard the whole "better than the first" spiel a couple of times now, and I honestly couldn't disagree more. This one was by far the worst of the three movies. The villain had flimsy motivation, the side "antagonists" weren't characterized at all, and the plot was the least interesting of the three by a large margin, and none of this is even taking into account them barely trying to make any of this believable or any of the characters having enjoyable arcs. That Sunset arc wasn't satisfying in the least. The quality of the writing was so low I can't even begin to understand why people think this was better than the first one. Not to say the first one was amazing by any means, but I still enjoy watching the first one from time to time, and I can't possibly think of a reason why I'd ever want to watch the friendship games again (besides doing so to write my review
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Personally, I have a hard time saying that the writing in this one is worse than EqG1. And that's because everything about Sunset in the first movie was just that bad. Her story in the first movie had more holes in it than swiss cheese. Ask any questions about her EqG1 story at all, and it immediately falls apart (And since the entire movie hinges on her, the movie falls apart around her). It's like the editors were asleep. I'm not saying that Friendship Games' writing was good, but at least it wasn't atrociously inconsistent like the first movie.
That being said, Friendship Games did feel more dull than the other two. Oddly... despite the fact that stuff was clearly happening, it felt like hardly anything happened at all.
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Sunset had a clear, believable motivation, and despite the fact that she was hardly characterized at all (which seems to be a running theme in all three movies for the villains) this is way more than anyone can say about any of the villains in the friendship games. Really, I think there was enough given about her to make it believable even if I definitely would've liked more. The final scene made sense and was believable because the entire movie pretty much led up to it. The final scene in the friendship games came out of nowhere and generally shattered any suspension of disbelief I had left.
I can say in complete confidence that I think the writing in the first movie was infinitely better than in the friendship games. I actually just watched through all three of them last night to see if any of this was confirmation bias, and it really wasn't. Like I said, I still enjoy watching the first movie. Despite a lot of the flaws it has (being rushed, uncharacterized villain, and a general lack of real emotional depth to name a few) I still find it a satisfying experience, though not as much as the second movie.
I really just cannot in good conscience say anything good about the friendship games in comparison to the first except maybe the animation and character designs were alright. I'm honestly kinda convinced at this point that hating the first movie is just a fandom meme.
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My big problem with the first movie begins with one particular line of Sunset's:
Sunset: Pop quiz: what happens when you bring an Element of Harmony into an alternate world? You don't know? Seriously?
And just like that, the entire movie collapses in on itself. Why? Well as you can see, Sunset is mocking Twi for not knowing how Elements of Harmony behave when they're brought to other dimensions, implying that she herself knows this. Problem: How does Sunset know? Not only is there no explanation for this, but given everything we've seen and the logic of the series, there's no way that Sunset could possibly know what happens when an element of harmony is brought into another world. And once you start thinking about it, the plot holes start appearing in droves.
While it's possible that she knew about the Elements of Harmony in general, how did Sunset know about the Element of Magic? The first episode established that it was a complete mystery!
How did Sunset know that the Elements of Harmony had been restored if she had been stuck in the human world with no way to monitor Equestria?
How did Sunset know who Twilight was, and how did she know that Twilight had the Element of Magic?
How did she know that Twilight would not only be attending a princess summit at the Crystal empire?
For that matter, how did she know that this summit lined up with the opening of the portal?
And how did she navigate the crystal palace, much less find Twilight's room? She's never been to the crystal empire.
It's just plain insulting in how many different ways Sunset's plan is impossible. There's no way she should know any of the things that she knows. She somehow knows anyway, but the writers can't be bothered to explain how despite it being absolutely plot critical. Friendship games was really dull, but it never reached EqG1's level of sheer incompetence. And this isn't even getting into the first movies other similar problems, like the Pinkie Ex Machina or the cut-and-paste photoshop scene (aka the worst scene in Gen 4).
If EqG1's writing is somehow better than Friendship games despite this, it's not by much. A razor-thin margin at best.
Though I've gotta say, one bit of genuine praise for Friendship Games that I have is that I'm glad that they're finally comfortable with Sunset Shimmer running the show as the main protagonist of Equestria Girls, and not feeling as though they need to involve Pony!Twilight every single time.
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I still really don't see how this brings it down to friendship games level. I will never, ever get the argument that fg was in any way better. All those questions, while some do seem impossible, were kinda lost in the ambiguity of the timeline and Sunset's origins and means. Expecting that level of explanation out of a seventy two minute movie is kind of a stretch, I think. Not to say that it shouldn't at some point be addressed, but in the ten or so times (at least) that I've rewatched the first movie, that's really never stopped me from enjoying it, and it certainly hasn't been enough for me to disregard every single aspect of the writing in that movie as bad.
At the end of the day, none of that subtracted from the movie so much that I would consider it even close to the piece of trash we got with the latest movie. And really, this all pales in comparison to a scene where high school students are expected to be experts in motocross and archery, or a scene where a giant plant attacks the field and literally no one can be bothered to do anything but try to continue with the games, or a scene where Twilight tries to destroy a school out of curiosity. I could not disagree more that the friendship games didn't reach the first movies level of incompetence in writing. I've honestly read first-time fanfiction that could do better than this. It surpassed the incompetence by a mile and just kept going into the sunset for me.
I can get why you might not be able to enjoy a movie because of backstory plotholes, but for me, a generally interesting plot, well-structured scenes, and at least some regard for staying believable is infinitely more important, and all these things are completely ignored in friendship games. Looking down on both movies with this in mind, the first one has better scene structure, better character interaction, more interesting overall plot, and believable situations for the most part. So I really can't concede that the writing was only barely better in the first one. Seriously, the friendship games was probably the worst movie I've seen in a long time. I went into this movie expecting that really the only quality thing I'd take from it was Sunset's character arc, and I can't even say they did that right.
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Well however we choose to judge it, I think we can both agree that the writers sadly were not able to maintain the level of improvement that was shown in Rainbow Rocks. :(
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Yeah, I think that's the part that hurts the most.
This movie had so much promise after Rainbow Rocks. I legitimately was excited for it to come out. Now everyone who perpetuates the idea that Equestria Girls in general is a blight on the fandom has more ammo to deface it with. This really could've been the chance to improve and show the fandom that Equestria Girls was actually worth the time, but instead we got this: a half-assed, boring excuse for a movie that anyone of any merit will never be able to respect.
Maybe next time, I guess. If there ever is one.
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I'm right there with ya. I was incredibly impressed with how RR seemed to recognize and fix every single problem that the first movie had, and I really was optimistic about FG. Such a shame.
Though If there's a fourth movie, and it's good, we'll suddenly have our own Star Trek Movie Curse: Even-numbered EqG movies don't suck.
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I've been told they're actually going to transition to a spin-off series of shorter, twenty minute episodes, but I can't actually find a link for that right now.
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Not the first time I've heard that. There have been rumors flying around about an episodic Equestria Girls series even before the first movie came out. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see if that ever actually happens.
3435826 It was a really close call to deside whether I like the first or the third more. I settled on the third, because of the animation, but I see your point.
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Welp, Equestria Girls 4 is gonna be a thing.
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Hopefully they put a little more effort into this one.
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Fingers crossed for another good, even-numbered EqG movie.
Eh. It was alright. Gotta admit, the Shadowbolts are pretty cool (even if not a lot of screen time), and the Twilight Demon and Sunset Angel was cool, but other than that, it was just about the middle. I enjoyed it, but again, in the middle.
Months ago when I first saw the trailer, I made several bad predictions about the movie. Almost all of them came true. Boring villain. Twilight is Flattershy 2.0, and once again hogging the screen time more than she should. Stupid games. Who puts underage school girls on a motor bike race? And of course, a whole bunch of new characters with no proper development. I was pretty much the only one who said, "This doesn't look good." Vindication!
Sunny was the saving grace of the movie. She's always been a natural leader.
3454000 Right? it was worth watching once if only so you'd get the references when the new fics/characters based off it came out.(that song about magic was cool but I like the hole sing as one style)
To be honest, I liked this movie. It wasn't as bad as I had expected. Am I wrong to think this?
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You're entitled to your opinion just like I am mine. There are plenty of other people who liked it too, but I'm definitely not among that crowd. This movie was just so bad I really can't see why all these people liked it. And this is coming from someone who really liked the first one.
3463441 It had it's fun moments. I'm among the crowd who didn't like the first one; simple music plot and basically it was season one all over again. So no, I like this movie for many things more than the first one. And probably will.
3463441 But as long as I don't get called retarded for liking it, it's all good.
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I'd like to think I'm not that petty. You should be safe from that with me.
3463969 Then I respect you for your opinion. Have a good one, friend.