Spoiler Alert - Trailers Suck · 12:57am Sep 28th, 2015
I've come to the realization that the marketing team behind the show has to cut the showrunners slack. Between teaser trailers and merchandise, the fandom's ability to enjoy the show itself is being damaged.
Remember the lead-up to Slice of Life? More than five minutes of footage from the episode were shown across the many teasers and commercials, and between them we saw Octavia speak, and she was roommates with DJPon, we saw Derpy and the Doctor speak, and saw Cranky and Matilda kissing at the altar. At that point, what more can be told about the episode? The only twist left was Lyra and Bon Bon, but everything else was ruined. We knew everything would work out, we knew who was going to speak and when, and it left little surprises. Even M.A. Larson himself tweeted they were showing too much, and actually encouraged us to not watch the teasers.
Rainbow Rocks showed almost the entire first half hour of its 73 minute run time across the trailers and teasers. Fortunately they didn't show much from the climax and heavily downplayed Sunset Shimmer's role, so there were still surprises, but still. A first time viewer who had seen the teasers could come in twenty minutes late and his friends just catch him up by telling him "Well we saw Teaser 1, then Teaser 3, then Teaser 2, and then Battle of the Bands."
However, Friendship Games screwed over the writers most of all. The fandom has known about Midnight Sparkle for months thanks to the toylines. What should have been the epic twist climax was ruined while the film was still in production. And if there was any doubt of that, the first trailer directly showed us Twilight being consumed by a blast of magic from her amulet. On its own that knowledge would have been just enough to tease us, but with the knowledge of Midnight Sparkle's existence, it was obvious what was going to happen. At least Sunset Phoenix wasn't spoiled, too, but that's because they made the wise decision to release My Past Is Not Today, so any toys or artwork of the Phoenix could be attributed to the music video instead of the song.
To use my friend Albinocorn's fic as a comparison, imagine if he stuck up this fanart as the cover image. Glorious art, yes, but kinda gives away the climax, don't you think? Or what if I slapped a picture of Discord in the stage select screen for my Mega Mare fic? Think of your own story, and how much time you put into writing it, and how'd you feel if a pre-reader spoiled the ending before you posted it. Or hell, just watch this.
I truly feel sorry for the showrunners. I can only imagine how they feel putting so much effort into the show, and then Discovery Family decides to give away half the episode they just wrote in previews days before it airs, or the toyline reveals Apple Bloom is going to earn her cutie mark in Season 6 before the premiere is even finished. I wonder if they have any sway on these things. Imagine writer Josh Haber calling up the toy execs and being like "guys, please leave Midnight Sparkle off the advertising, it's a big twist that will shock fans, that merch will move itself once the movie is out, please keep it secret." And then they just hang up on him and plaster Midnight Sparkle all over the internet like some celebrity gossip story.
The showrunners themselves do a fine job advertising their show. The Season 4 animatic teased many episodes, but never gave too much away. We saw them as the Power Ponies, Luna's transformation with some eyebrow-raising dialogue from Twilight about her and Celestia going missing, and that was all we needed to get us interested. The Season 5 animatic showed them visit Same Town and the cutie map's appearance, but nothing else. The animatic for the finale showed us Starlight Glimmer and Twilight talking about the Sonic Rainboom that got them all their cutie marks. We don't need anything else. A trailer's purpose is to get people to watch. Well, Starlight is back and she's up to something that involves the Sonic Rainboom. We don't need to know anything else to be interested.
Going back to Rainbow Rocks, "Battle of the Bands" was all that movie needed for advertising. There's a trio of new villains, they're singers, they have magical powers that drive the school to anger, and Sunset Shimmer is still around and with the Humane Five. Boom, done, interest peaked. That's all you have to say, just enough information to give us a hint of the plot and show off the new villains, but not spoil anything. Friendship Games, the first trailer was better for this, but again, Midnight Sparkle was all over the toyline. Whoops.
In the future I am going to give serious consideration to avoiding teasers and spoilers, out of solidarity for the showrunners. I love what they do for us fans and it pains me as a creative writer to see their work ruined when some uncaring network executives spoil us on the story they worked so hard to craft.
I actually did see the Midnight Twilight doll but totally forgot about it. So the climax of the movie actually came as a pleasant surprise.
Don't forget, Trixie's return was also suppose to be a surprise. But the episode synopsis totally ruined that. And this was before Discovery Family.
I guess we just have to abandon the internet, then. Yep. Totally.
The Season 5 animatic showed them visit Same Town and the cutie map's appearance, but nothing else. The animatic for the finale showed us Starlight Glimmer and Twilight talking about the Sonic Rainboom that got them all their cutie marks.
Well, shit. I didn't know that. Now I do. I'll do my best to forget it in the coming weeks.
I have largely avoided EqD and story groups for months for these exact reasons. I did my best to not watch anything FG-related, so I was very glad going into it that nothing had been spoiled. I was able to enjoy it a lot more.
It's also why I haven't watched the leaked episode yet too.
I don't really pay attention to toy news, so Midnight Sparkle did actually surprise me.
But I agree that lately the teasers, sneak peeks, and trailers give away a little too much. I mean, DFC showed ten minutes of a 77-minute movie as a "sneak peek". And only aired 64 minutes of the actual movie.
What's worse is they don't bother with individual episode previews for promo breaks. The ran the S5 premiere promo for the whole ifrst half of S5, and they're running the Canterlot Boutique promo for the entire rest of the season. Granted, it has scattered shots from later episodes, but it's mostly from Canterlot Boutique.
Wow
That just sucks. I'd hate that.
I've been doing that since the end of season three. My pony viewing experience has been dramatically more enjoyable ever since.