• Member Since 9th Jul, 2012
  • offline last seen May 5th, 2019

MythrilMoth


LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

More Blog Posts3908

Oct
15th
2015

Friendship Games Deleted Scenes Thoughts (minor spoilers) · 8:45pm Oct 15th, 2015

So, there are four deleted scenes on the Friendship Games DVD that lay out a dropped character arc from an ealier draft of the script.

In the dropped story arc, Sunset Shimmer grows restless and unfulfilled with her present life. She has friends, she has respect, she has a good life at CHS, but she misses magic, she misses Equestria, and she's growing frustrated with her inability to figure out how magic works in their world. She calls Princess Twilight out to talk to her about all this, and Twilight tells her that she's more than welcome to return to Equestria anytime she wants.

Later, Sunset confides in her friends that she's thinking about going home (this is an alternate version of the hallway scene).

In the alternate ending, SciTwi does NOT transfer to CHS, and Sunset decides that she'd rather stay with her friends and figure out the magic of their world together than go back to Equestria. Although she still might go for a visit, she's happy to stay where she is, and looking forward to solving these new mysteries of magic.

This entire storyline seems to have had two purposes: (1) to build a needed character arc for Sunset, and (2) to effectively remove Twilight Sparkle from the Equestria Girls franchise for good.

I do like the possibilities it sets up for fanfic writers. It also, and I admit to taking rather personal and vindictive pleasure in this, completely invalidates stories where Sunset is treated as a criminal and not allowed to return to Equestria. Even deleted scenes can be considered canon, and the cafe scene with Twilight stands on its own, independent from the rest of the dropped arc, as something that could have happened in the movie without significantly changing its existing story.

Comments ( 13 )

Are they animated or are they storyboard scenes (I feel that deleted scene means that they are animated, but sometimes deleted scenes never make it past the story board).

3472491 Alright.

They wouldn't happen to be with the deleted song that surfaced a week or two ago, would they?

3472492 Nope, I just looked it up on Youtube.

Why did they drop this scene, this could have been the equivalent of the late night kitchen scene from Rainbow Rocks?!

3472503 Don't you just hate it when that happens?

The dropped arc seems nice, but I think it was for the best to remove it. Sunset is already struggling with figuring out the nature of magic in the human world and trying to keep a lid on it during the games. Besides, the rest of the movie is already kind of overstuffed (If you count Other Spike and Other Twilight, there's like 10 new characters in this movie), trying to do too many things at once and some aspects feel underdeveloped as they are (The Shadowbolt girls are either one-joke characters or non-entities, Flash is basically just a cameo, etc.).

Whilst I would of enjoyed this story, I think the whole twilight and the games thing was extremely well done and needed the attention the film gave it.

The whole sunset shimmer arc would be better suited for a separate film.

I wouldn't say it invalides stories written where she's treated like a criminal, assuming they were written before this movie came out and had a retroactive edit stating that much in the description.

Stories written after this movie without that acknowledgement, however...

I would have preferred the deleted scenes version, mostly because I didn't want Twilight transferring to CHS and overshadowing Sunset. That said, I haven't run into a single fic where Sunset wasn't welcomed back to Equestria with open arms, usually with Celestia giving her a big ol' hug.

According to the audio commentary, they struggled with choosing on what to do with this subplot, but it was eventually scrapped due to time constraints among other things. They said that the scene in the café was done well, yet it wasn't considered because of Twilight suddenly being there, and not wanting to interact with the rest of the Mane Six.

Perhaps what was scrapped can be used in the next movie?

I really enjoyed the deleted scenes and would have loved if they were kept. I think that character arc felt very natural and something Sunset would want. Also, that duet was amazing.

I will say that I really want to see all of the chaos that would happen if the entirety of the Canterlot High was dropped into Equestria. You would have multiple Princess, a pair of them not knowing how to control their magic, and everyone else running around freaking out because of all of the things that would be normal for a pony.

But at the very least, Sunset should come back to Equestria for a visit. I just wonder if she orders a daffodil sandwich if she would make weird faces because she's not use to it anymore.

I would've liked to see some of those scenes be animated, but I believe they were dropped when the decision was made to sync up the movie to the Season 5 finale, instead of taking place some time after the fact. It would've seemed very odd for pony Twilight to be around prior to the games, and then suddenly be unavailable prior to the portal being shut down.

Login or register to comment