School, Physics, Math, Feminism and Friendship Games · 4:06pm Nov 8th, 2015
This week I received my Friendship Games DVD, which, thanks to the tantalizing post-credits ending of Rainbow Rocks, I watched with considerable anticipation. Of course this film was going to destroy my personal theories about the new Twilight Sparkle.
But I really liked the film. Moving beyond the novelty of Equestria Girls and the pizzazz of Rainbow Rocks, this universe has matured into something far better than the original “magical parallel universe with high schools instead of castles, where six pony friends become real girls with a love for fun and fashion” .
A being from another world visiting Canterlot High School during the first films, might have had the impression that school in this world is basically all about popularity contests and musical concerts. Friendship Games was clearly going to add competitive sports to that list, but good to see that Canterlot High does also have an academic function.
This film is the story of the other Twilight Sparkle, and seeing this alternative incarnation of my favorite pony was what I really liked. In addition to being a Twilight Sparkle fan, I have a further bias as a college tutor—seeing how the school shapes the student is fascinating theme for me. The Twilight from Crystal Prep is the same character as Twilight from Equestria, but with a different educational background. Twilight the pony was groomed as Celestia’s personal student, nurtured in a supported environment to make a smart confident pony, but a little aloof from her peers, until she learns about friendship. Meanwhile the other Twilight Sparkle was left to fend for herself in the harsh environment of Crystal Prep. She thrives academically—as she would anywhere, given her ability—but her achievements just make it harder for her to interact with other students, leaving her alone and insecure. She needs friends, but doesn’t yet recognize this. But underneath all this she is the same character, with the same fixation on achieving personal objectives (getting onto the Everton study program).
What about the physics? The last film ended with the supremely awesome shot of Twilight’s pin board and the start of a scientific investigation into the mysterious phenomena around Canterlot High. It involves lots of rainbow-colored spectra, so as a first step, learn all you can about optics and electromagnetism. Atmospheric optical phenomena are often also associated with radio wave emissions. Next step would be to take a look at this with a spectrum analyzer. Fortunately Twilight is an electronic construction whizz-kid. And she collects old cathode-ray-tube oscilloscopes. No problem.
But while a solid understanding of electromagnetism will help you explain lights in the sky and anomalous radio emissions, it doesn't help much when you get to portals opening into a magical land of talking ponies, students spontaneously growing wings, and mysterious glowing orbs which transform you into a megalomaniac demon.
Here’s a fun game for math fans: How fast can you calculate the value of the angle x? Just using high-school trigonometry. It’s harder than it looks.
If you can’t read Twilight and Sunset’s working (which looks strangely similar - shame that Sunset slipped up on basic arithmetic at the end), the solution is given here.
Finally I want to say something on the feminist perspective, to follow my comments on Rainbow Rocks. It seems no one else is talking about this. Maybe there’s not much to say, but let’s give Hasbro due credit - they have taken on board the early criticism of Equestria Girls and aligned Friendship Games with the all-kinds-of-awesome / many-different-ways-to-be-a-girl philosophy which has made the show such a success.
It did look, in the early days, that this might turn into another generic series about teenage girls giggling about fashion and boyfriends. But it has now reoriented itself to be more like original series, with a diverse cast of positive characters and a learning-about-friendship theme, and a plot which mixes school drama with magic adventure. Science and math in the morning, then motocross and fighting giant carnivorous plants after lunch.
And, for once, the toy design is also following this. The Friendship Games dolls have a much more action focus. And, yes, we got the Twilight Sparkle Scientist doll. (Still waiting for the science kits).
You know, a Twilight Sparkle scientist doll honestly redeems just about any sin Hasbro might have committed with the spin off series in the first place.
I need the science doll!
I have to admit, I like the circuit pattern on her pants.
And yeah, human Twilight's portrayal was quite well done.
The drawing extra lines always gives me a headache, reminds me of playing Yugioh where most of he rules dont even exist in text, but have to be logically computed, and then are made totally irrelavent by Flim Flam class exhibitionism.
I was just trying to add up all the angles, until I realised I coldnt memorise more than a few numbers at a time and decided to nom on a virtual pizza instead.
Looks like she's wearing nitriles. Good choice, Twilight. Just go easy on the acetone.
0thly, the good:
Megan McCarthy is great at story, but not at Grammar. Josh Haber makes far fewer grammatical mistakes. Calling Mister Shining Armor an Alumni instead of an Alumnus is very jarring.
1stly, the bad:
The 1st 2 movies had worlds in the balance. Friendship-Games did not until Abacus Cinch, who is supposed to be very intelligent with an extremely good education talked the HuManeTwilight Sparkle into releasing an huge amount of magic all at once. This could have exploded like a bomb, killing everyape. Luckily, that did not happened, but something else did happen which lead to the climax of the movie. Since the HuMane Pinkamena Diane Pie was there, one knows that there was lots of CreamPie. Seriously having an intelligent well educated character use the idiot-ball for advancing the plot is just bad.
We did not have a chance to learn about the members of the CrystalPrepShadowCults. It is my personal opinion, that all EG-Movies would be better if they would be 90:00 minutes long instead of 67:30 minutes long.
At the end, the HuMane Twilight Sparkle realizes that she needs friends, this is good, but she abandons her studies, which sends a terrible message to children in general and girls in particular. The Show did it better:
Miss Twilight Sparkle starts out as the equivalent of a Graduate-Student in Canterlot, but at the end of S01E02 Friendship is Magic Episode # 2, moves to Ponyville to be near her new friends, but still continues her studies as the equivalent of a Graduate-Student in Ponyville.
Since in Rainbow Rocks, the HuMane 5 had to fight Sirens, it was a musical. Friendship-Games just musically cannot compete with Rainbow Rocks.
DHX has been experimenting with rendering somethings in 3D and running the output through filters for the 2D-Look/Feel such as the Timberwolves in Spike At Your Service. I suspect that some of the new characters such as Dean Cadance were 3D. If DHX intends to just render everything in 3D and run it through a filter for the 2D-Look/Feel, the technology seems mature and it might as well do so now.
On a scale from 0 to 5 stars, these are how the movies compare:
3 stars for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Equestrian Girls #01
4 stars for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Equestrian Girls # 02: Rainbow Rocks
3 stars for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Equestrian Girls # 03: Friendship-Games
The Equestria Girls series is really turning out much better than it has any right to. (A quality you could argue it shares with the original
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toy commercialshow!) Sunset Shimmer alone pretty much justifies the existence of those movies. (Why don't we have a Sunset smiley?Personally, I agree that Rainbow Rocks was the best of the films, if only because of the awesome music and good antagonists, but I think I'd rank Friendship Games a bit higher than the first movie.
When the movie first came out, I heard a lot of talk about how by far the biggest flaw of the movie was that the Shadow Bolts were criminally underdeveloped, which I agreed with. I also heard this was just because parts were cut to make room for commercials. Is that true? I'm assuming since you have the disk version you'd have watch the full thing, should 'the full thing' be different from the television version.
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This problem is deceptive. I started off thinking I would solve it in a few minutes, but it took a lot longer. I did begin to wonder if was really possible to do it just with basic rules about triangles, but it is. Altogether a great test to give your brightest students.
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I would agree that Rainbow Rocks had the better script, and is probably on balance the better film. There were quite a few bits of Friendship Games that didn't really tie up, but I found I was very forgiving of the mistakes because there was so much cool stuff there to like.
She's not abandoning her studies - just taking a different direction. She set out to understand magic - even if she just thought of it as 'strange energy' - at the end she realised that to understand magic, she needs to better understand friendship. And I expect she will continue her science and math projects alongside her friendship studies just like her pony counterpart.
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As I haven't seen the television version, I don't know if there was anything cut. My impression is that shaddowbolts didn't really contribute to the plot - they were just a sort of background - a chorus to Principal Cinch. But it was quite nice how they were all given individual quirky characters.
Hot damn. It's rare to find any writer on here who has anything to say about feminism other than 'get that shit out of here'
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I can't be the only writer on this site who shares Lauren Faust's values, but I do seem to be the only one who blogs much about it.
Finally got that insidious geometry problem (after about 2 hrs). Had to use a calculator too, since the glob of sine products I ended up with wasn't going to cancel in any straightforward way. Hint for anyone still trying it - don't go the matrix route; it's a trap. This confirms my belief that the ponies are all savants at mathematics.
Maybe I should ask Twilight for lessons