My Little Pony: The Movie (spoilers) · 2:55am Oct 12th, 2017
Once again it seems I saw a thing, enjoyed it, and am now running into fans all over the site who would rather complain about the things they disliked, even when they say things like "Overall I loved it" or "I give it 2.5/5, and here are the things that annoyed me." (paraphrasing, obviously)
So lets get started. Spoilers below the break.
So, rather than reply first to specific complaints and continue the cycle of "no you're wrong, it's bad/you're wrong and you're bad" let me just go into explaining what I saw, and what I enjoyed.
We start off with a Friendship Festival. Fun idea. Celestia has her Summer Sun Celebration, Luna has Nightmare Night, and Cadance has... I'd like to say Hearts and Hooves Day, but it seems like they kind of dropped the "princess of love" thing in favor of making her "generic pretty pink pony princess who is married to her prince, has her princess baby, and her own crystal kingdom in the snow." So... the Crystal Empire's whole thing with the Crystal Heart each year is her holiday now.
Moving on.
Twilight getting her own day is pretty cool.
Now, if this was, I don't know, some kind of gritty war/adventure, with emphasis on violence as a conflict, you might question why we spend so much time at the start on little details of character interaction, like Rarity putting up decorations with Rainbow's "help" or learning that Applejack was born in a barn and raised in a barn. That was funny though. I liked it.
We also got to see a veritable feast of "background pony/cameo" shots. Coco and Sassy together! Lyra and Bon Bon together! Starlight and Trixie together! Overall, pretty, shiny, happy, and lots of fun to look at and soak in. I love Songbird Serenade. She has a cute design, and her behavior was silly and fun.
Oh, right. We need a conflict. Well, an army shows up. They want the magic of the four princesses to power their magic stick and be villany villains. So, sure. That's a thing. I'll get back to this later, because this really "stuck in the craw" of a lot of the complainers.
The M6 escape. Because they're the main characters and this is a story about them. They don't really have a plan, and one hint of a maybe plan escaped Celestia's lips before she was encased in crystal. Which leads to an amusing Hasbro-joke involving Hungry Hippos. Which later gets corrected to hippogryphs, then later still to hippocampi (fuck your seaponies, they're hippocampi). It was an amusing joke to me that unfolded neatly.
I'd like to point out once again, that Twilight and her friends have no idea what they're doing. Yes, they've been on adventures before. They have not faced an army before (the changelings are an infestation, not an army. More on this later too). They don't have a plan, but the series has shown us that "go get the magical artifact, then use the magical artifact on the bad guy" is the tried and true method. So, as they slowly figure out more stuff and try to make sense of Celestia's desperation plan-hint intended for Luna, and upon learning about Queen Novo's pearl, it comes as no surprise that Twilight would imagine this is the right key to solve their problems.
Look at me jumping forward and backward though. It's fun.
Along the way to that discovery, the M6 encounter some characters. Capper, a shady cat-guy who intended to sell them off to get out of some debt, Celaeno and her airship crew, and Skystar, the daughter of Queen Novo. Each of these characters has been negatively impacted by the Storm King, and in each case the M6 leave behind a friendship in their wake. I think each of them deserves some attention, because it feels like not many others watching the movie got it.
Capper is a fairly stereotypical rogue. He has clearly grown up in a shady neighborhood, he's had to interact with unsavory types. He's streetsmart, and he's looking out for number one. The ponies step in and he sees an opportunity to get out of some debt. However, Rarity's simple act of generosity, fixing up his outfit without even thinking of anything in return shocks him. This is not how the world (his world) works. All of a sudden he feels guilty for what he's trying to do. And the ponies escape despite the trap he had set for them, and while he can't try to make things right in front of them, you see he does try to aid them by misleading Tempest Shadow off their trail.
Celaeno and her crew used to be pirates! Of course, Rainbow Dash thinks that's awesome. Today they're beaten down, spirits broken, and they work as cargo haulers for the Storm King. Without any hesitation, Rainbow Dash cheers them up. Reminds them of who they are. Pirates are probably not good people. I don't think Rainbow thought of the consequences of turning some law-abiding and productive sailors back into pirates. But, whatever. Pirates are cool, Celaeno and her crew are cool, it has nothing to do with getting Equestria saved, but that doesn't matter any more to Rainbow Dash than Capper's outfit mattered to Rarity. It was just the right thing to do.
And, of course, it backfired on them. Rainbow's awe-inspiring Sonic Rainboom led Tempest Shadow right to them, and the ship is destroyed. The M6 once again escape in the nick of time, leaving yet another group of characters behind in their wake without getting to really see the value of what they inspired in them.
Now, in both of these cases, focus on Twilight Sparkle for a moment. While the M6 as a whole are main characters, she is the main main character. The journey so far as she has seen it involves seeing her home town, her idol and mentor, her sister-in-law, and a lot of other ponies she cares about harmed. She sees that the Equestria she loves is being conquered by an invading army. She has no plan, she has to just go forward and hope to come up with something. Along the way they encounter some rogue and barely escape being sold into who knows what terrible fate. They lost their ride to the destination that they hoped would give them an answer, almost being captured by Tempest because Rainbow needed to show off again. Her own quick thinking in forming a balloon mid-fall saved them, and when they finally arrive to where the hippogryphs are supposed to be, the place is deserted. Twilight is not in a good place. She's desperate, she is painfully aware of the stakes and the ticking clock where every moment ponies back in Canterlot are suffering, and her friends have been of very little help along the way, and even added to the difficulty.
So, they meet Skystar, who brings them to see her mom, and they see a powerful magical artifact. Twilight sees this as that break they've been needing this whole time. She even comments about how it could be used to turn all the ponies into some kind of powerful combat form to fight back. But of course Queen Novo isn't very sympathetic. Twilight doesn't have time for persuasion that may never work. She needs to rescue Equestria.
At which point we get to the true conflict of the movie. Twilight turned away from Friendship. She, like a lot of the audience, was focused on the "practical" side of the situation. You get the weapon, you use the weapon on the bad guys, you beat the bad guys, things go back to peaceful. This works in a lot of other stories which are about fighting and violence, but it doesn't work here.
Why it doesn't work is perfectly believable and reasonable. Novo needs to protect her people. She isn't willing to risk her pearl getting into the hands of the Storm King and making the situation even worse on top of rendering herself defenseless. Besides, Equestria has handled all sorts of bad things before, they can take care of themselves. Hiding has worked so far. Letting the Storm King think her people are dead and gone will ensure they can continue to hide and survive.
Twilight straight up uses Pinkie to distract the hippocampi while she goes and tries to sneak off and steal the pearl. Pinkie's reaction is hurt. Twilight just betrayed her. If nothing else, that one scene justified everything else in the movie for some powerful, heart-wrenching emotion.
"I just can't talk to you right now."
Then Twilight gets captured. She was pretty much giving up at that point anyway. She didn't have a plan to start with, what they were trying to do just failed, and she betrayed her friends getting to this point. There is literally nothing left to do to win. Game over.
So, back to her friends, they reunite with those they touched. Capper was inspired by Rarity, Celaeno was inspired by Rainbow Dash, and Skystar was inspired by Pinkie. They don't have a master plan. They don't have a special weapon. They don't have an ace up their sleeve. All they have is daring and hope. They head back to Canterlot. Maybe to get captured. Maybe to die. But hey, why not do those things trying to fight to the last breath?
This is one of those sorts stories, so it works. They break in. On sheer audacity they get right to the heart of things, and leap out and spread confusion and havoc. They're in the middle of an entire hostile army, and they're straight up doomed if things continue on. Whatever it is they need to do, they need to do it now and have something decisive turn the tides. That's some Three Musketeers shit right there.
So some allies stay behind to hold off the minions while the M6 smash into the throne room and confront the main bad. Not only has he gotten the magic he was after and now is even more powerful, that means their magical powerhouse Twilight Sparkle is spent. Again, every step forward runs into yet another setback.
The classic villain flaw is: evil turns on itself. The Storm King betrays Tempest, and reveals he was using her all along. She turns on him. The good guys win. Because Friendship is Magic. Not super powers. Not tons of unicorn/alicorn/artifact magic. Not raw strength. But literal Friendship.
Then we move through the aftermath. While we're unlikely to ever see her again, Fizzlepop Berrytwist would be an interesting new face around Ponyville. Overall, a satisfying ending to let us cool down from all the action and suspense.
There was a lot of symbolism going on in the movie that I noticed, but couldn't quite fit into that recap.
For one thing, Pinkie Pie was very prominent through the movie. While a lot of the conflict was centered around Twilight Sparkle as the main main character, the movie did a good job of setting up scenes to where things were not directly focused on her. It felt like the whole team was the focus, so when Rarity took center for a moment or Rainbow did, it felt like we were watching a story about them and their point of view for a moment, rather than constantly being "Twilight and oh, her friends are there and doing stuff too." Pinkie seemed to get that spotlight quite a bit in a lot of the downtime, and took part in the "main" scenes too. Especially with her major scene with Skystar. It almost felt at times like she was the main main character instead of Twilight.
Rarity's act of generosity was meaningful and impactful, though it was simple and subtle in execution. It just felt like a very Rarity thing to do, something you'd not even bat an eye at if you knew her for any length of time with any degree of closeness. If we hadn't had scenes with Capper and Tempest after, or if we didn't see his visibly growing guilt at what he planned to do, you could easily dismiss what happened and forget about it. I felt it was really smoothly done.
Rainbow's inspiration was an interesting example of Loyalty. In this case, inspiring Celaeno and her crew to be loyal and true to themselves, instead of accepting the yoke of the Storm King. It was doubly interesting because there was a running theme before and after about "accepting fate and trying to survive" vs "charge in and fight. die free rather than live oppressed." It was subtle foreshadowing to the next major scene, in which Queen Novo essentially chose survival and hiding over fighting. Celaeno and crew picked their swords back up.
We then bring out optimism. Pinkie's element. It has been called laughter mostly. Celestia referred to it as optimism in MMC, and we see that it grew from Hope in another place The Season 7 finale. Overall, Pinkie's character has been that sense of light, joy, and indeed hope. When things are dark and scary, she says to laugh. When others are serious and rushing to get to the next stop in the adventure, she's bouncing.
The underwater kingdom of the hippocampi might be safe. It might be a little bit nicer than the dreary muck and overcast drudgery of the surface world under the Storm King, but Princess Skystar missed the sky. She missed the freedom. She was bored. A cage of gold (or seashells) is still a prison.
Pinkie's call to laughter in the face of scary trees in the dark Everfree forest is easy to see due to high contrast. But her call to joy in face of boredom in a gilded cage is far more complex. This felt like the kind of "Ghost of ChristmasSpirit of Hearthswarming Presents' where her focus was not on the bad that could happen or was happening, but on how to laugh, live, and enjoy being alive.
The entire movie could be encapsulated by these three main elements, with hope/optimism/laughter being the main one. Things were desperate and hopeless-feeling at the start, but Pinkie kept that smile and energy. In the end, all they had was hope. When that's all you have, you need someone inspiring like Rainbow Dash and her flashy Rainboom to just set aside caution and go. Rarity's generosity comes to mind when you're giving up something precious like safety and security for yourself for something like the hope of a better future for all.
So, on to the detractors. I'm hoping most of those who enjoyed the movie saw a lot of the same things I did. But after reading a lot of other reactions, I notice a lot of stuff they saw that I either didn't see at all, or simply didn't care about. I sort of worry that they didn't see the good things I enjoyed.
The villains you'll notice don't play a prominent role in my recap. The series has given us a lot of bad guys.
Nightmare Moon wanted to bring eternal night, which would have ended the world in a frozen wasteland. While the show was pretty poorly written at this point, the Elements of Harmony were an abstraction of the concept of friendship, and it was Twilight's realization of the importance of friendship that sparked inside of her that brought defeat to Nightmare Moon.
Discord's chaos magic is very powerful, he's ruled Equestria before, and is devious and nefarious even while being chaotic. He's less "random" and more as his name implies: the opposite of Harmony. He'd been defeated by the EoH before, so he worked to neutralize them. But he underestimated the force behind them: friendship. Again, a fairly abstract win, bit a little more obvious than with NMM.
Chryssalis had numbers on her side, stealth, and she too created a social problem first and foremost rather than the more obvious "military" conflict you might try to point out. In the end it was love that beat her. Specifically an explosion of love. So... I guess that kind of sort of relates to Friendship.
Tirek was a solo powerhouse who was immune to magic pretty much, and fed on it to power up further. They got a little better about things in season 4 though. They retired the EoH and when we got to the "DBZ-style" fighting that a lot of people enjoyed, that fighting did nothing but make both realize they were at a standstill. Tirek turned to a classic villain move and used hostages. Twilight gave up her magic/fighting option, but friendship prevailed and invigorated her and her friends to overcome Tirek anyway.
Starlight Glimmer has been both the best villain of the series to date and the most background, and conclusion. Rather than present a purely "I am a villain, defeat me!" conflict, she presented a different (and flawed) ideology. When dethroned at the start of Season 5, she cooked up a revenge plan involving time travel, and in the end Twilight only won through extending an olive branch of Friendship. It was the least abstract they've done with the series up to that point, and it resulted in watching "what happens next" as Starlight is rehabilitated. This involved not only teaching her the theory of Friendship (the lessons) but also involved her forgiveness. Forgiveness for her mistakes from others, and forgiveness for herself for making them.
I'll go ahead and stop there, and not include the EqG villains or the Season 7 stuff. Suffice to say, more of the same general trend. Bad guy does bad stuff, good guys do friend stuff, friend stuff wins. I'm sure I'm forgetting someone else in that list. Gak.
Back to the movie. Instead of just one powerful entity, we get the Storm King. While he does seem to be reasonably strong personally, especially after he gets the magic of the four princesses he was after, it seems his value as an antagonist is more environmental than personal. We see the obvious "face" of his threat with the invasion at the start, and we see his "I'm kind of a douche" behavior in his interactions. But what really sells his value as an antagonist is the world the main characters discover outside the borders of Equestria. The places the Storm King has subjugated, and the lives they lead under his rule. His environmental threat is not that he plans to inflict death or slavery upon everypony, but he plans to get rid of their happy quality of life and more or less turn them into what we live under in the real world. A crazy, fear-mongering governmental leader, high taxes to fund a giant military, wage slavery that kills our individuality and turns everything into pursuit of income just to survive, and no real upward mobility into a satisfying, peaceful life. He plans to dim the sun. Not bring eternal night, but make the world overcast and dreary.
You can complain about what was literally on the screen in the invasion force at Canterlot. You can complain about how certain champions of Equestria didn't make a bigger impact on that initial fight. But you have to realize that in order for the Storm King to be the kind of threat the movie depicted him as, he too has his champions. Tempest Shadow was one. Who knows how many more he had under him? We saw some zeppelins filled with bulky, intimidating shock troops. Who knows what kind of artillary, siege weaponry, and other artifacts and things he had at his disposal. Where Chryssi had her swarm of drones, the Storm King has not just troops but military vehicles and weapons. He has the resource base to support an army and go on the attack against a nation like Equestria.
The point of his antagonist role was not to be just a powerful bad entity to face, like the other villains before him. He represented an irresistible shift from the normal to an overcast, oppressed one. So if your reaction is "they should have fought more. The story should have let them fight more," then I just have to say you're wrong. What they should have done is show how powerful and hopeless it was to face the Storm King. They toned that down to keep the ratings low. If you really wanted "better" out of what the story was trying to show us, then you're asking for an R-rated movie with blood. One where the champions of Equestria are broken for trying to stand up to him.
I've seen such nonsense comments as "Rainbow/Wonderbolts could just poke holes in the zeppelins." Apparently some of you have no idea how military zeppelins work. They're not one big balloon you can pop like the one Twilight rides in during the opening song of every episode. They're a container built to stand up to combat conditions. There are internal chambers limiting how much lift gas is lost in case of rupture. They're also armed. You fly to one to "poke it with spears or something" you get shot at. If you want an idea of what it is like to charge a machinegun nest, watch Wonder Woman. She's at least immune to bullets and lives.
I've seen comments about shields, such as from Shining Armor. It seems like they thought of that though. Cadance erected a shield to protect herself, and Tempest's grenade ripped right through it. These are a military force intending to attack Equestria to take the most powerful magic inside. They're prepared. Also, if you're adamant that magical shields would be strong enough, read up on how sieges work. The Storm King could just sit and let Canterlot starve. He has supply lines to the outside to wait it out. Canterlot is up on a mountain.
The initial invasion was brief. Because it wasn't intended to be a showcase of cool fighting and struggle. It was intended to be an overwhelming military strike. And within the PG rating, with the intent to convey the antagonist role of the story, it succeeded. It seems to be the biggest thing that bothered fans, but it feels they're bothered because they missed what it was doing, and were more upset that their headcanons about Celestia and Luna were trampled. Instead of taking in the story, they demanded some other genre of story.
The other complaint was somewhat headed off by my recap and symbolism notes, but I did notice that some people didn't really care much for: Capper, Celaeno, and the "non-plot" with Queen Novo and the pearl. Yet each of them helped showcase many things. From letting us see just what the Storm King is capable of before his invasion, to showcasing the friendship elements in contrast to Twilight's "this adventure we're on" focus. Again, missing the story being told and complaining about not getting the story they expected.
Another complaint was about Storm King's character as a person. I never watched Disney's Hercules, but I've seen enough bits and pieces to get the obvious similarities to that movie's Hades. I also personally noticed some similarity to Disney's The Emperor's New Groove, Emperor Kusco.
If we're really going to complain how "stock villain" feels too much like some other "stock villain" then I'm just not really interested in the conversation. If your complaint is mere preference, again I'm not interested in that rant-session. What amused me about the Storm King was that it was a more fun break from some of the various other stock villains we've seen in the past. I can't begin to tell you how tired of seeing Skeletor/Cobra Commander/Megatron/Queen Beryl/Rita Repulsa/etc. again and again. I am tired of the "I'm evil for the sake of evil, and I do bad/douchey things just because I am evil."
Storm King seemed to have a purpose. He knows he's using fear and a display of power to keep his conquered empire under subjugation. He's aware of how important his image is to his goals. He has his military. He has at least one champion, probably others. He has the might. But he clearly wants not only more, but he also wants to be able to use his particular theme: storms.
And if his personality seems similar to Hades or Kusco, I'm fine with that, because it also feels like you get a sense of a real person. He doesn't spend all day just plotting how to be more evil. It doesn't feel like he just spends hours and hours each day waving his hands menacingly over a crystal ball. You can tell he has his priorities. He doesn't just use the communication spell effortlessly, because he doesn't have time to fiddle around with those utility spells and stuff. He has people for that. He comes across like a modern business person running a business. You could imagine he probably likes golf. He's probably the best at golf. He sounds like the kind of person you could sit down and hold a conversation with. Sure, you'd probably hate him and think he's a dick, but he doesn't necessarily need to use violence to get you to dislike him. He doesn't need to wear a supervillain costume. Hell, it feels like he probably puts one on in a sort of self-aware mockery of the practice, rather than because he genuinely likes that kind of gaudy style.
If this becomes a more common stock villain archetype, I'm fine with that. It's a lot more fun.
Overall, MLP falls on its face when it tries to do adventure. The main focus of the series is about social interaction, and facing the conflicts and problems that come up when making new friends, maintaining existing friendships, and so on. The adventures tend to focus on turning all of that abstract, and representing it with laser beams that cleanse the evil out of bad guys. This movie felt like a serious attempt to do the "adventure:friendship matters" idea well though. The adventure portion served to let us all know we were on an adventure, and even served to distract us (some a little too well) from the real plot. But it let the acts of friendship be the way to victory, while giving us one hell of a swashbuckling, rip-roarin' romp to boot.
Friendship matters in Equestria. Violence is how we try to solve things too often in the real world, and we have a stressful, scary, and depressing world as a result. Equestria is brighter and more fun. Even if they have their share of dangers, you can sometimes throw a pie at it or just sit down and talk things through and everything will be alright. We may see characters and be able to measure how strong they are, but the comparison of strength/might isn't the focus of ponies. Having the bigger dick doesn't make you right.
That brings me to a character that you might think I neglected so far: Fizzlepop Berrytwist, A.K.A. Tempest Shadow.
Her backstory was cute, interesting, and impactful. Even in a place as magical and friendly and peaceful as Equestria, some ponies slip through the cracks. They might earn their cutie marks, but not really understand them or what they mean. They might suffer an injury, and be excluded from games with their peers. They might have an affluent parent that teaches them a bad way to look at other, less affluent ponies. They might not get as much encouragement from their parents as they need, or they might get too much. They might think that study or training is more important than getting along with others. They might think servng their community is more important than personal goals. They might think personal goals are more important than community participation.
In some cases that can turn out extreme. You get hurt, and someone offers you something that feels better. In Fizzlepop's case, she was given a purpose. A life to follow that relied on only herself and her own strength. Except, y'know, for the parts where she has to do someone else's bidding. And winds up betrayed.
But she also represented a threat that was rather different than a lot of the previous villains/antagonists before her. NMM was an alicorn, and used her magic to do all kinds of tricky things to the still-forming M6. Discord is almost entirely magic. Chryssi feeds on love "magic" and used illusionary disguise to do most of her harm. Tirek feeds on all magic and mostly blasted stuff with lasers. Starlight was a powerful unicorn with unusual magic.
Fizzlepop was more of a brawler. She had kind of a "shotgun" magic to attack with, but most of her power was in hand to hand (hoof to ... whatever. melee) ability. A classic trope in fantasy stories/games is that melee characters can move in and harm a wizard before they cast a spell. Thrown weapons help with that. Enchanted weapons help with that. Resilience to spells that get off before you can stop them help too. Knowing how to get through magical defenses helps with that. It felt like Tempest Shadow was all of that, and was well-suited to handling wizard-type opponents. She really felt like the sort of champion you'd bring in to take on powerful magical adversaries you wish to steal magic from.
By the end, she seemed worn out. She started off calm, somewhat arrogant, but willing to hit and do harm. She was a trained combat type. She really showcased the difference between a military combat attitude contrasted to Twilight's soft demeanor, a civilian who mostly befriends people. Fizzlepop is "hardened."
Despite being hardened, the movie gradually let slip more and more of the pony underneath her grizzled exterior. And by the end, worn down from fighting and betrayal, she volunteers her real name (which Pinkie was super enthusiastic about), and uses her magic to add a little bit of pretty to the celebration. It was short, and somewhat symbolic, but it felt like her deciding to discard her hardened exterior, and return to being a marshmallow pony.
Now, seeings as the series has been more than willing to roll up its sleeves and wade into the much that is a post-redemption, rehabilitating villain twice now (Discord and Starlight Glimmer), in an imaginary scenario where we add Fizzlepop to the main cast too, I am somewhat hesitant to delve into what kinds of stories/episodes would be told for this journey. She very clearly would fall smack dab in the middle of the "soldier coming home" archetype. I can't imagine her combat-honed reflexes would just go away, and her inclination to hit things in the face when situation calls for it would lead to some very bad situations in non-military contexts back home. Where Starlight drew a lot of upset fans for mind-controlling the M5, I fear Fizzlepop would cripple or kill someone. Which would be some cruel irony considering her own disability.
So, overall, I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. I felt it was a refreshing take on otherwise tired concepts of adventure and conflict. There were parts that, in the initial viewing of, I had some confusion about and needed to reflect and think on afterwards to fully understand. I enjoy that the movie got me to do so, and it treated me to a whole lot of eyecandy in the process.
It managed to make Pinkie rise in my respect as a character. I sincerely wish she was as well written on average in the series as she was in the movie. We get occasional rare episodes where she is this well or better written, but that all is heavily diluted by the poor writing inflicted upon her all the rest of the time.
...I agree with your review, I enjoyed the film for what it was, but I have one issue. Why do you keep on referring to the Storm King as the "Storm Lord"?
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Fixed. My mistake.
Prequel comics strongly support your assertion that Stormy has just tons of war magic sitting in his hold. The crystalline petrification grenades are probably shards of the Misfortune Malachite; its original owners were practically afraid to touch the thing and it routinely and almost mechanically ruined anyone contacting it. Stormy has been doing this to every empire he comes across, just flat-out laying waste just to plunder national vaults of bad shit like this. I disagree that there was no way to show the Royals putting up a bit of a fight without upping the rating; heck, if the other two had even done Cady's level of "three-second-shield-before-being-overwhelmed," we might not even be talking about this. But I have no problem believing in the FACT of Stormy's success.
I loved Liev S.'s Storm King and just wanted a little more nuance and screen time, and I suspect the two would have come hand in hand if allowed.
All in all, I had fun, and my good outweighed my bad by a whole lot.
Good lord, this. Where is this Pinkie Pie in the show?
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This applies to a lot of things, in my view. Much of it felt rushed and hamfisted (with the one causing the other).
Absolutely. I don't remember the last time I had that much fun in a theater.
Oh, and I should clarify, my blog post wasn't intended to nitpick. It was trying to just get the few things I remembered questioning out of the way in one paragraph, because I enjoyed almost everything else. Writing a post about THAT couldn't be done late at night because it would've taken me until way past my bedtime. Sorry if frontloading it with nitpicks came across as overly-negative.
Very much yes indeed. I really liked the movie, and you pretty much summed up why. As well as why I like MLP in general so much.
It's a regular theme in the show. The girls never win their battles by being stronger, tougher, or faster, or by having superior numbers, or powerful magics, or weapons, or artifacts. They win by having heart. Compassion. Understanding. Friendship. Twilight's ability to forgive and accept others has never failed. Even the Elements of Harmony are just useless rocks without the heart of the pony who bears it. In the end, the strongest power of all is friendship.
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There is a slippery slope argument in place here, though. The defeat of that often wrong argument is as you just noted. Where I ask, "where does it end?" You answer, "roughly 3 seconds worth of showing them fighting back would satisfy me." And as usual, the slippery slope argument ends when presented on an individual level. As you noted, many times and fairly so, just a token bit more would have satisfied you.
The token bit we did get satisfied me. I'm higher on the slope I guess? But this is mere preference.
Others may not have been satisfied with what would satisfy you. We're back on that slope. Others will draw their own lines on the slope, find their foot or handholds, and be comfortable with where they stop. But we've seen in other creative works how far down the slope that can ultimately be: Dragon Ball Z (etc.) stands as a ready example of someone taking the "might vs might" concept well past the reasonable limit, and it has fans still discussing it decades later. It has sequels still going on, last I checked. You have other creative works that go to absurd levels and are popular for it, like Gurren Lagaan and Naruto. You have stories which are focused on the fighting itself, and mark their quality based on how interesting, exciting, and "cool" that fighting is, with the underlying meaning becoming simple and abstracted to make room.
Attempting to satisfy everyone on the grounds of "enough cool fighting" may have a stopping point and not slip off to an edge or a cliff. But I feel that going that direction would warp the story away from what it wanted to show, for what is ultimately gratuitous violence. The story we did get had violent things in it, but for a point, and that violence was minimized. We got enough to let us know Storm King was a bad dude and won. We already know roughly how strong Celestia, Luna, Cadance, and everyone else already are. But their struggle and individual character arcs were not told in this story, so their parts were minimized to mere seconds.
You already agree, in part due to reading the comics (which I didn't read, so I take your word on) that the Storm King won and his doing so was pretty reasonable. That was the important part of the opening conflict, and the movie got that right. Gratuitous violence for the sake of satisfying people expecting a might vs might conflict would have harmed the story. Go too far, the rating would invariably go up. Go further, but avoid that rating hike, and you're still spending time on something that isn't what the story is about. As storytellers, we cut that which doesn't tell our story. In this case, showing master strategist and wielder of Solarbeam Celestia (it's super effective!) got cut.
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I am often a negative person. You could say my entire blog is a negative response to others' reactions, which includes yours. But when you cut out the "I enjoyed this and this" and summarize that part in favor of the "I disliked this and felt this was important enough to go into detail on rather than summarize" then you're not just front-loading/nitpicking. You're treating the parts you liked as the gratuitous, unimportant parts, while the few bits you disliked as important enough to promote discussion of.
Much like how I feel catering to your/others' preference on the might vs might conflict would ruin the story, rushed and solely negative blogs like yours tarnish the conversation space. You were concerned about your bedtime, that's valid, but in that brief time you focused on the negative. Why not, "I really liked Rarity's mane. The new style made it extra fabulous and I'd like to see more of that. Overall I liked the movie, though there were a few bits I didn't like." Where the movie cuts the violence bits you'd prefer to see, your blog cuts out the parts you did like and prioritizes those you disliked.
Again, you're not the main or only culprit of doing this. I'm seeing generally your trend across several people. Some going so far as to write "fix fics" for the movie along your route of thinking. I saw one who entirely missed the point because he felt the Storm King's army shouldn't have won, so he wrote a scene in which the good guys defeat the invasion easily, and the rest of the movie never ends. I can't chalk that up to "I was in a rush, and didn't carefully consider my contribution to the overall conversation."
You'll notice that most of the things I addressed in the "detractors" section of my blog were not complaints you made. Your blog was more the straw that broke the camel's back than anything like a "serious offender" or anything. If it had been the case, I'd just leave my response as a comment only, instead of feeling the need to post my own extensive blog.
4695532
Are you picturing various poorly done episodes, like Bats! and Filli Vanilli that would be so much more entertaining and fun if Pinkie was this well written typically?
Like, Applejack gets a ridiculously large share of the screentime: "sage wisdom" quips as well as focus episodes. She and Rarity's dynamic gets put on display more often than any other pairs'. And taken as a whole, the series is a bit more "orange" for it. If instead it were a bit more "pink" and instead of Applejack's "my culture/tradition/Granny says this, so it is so" we got Pinkie's more hope/fun-oriented wisdom. Imagine how the show might be?
I'm not a big fan of Pinkie, but I would be if this were the case. We'd still have to erase Party of One from existence, and remove that specter of what Pinkie is capable of and how she might act that colors every other depiction we see. I know many folks love that episode and that aspect of her character, but it frankly ruins the rest of her character for me. I can only really enjoy her on screen when that specter is forgotten as it felt was the case in this movie. That really is its own discussion though.
4695635
That really is the point. They bring up these recognizable "violence/might" things because people can understand them as they're used in other stories. But they always do so in order to demonstrate why they're poor paths. Friendship is always more important.
Friendship is Magic.
Not the unicorn/alicorn kind of magic that lets you shoot lasers, float objects around, or transform frogs into oranges or raise the sun. It is its own kind of magic.
In the real world, we kill bad guys. Dead bad guys don't hurt us, so it works. But we can go on for years discussing how and when this is or isn't OK to do, what collateral damage this causes, and the endless cycles of revenge it creates.
Friendship doesn't directly and obviously make you safer from bad guys. But it isn't supposed to be a weapon to make you safe. It is magic that makes you and others get along. Not just tolerating each other until the annoyance of proximity becomes unbearable. It makes you happy. It makes you genuinely enjoy each others' company. It makes you seek out your friend to go do fun things together. I makes you wake up each morning with a smile because your life and theirs are better.
The show attempts to weave these two concepts together: harmony and friendship makes for a wonderful society to live in, and the power of this overcomes the violent shooty killy stuff that others do. There is something of an analogue to this in the real world: as much as some countries hate the United States of America, despise the evil military/diplomatic things we've done, a lot of them love our culture. They love our prosperity. They love our movies. In a place like North Korea, the government spreads propaganda labeling us as evil, and a lot of the populace knows no better. But they love smuggled in American TV shows like NCIS where depictions of our law enforcement respecting the rights of our criminals are shown.
I do wish more people would learn about this way of thinking. Instead of adding more "punch them until they stop being bad" stories, we could have more "they look up to us and lay down their sword to have our kind of happiness too" stories. Complaints in a story about the latter are not raised in quality with more of the former.
4695761
Sorry to be a straw of any kind, really.
Shit, are we even gonna have anything to talk about? Your blog is already everything I would have said. My only "complaints" if you could even call them it that were "Storm King needed more substance by way of more screen time to sell him" and "This isn't Friendship Games enough"
We'll just skip straight to fawning over/shipping the new characters next time we talk I guess lol. (In particular I think I'm minorly obsessed with Tempest and I didn't see this coming.)
Reading your summary of the detractors made me madder and madder as I went along, but ::sigh:: really I've learned to expect rock bottom from this site by now.
4695761
Aaand fixed now, I hope.
4695840
Cryo has rekt the conversation to make us talk about the important biznezz: shipping Tempest.
Jokes aside, I thought this was a solid blog that covered a lot of things that Cryo and I spoke about at great length on Discord, especially that note about Tempest being just plain tired at the end. I was in the "TEMPEST CAN BE TWI'S GUARD" camp after spoiling myself with a few clips (I was weak and bored studying calc, I needed something!), but after seeing the whole thing ...
Shippy things aside, I could definitely see myself writing something where Tempest tries to adjust to life as a civilian. Maybe using her magic to create wonderous firework displays for high end parties (and her friends in Ponyville, of course ;) ), settling down in a modest little home with a garden, a lawn to tend, and far too much free space than she knows how to decorate and see how she deals with it. Does she like this quiet life? Does it somehow feel like it's missing something? Does she have flashbacks as war vets do? Does she reflect on her actions a lot?
And how do the girls help her through it? If she does have those flashbacks or start to dwell, how do each of them kick down the proverbial door and go "HEY! Come with us, you're awesome and you're not alone anymore."?
4695807 I can't speak too much on your blog, as I don't follow you nor did I read it (though I have read and enjoyed your fics), but I will say this: blogs that focus way too much on the negative aspects of things are the reason I stopped reading them in this fandom. From blogs that nitpick the ever-loving shit out of episodes because of, frankly, stupid gripes about canon not matching headcanon, to people getting triggered over athlete/military culture, and more I've frankly gotten so fed up that I just tune out fimfiction's opinion when it comes to these things, save for a few people who, even when they disagree, will actually have a conversation about things. The trigger-happy flailing gets tiresome.
Now, given what Cryo's pointed out, I think it's safe to assume that yours doesn't fall into that category. But I'm willing to wager money that I could guess a few names in a PM and get each of them right on who went on a long-winded rant without putting things into context. Because, well, that is how the fandom do lol.
4697545
Yeah, I didn't intend to be all quibly. It was just a rhetorical error that maybe I came off as such.
4697645 Eh, like I said, it's not so much a comment aimed at you directly, it's more a commentary on the site as a whole. Personally, I fall very much in line with the tail end of 4695840 's comment when it comes to reactions/takeaways/whatever from an episode (or, in this case, a movie), and, sadly, history has given me plenty of reason to feel justified in doing so.
So, these days, poking my head onto Cryo's or Bookish's blogs regarding episodes and whatnot is about the most I'll do as far as canon content, because there's way too much salt on this site and I feel far too many people end up unironically being Quibble Pants before his little revelation at the end of Stranger Than Fanfiction.
That said, there's my two cents on the matter. Just sorta felt the urge to comment and point out that, while yours isn't quite what Cryo (and, by extension, Bookish and I) is groaning about ... eh. It just falls in line with the ">this fandom" manner of thinking. I don't really know how else to phrase that, so you'll have to forgive me. My brain has been melted by a calculus exam @_@
4697647
It's a fine line to walk. I never want to give anyone the impression that they can't have a negative opinion and express it. We all absolutely have that right, I feel. But it does mean I hang out in their spaces less.
4697659 Agreed. Thus why I'm quite reclusive save for a small number of Discord chats lol.