Equestria Girls - Spring Breakdown *SPOILERS* · 10:41pm Mar 31st, 2019
Hello everybody, DaveMan1000 here and I just finished watching the latest Equestria Girls special, Spring Breakdown.
I wasn't expecting too much from this, just something that would give me an enjoyable experience at most. And honestly, I'm a bit indifferent towards this one; it certainly had some great concepts, but the execution left a bit to be desired.
What's happening here is that the Rainbooms, along with some familiar faces from CHS are on a cruise ship for Spring Break, but Rainbow Dash is yearning for some more Equestrian magic to fight and soon begins to disrupt the others as their trying to enjoy the peace that they have.
I can understand Rainbow longing for the thrill of being a superhero, but the way present it just seems like it comes straight out of nowhere; right at the start, she's pointing out everything as "evil equestrian magic", and it did quickly start to get grading. A better approach I think would've been showing her reminiscing on the previous times they've saved the day and maybe have some of the other people mention her and the girls as "the ones who saved us" or something along those lines, and have that be her motivation.
Plus, despite this being essentially Rainbow's story, they keep cutting back and forth from the other girls, and while I'm all for that, here I think it just detracts from the main narrative and makes the first half of the special drag out a little. We have Pinkie Pie trying to get her hands on a particular cake from the buffet hall after the cook banned her thanks to Rainbow's actions, and this is honestly the only subplot I actually enjoyed; I always love Pinkie's antics, and the conclusion does lead to one of my favourite quotes from Pinkie.
Cook: I thought I told you never to come in here!
Pinkie: Good thing I'm a slow learner!
The others I didn't much care for in terms of the story: Applejack is seasick, Fluttershy is just chilling at the on-board petting zoo and Sunset and Twilight are doing whatever. Rarity however is given a completely pointless romantic setup with one of the crew members called Ragamuffin and I didn't care for it one bit; not just because there is barely three minutes of total screen time dedicated to it, but also cause Ragamuffin himself I found to be kinda annoying, both with his unnaturally cheerful personality and incredibly exaggerated accent (I'm thinking Irish?).
And once the main chunk of the story actually gets going, we're two thirds of the way through, leaving very little time to set up the stakes and resolve them.
I will say though, when Sunset, Rainbow and Twilight actually make it to Equestria, that is the highlight of the special; with them sneaking around Ponyville, Twilight's freakouts and their interactions with Princess Twilight. Why couldn't we get more of that?!
Something shown earlier in the special is that the mysterious storm that's halted the cruise ship and caused Rainbow to venture out in the first place was caused by the Storm King's powers (as evidence by his emblem appearing), and you'll notice that during the scenes in Equestria, Spike does not have his wings and Twilight mentions the time they defeated the Storm King and sealed his magic within the Staff of Sacanas. All this could mean that this special takes place not long after the event of My Little Pony: The Movie, which makes the Storm King's magic leak into the human world more believable, rather than having it occur seemingly a rather long time after his defeat.
So overall, I think Spring Breakdown is just average, nothing more. The first half seemed to have too much happening, yet felt like it didn't actually go anywhere, leaving the second half to be quickly skipped over, taking out many moments that would otherwise have been much better to focus on.
I didn't dislike this whatsoever; that's one thing I'll give Equestria Girls over Friendship is Magic, there's nothing in the former series that I strongly don't like, the worst I think is just average. This special just unfortunately fell into the latter category for me. I loved the sequence in Equestria, and I'm glad they remembered the Friendship Games post-credits scene showing that Princess Twi and Sci-Twi have met before. I just wish there was a bit more time spent there (maybe there's some additional footage they'll release on the official channel like with Forgotten Friendship)?
With so much potential literally BEGGING to be explored, I do so terribly wish Equestria Girls would've been a proper network or streaming series. I want that so bad I even made three season lists of my own.
Now to wait just a little longer for the start of the final season of Friendship is Magic. Still can't believe we've made it to this day...
Until then, I'm DaveMan1000 and I'll see you all next time!
Let's just say in my opinion that.... this was below Rollercoaster of Friendship. Not an enjoyable special.
I think Ragamuffin is meant to be Cockney, but the way the accent is delivered makes me think of Bert the Chimneysweep in Mary Poppins.
5059987
I think it would've been much better if they'd got an actual British voice actor to do an exaggerated accent.
5060135
Yes. Then at the end, his accent goes Irish!
Drawing on video games here, I was half expecting a reveal similar to the end of the game Bioshock!
5060328
Never played Bioshock myself.
5060545
Basically, the player is guided by a chap called Atlas, who speaks with a nebulous accent that varies between Cockney and Irish. At the end of the game, he reveals himself to be the main villain the other characters have referred to, and his accent drops away.
Ragamuffin has something similar happen at the end of the film; for most of the short, 'e speaks with an exaggerated cockney 'accent, but then it soodunly turns Oirish at the end!