Vertigo Reviews: The Furge · 12:43am Aug 13th, 2019
The My Little Pony fandom seems to have a thing for crossing over with the most grimdark franchises. Not too hard to see why given the show's idealistic nature, where friendship can defeat nearly everything and nearly everyone is consistently happy. However, of every franchise, I find today's crossover to be one of the sillier ones: The Purge
If you aren't familiar with the series: The Purge is a dystopian horror series that takes place in the near future. Set in the United States, a group calling themselves the “New Founding Fathers” have taken over the government and enacted something called “The Purge”. One night a year, from 7:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M., all crime is legal. However, there are a few rules, such as certain weapons and people (e.g. politicians) are off limits.
The general idea behind The Purge is extremely silly and simple. It's class warfare disguised Anarchism/off the rails Libertarianism. The New Founding Fathers are using this yearly event to slaughter the poor/lower class and some of the 1%. This is more or less presented as people who are victims of the Purge and nothing to worry about until you realize this is all a front for population and wealth control. High brow commentary as brought to you by the director who helmed the remake of Assault On Precinct 13.
There are numerous logical follies I could point out now with this and have wanted to for several years now, but the point of this blog isn't about The Purge. Rather, it's about The Furge.
Oh Beautiful, For Spacious Skies
When I first saw this story years ago, probably around the time I joined the site in fact, my first reaction was to laugh. It's a parody of the first Purge movie, only it substitutes all crime being legal for all friendship being illegal. This is so ponies understand the value of friendship. This is actually a significantly less silly idea than all crime being legal in the name of bringing out happiness and allowing people exert their anger on the spring equinox I some metaphorical tripe for a new beginning.
I digress however. While the driving force of the story is adequately different, The Furge is, at its core, very faithful to The Purge. I'm not kidding when I say that this story is a near direct mirroring of the first film. Lemme go over the two major ones:
The Apple family are the Sandin family, with Applebloom being the one to let in Scootaloo (who's the war veteran who cries for help in the first film and became a major character in later films). Unlike in the film however, The Furge doesn't try to make a point about bleeding heart liberalism with this action.
Twilight Sparkle, meanwhile, takes on the role of the only good character from the film: the “polite stranger”. She finds out that Applebloom has let Scootaloo in and demands that she be thrown out because it's The Furge and that's just not gonna fly—much like Scootaloo herself. From here, the story takes the same route the film does with the moral “crisis” that the film has of letting her go until the inevitable siege, saving, and so on.
As a whole: The Furge makes enough changes to not be a direct carbon copy of the film, but it's also similar enough that it reminds me of why I found the first film ti have been so aggressively awful. The idea of all friendship being illegal in the name of reminding ponies as to why it's so valuable is interesting, but it's squandered in favor of mimicking The Purge.
This is just woefully lazy.
What I feel should've been an anthology is instead everything bad about The Purge that left me gobsmacked because I sat through it. Though I must concede that of every Purge crossover on FiMFiction, this is easily the best one. It's the only one to not take the film's premise and make an edgy, M-rated grimdark story aims to go nothing but have more violence in it than Hatred. I’m firmly of the opinion that creativity and heart make any story genre excel and that violence isn’t the way to fuel an action or horror story. Atmosphere and emotion are the backbone to a story like The Furge and the fact it so closely mirrors The Purge is a grave misstep. The Purge itself, the first one that is, was a home invasion thriller that used its premise as an excuse to explain why the family couldn’t simply call the police. Since all crime is legal, all emergency services are suspended. It’s a free for all; anarchy at its finest (even James DeMonaco agreed since they titled second film was titled The Purge: Anarchy).
With that said, I have to stress that The Furge isn't badly written because the author themselves is a bad author. That's extremely unfair to them (even though they haven't logged on in quite some time). Rather, I find the story to be badly written because of the material is lifts notes and beats from. The changes made to the film's plot are actually clever and welcome. However, the fact is that the story is using the template and skeletal structure of the film and it suffers greatly from that. It feels all too similar and all too restrictive to what could be an interesting look into two great friends having fend for themselves when they're the guiding light in each other's lives.
Moving on however: let's discuss the characters. While they mirror the film’s characters, this is one area where the story actually far exceeds the film, though I found Twilight to be nowhere near as entertaining as the “polite stranger”. It doesn’t help that her dialogue feels lethargic and robotic at times. Perhaps that was the intention, but it was distracting at points—especially when I couldn’t help but expect her to short circuit and turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger. I bet if I look hard enough, I can also find the script to Terminator 7 between the lines.
On the brighter side of things: Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Applejack are all significantly more well fleshed out and three dimensional than the Sandins were in the film. Scootaloo is more or less the same in the way of motivation and feel as the veteran from the film, though with the necessary differences to make her being let into the Apple house less… questionable.
Being that this is story is tagged as being “Dark”, I would expect it to be quite the grimdark story. It is, though it’s no darker or lighter than the film it’s mimicking. Not that that’s a bad thing since The Purge itself is as edgy as a red and black Alicorn OC that masquerades as political and social commentary. The story has its fair share of humorous moments that are easily the highlight of everything in there (with the ending scene being very well done). The dark stuff however is more or less acceptable. Ultimately: this just further makes me wish that, like the film series, The Furge had potentially gunned for a more comedic tone to fully parody The Purge itself and its overly serious tone.
Grammatically: this story is fine. I didn’t notice any errors. If there are any, they likely slipped by me thanks to my near delirious state.
Overall, The Furge isn't a bad story because it's badly written. Far he from me to criticize a story that uses an absolute trainwreck of a film as its basis; I once tried to write a story based off of Saw. Rather, I find The Furge to be a very… okay story that suffers from a lack of its own ideas to fuel its clever premise. Had it been its own beast that was merely based off of The Purge, it might've been something memorable. As it stands: it's not really worth your time unless I managed to sell you on it. Which, if I did, I hope you enjoy it.
Final Score: C
Post Script: Hey, look, I reviewed something! I haven’t done this since May 30th. I sincerely apologize for not having done more of these as I’ve been both extremely busy with real life and emotionally out of whack. 2019 has proven to be a complete beast of a year for me and I feel I’ve been hit by hurricane after hurricane of turmoil and strife. I digress however, this is neither the time nor the place. I’ll try to do more reviews in the future, albeit a bit more in depth than this one. It’s a story I’ve been meaning to get to since last year.
Um, link?
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Added it. I knew I forgot something. Sorry!
Seems like a fit enough review.
Never saw the Purge. But the premise sounds intriguing. What would I do if I could do anything I wanted?
Probably nothing illegal. Doing bad things makes me feel bad. I'd probably hang out in a bookstore and take everything interesting, though. Do you know how expensive books are?
I hate to be that guy but,
According to all your blogs that I have taken very good looks at (I am totally not stalking) the last time you reviewed something was July 3rd, and the last time you reviewed something pony related was May 31st. Like I said I am totally not stalking you.
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I should've specified it was pony related. Thanks for the correction though!