Some themes from the G5 movie score · 5:33pm Oct 18th, 2021
Enough with the crazy theories. I want to talk a bit about something that definitely is there in the movie: its score.
A movie score is the music that plays either by itself to set the mood of a scene, or under dialog ~to underscore (ahem!) its emotional content – but not the overt songs of the movie. It’s one of the often forgotten parts of the movie experience, but when done well, it can be surprisingly rewarding to listen closely to. This blog post is about some of the subtle correspondences and repeated themes I noticed while listening. SPOILERS AHOY.
The G5 movie’s score is written by Heitor Pereira, a Brazilian composer with about 20 years of experience in scoring animation features, from Despicable Me to The Angry Birds Movie. Like most movie scores (live action and animated alike), the score was recorded by a classical orchestra – a Nashville outfit that specializes in movie scores, but real musicians playing real instruments. This contrasts to the songs of the movie, which were recorded and mixed separately, following pop/rock workflows instead. When you listen for it, it’s clear how the rich orchestral sound of the background music gives way to synth string and brass parts in the songs. Its a pity there apparently weren’t just enough production value (or lead time) to hand those parts to the same orchestrator who did the score.
One doesn’t need to be very observant to notice that this haunting woodwind motif plays every time magic is mentioned. Or perhaps it is more the promise of magic than magic itself it symbolizes.
If you mention magic in front of Queen Haven (who doesn’t see magic as a promise but a threat to the prosperous stability of her kingdom) you don’t get this magic motif but instead an ‘oh, snap!’ chord in the high strings. And when magic actually returns . . . but we’ll get back to that.
As a rewatch bonus (unless, like yours truly, you tend to cheat and ‘rewatch’ the movie by rewinding to the beginning of the action) this is also the sound to the eOn and Boulder Media logos at the very beginning of the movie.
This short dissonant motif follows Sprout in dictator mode, and is also hard to miss. I’m not quite sure which key signature to notate it in, but to my ear it feels most like some kind of E minor, possibly Dorian.
One thing to notice about it is that doesn’t play in the scenes where Phyllis talks Sprout into being acting sheriff – the music that plays there is is just fragments of the Canterlogic factory tune. The first occurrence of the dictator motif is at Sprout’s ‘Darth Vader’ entrance at the factory. Well – almost the first. Once you know what to listen for, you’ll also hear it in the intro sequence during Evil Rarity’s rampage!
This Zephyr Heights theme first presents itself clearly after the elevator reaches the top station, and Sunny and Izzy are escorted across a walkway towards the castle. Initially it’s played by the strings, but inside the throne room the brass takes over, and after “Bow before our queen!” a Royal Fanfare built on the same thematic material is played.
A slower version of the theme (pitched half a tone lower for some reason) plays in the background of Pipp’s livestream of Sunny and Izzy from the throne room, and later on Pipp’s guards play the royal fanfare on their cellphones.
Bonus observation: As the Mane 5 flee from the Crystal Tea Room, the Zephyr Heights theme suddenly plays loud and clear several seconds before Queen Haven emerges from the shrubbery. Once the queen does appear, we hear the royal fanfare, but for flutes and glockenspiel rather than trumpets.
At first the Zephyr Heights theme sounds like efficiency and precision, the dynamic, relentless energy of a modern metropolis. However, as I listen to it more times, it strikes me that it is not really a theme – it’s barely a coherent melody; each time a bar starts the same three initial notes are followed by slightly different continuations. They never lead anywhere, and in the next bar we start from square one again. It’s more a mood than a theme, and a very impatient and unfulfilled mood.
My thesis is now that the tick-tock monotony of this theme represents walking, and in particular the pegasi’s feelings about walking everywhere, when they’re made to fly. For this bold claim, I hasten to present exhibit A:
Zipp has rigged an air blower in the abandoned station to let her at least glide. When she jumps onto it we first hear the horn phrase that introduces the royal fanfare. But then a thousand violins join in with a soaring, lyrical melody we haven’t heard before – except that the first three notes in each phrase of that melody are exactly the three notes that never lead anywhere in the ZH theme. That’s what those notes were made for, and what they never get to become in the city’s theme. The whole thing is a very subtle representation of what the pegasi have forgotten, a barely conscious yearning they disguise as mere efficiency.
(Possible counterpoint to all this: A brighther variation of the theme plays while Izzy leads the gang towards the Crystal Tea Room. I have no good idea why that is. Perhaps it’s setting up the tea room as an analogue of the castle in ZH, with Alphabittle keeping court? To be sure, there are clear parallels between Alphabittle and Queen Haven – they seem to be a popular ship already – but that still feels very indirect).
Queen Haven’s personal motif starts with the same three pitches as the royal fanfare. In the personal form it plays two times during the throne room scene (one of them when the interrupts Pipp’s livestream), and once in Bridlewood when she pleads with the princesses to come home.
I suspect this ‘heist’ theme is an allusion to a particular heist/caper franchise, but I can’t place it exactly. It’s mainly associated with Zipp, and plays both when Zipp visits Sunny and Izzy in the dungeon, and later when they plan and execute the crown heist, as well as when the ponies flee to an alley after they leave Pipp hanging.
Later on, a variation emerges as the ponies flee from the Crystal Tea Room. This is pretty subtle, because it’s mostly just the backing section without the ‘sneaky’ first notes of the theme – but when the tea room sign falls down, we hear a dramatic rising string figure – shown in the last two bars here – which did play during the heist, at “Everypony who’s anypony will be there.”
(For bonus subtlety, this hidden allusion to “everypony will be there” comes just before Queen Haven actually reappears).
There is a case for considering the heist motive to be Zipp’s personal theme – except that when we hear it for the last time it’s during the final battle when Pipp finds the dropped earth crystal. At which time Zipp isn’t even present, having split off to help Hitch disable the robot. The significance of that isn’t clear – I’m even willing to suspect a typo in the notes the composer was working form, such that he thought it was Zipp rather than Pipp who found the crystal.
This little ditty seems to be a unicorn theme. It’s unusual among the themes in that it appears in several different key signatures. Its first partial appearance is in F major, during the chase scene in Maretime Bay when Izzy dances around the unicorn traps Pinkie-stye. It plays in E major two times, namely immediately after ‘Fit Right In’, and also in fits and starts while Sunny talks to Izzy at the lighthouse. However, just before the ponies arrive at Izzy’s house it plays in D major, and in the scene on the road outside Maretime Bay it’s in F sharp major.
I’m not sure what to make of that – unless it’s the subtlest of subtle hints of friendship bonding: As Sunny and Izzy run past the Maretime Bay city limits sign, Sunny’s theme (which is normally in G major) plays once in F sharp major, and then later in the scene (at “You don’t smell”) the unicorn theme (otherwise in E or D major) is also in F sharp major. They’re meeting in the middle!
This theme is for Sunny being happy. It plays several time before ‘Gonna Be My Day’, but afterwards only rarely: (a) as she runs away from the lighthouse with Izzy (as noted above), (b) briefly after she wins the dance game, (c) when she runs back into town after finding the third crystal. However, the first three notes of it becomes a kind of Sunny leitmotif. Played very slowly they’re Sunny being sad. But the motif is also used e.g. when Sunny remembers her father fondly at the campfire, or when she’s almost winning over the assembled troops outside the Canterlogic building.
This rhythmically complex fanfare – actually two separate fanfares with a more lyrical bridge connecting them – was a bitch to transcribe. I hope at least some followers can read music and appreciate the result.
This plays under the initial G4 ‘guardians of friendship’ sequence, starting right after we cut away from the picnic. And at the end of the movie the exact same music – with tiny differences in rhythm and instrumentation – plays again immediately after magic returns, while Zipp and Pipp take flight.
It’s a neat idea, but my enjoyment of it is somewhat spoiled by the thrown-together rhythmic feel. The fanfare parts work well to accompany a child’s dramatic playtime imagination, but not so well for an actually (in universe) world-changing event
(The first of the fanfares plays again as the last thing before the credits).
Finally, the closest the movie has to a love theme. We hear it in full two times, first when Argyle and Sunny launch the lantern letter, and at the end under Sunny’s “we can choose love, that’s the true magic” speech.
If you listen closely, small pieces of the theme try to start while Sunny addresses the crowd at the Canterlogic presentation (“aren’t you tried of being scared all the time?”), but never manage to take off.
The theme starts up for real at the campfire, while Hitch is warming towards the quest, but is cut short by the smash cut to Bridlewood.
The second half of the theme (where it swerves briefly into G minor) plays as Hitch accompanies Sunny back to Maretime Bay. (This would be one of the better arguments for a Hitch×Sunny ship, except it is not primarily romantic love the theme signifies).
And this is the music that swells up triumphantly when the sun catches the earth pony crystal.
Non-themes. The electronic tune that plays the first time Haven and the princesses descend to the throne room sure sounds like it’s introducing a major theme – but we never hear it again afterwards. In other words, it’s a phony theme, like the phony act of flying it accompanies.
Come to think of it, the part of the score that sounds most like this music (though they are by no means the same tune) is the tune that introduces the inside of the Canterlogic factory. Which makes sense – both the fake flight and the Canterlogic products are phony devices for managing fear.
Interesting analysis!
:)