G5: Make Your Mark · 6:44am May 27th, 2022
In the name of rest and recovery, I made some time in lieu of exercise and watched Make Your Mark yesterday. So, just like with G5 movie, here goes my incredibly irrelevant opinion on it:
NON-SPOILERS:
1) Overall: It's kinda what the movie should have been - a two-parter opening series episode. It sets up future problems reasonably well (aside from the potential "villain", but about that later), and in terms of direct plot I think it's actually quite a lot better than the movie.
2) Graphics quality obviously took a deep dive, which is understandable and absolutely fine since we're talking about a consistent 3d modelling style for a long run instead of the visual feast that the movie was. Unfortunately, the visual storytelling from the movie is gone - the secrets, tiny details, background lore, so we're left only with what's happening directly on the screen. And that's not enough, which leads directly to my next point:
3) The 3d style, right now, lacks both the expressiveness of the movie (understandably) as well as that of the 2d style of G4, but it's trying to make up for it with believable physical reactions and animations. It works, but to me it looks like it limits the possibility of mega meme faces we got so far from the movie and G4.
4) Only two songs, and thank god for that. Remember what made early G4 songs absolute blast? Up until roughly season 4-ish(?) almost every single song was a different genre and it added mistakes- I mean variety (there was reggae, operetta, rock, soul, a lot of fun). Not that later G4 songs were bad, far from it, but stylistically they kinda blended. This trend, in the G5 move and here, continues and gets worse, turning the potential of interesting music into a light pop music ball of gummy bears melted in the sun. I'm going to be harsh here and say that the musical direction of G5 sucks ass and is by far the worst part of everything I've seen of G5 so far (Wait, no.. the villain). Not that the songs are bad as such, I liked the movie songs, but if everything is going to be uncreative light pop then holy fk no.
SPOILERS:
5) Plot: Yes. Plot is good. There's not much of it, but it's good. Most of it, depending on the interpretation. So, it's been a few months since the way too quick and happy resolution of the movie, pony species are mixing together, and earth ponies still don't have magic because the MLP balance team is made of kicked out Riot employees led by Nightcrawler himself.
Magic occasionally stops working for no particular reason at first, and Zipp investigates while EVERY SINGLE PONY makes it clear that they are the result of incest and chain-smoking during pregnancy because dear god the mental retardation of everyone involved aside from Zipp, Queen Haven, and Posey is unbelievable.
--- the good ones---
Zipp is clearly the main character in the special, because only she and Hitch get their own plot lines, and Hitch's is mostly just for minor comic relief while Zipp gets a serious one and a good one. In short, Queen Haven knows what sort of a social media addicted potato Pipp is, and that she would sell out government nuclear codes on instagram for likes so she decides that the future pegasus Queen would pe Zipp and wants her to go home and get working on her princessing and future leadership to grow into being a cog of the inner workings of the state instead of being a living pony. One, that's actually based in history. Two, stupid expectations like that are extremely relatable. That's why her subplot feels really good to me. The best part - it doesn't get resolved, Zipp just gets more time to figure herself out and live. It acknowledges that Haven still needs a successor and it doesn't magically just make this plot point done. CONTINUITY FOR LATER!
Queen Haven. She is unapologetically a government official/royal and her part is simple, small, but perfectly written. Also, jewish mother stereotype as hell and it's open and funny. When Zipp starts messing with her by lying and ghosting her, she messes right back by coming to Maretime Bay and trolling the fk out of Zipp on the call. Her miniscule but extremely influencial (on Zipp's arc) role is how a side-character should be written. Whoever did the details on her role in the special, well done.
Posey - a tutorial on how to write someone who is a complete asshole for basically very little reason. Her toxic influence on other ponies so heavily reminded me of direct sabotage Chrysalis used to screw with ponies during Twiggle's coronation that I thought we would be getting an actual villain disguised as a "concerned citizen". My only regret is that, unlike with Sprout, the special just magically fixes everything in the end when she almost caused more LETHAL damage than the God Emperor of Ponykind Sprout himself. She's basically the villain of the movie and, while I don't want to be paranoid, I think her getting off without any consequence in comparison to Sprout is because of the girl power message of G5. This opinion is only reinforced by Hitch turning from "a cool guy" to a bumbling idiot. If that's the case, it will become a problem.
--- the rest ---
Sunny, Pipp, and Izzy have zero role in the special, so there's not much to say other than they just do their character things and Izzy definitely does them best.
Flutterguy- I mean Hitch... I genuinely hope they decide correctly what to do with him and the dragon egg he finds and hatches. We got the Gigachad Thundercock vibe from the movie but in the special he's basically Clancy Wiggum from the Simpsons. Anyway, the random dragon egg he finds which instantly hatches is a stupid plot point that I want to bash my skull against a table until I'm happy and braindead. Are we repeating Spike? Are we making Spike WORSE (I will never forget "Spike at Your Service", NEVER!)? Is it just to make Hitch's future arc being a single dad juggling a kid and a job? One of those possibilities is better than the others. Lore-wise, though, the hatching of the dragon egg is consistent and I like it. When the magic returns in a burst of cooperation from the three main pony races, it resembles the magic jolt that Twiggly Wiggly used to hatch Spike. Me likey. Well done. Hopefully not on accident, because everything just happened to happen at once.
Earthpony magic - Earthponies are DnD druids by the end of the special. I think I preferred the subtlety of G4 in this regard. Let'S see how that's handled. It would suck hard if we just got "hornless unicorns but for green stuff".
6) The omen of things to come - THE REAL VILLAIN, MWAHAHAA, ORIGINAL CHARACTER DONUT STEELE!
No, seriously. If you saw the final scene, did you also recall DWK's Totally Legit Recap? The part where the "OC" called Clusterfuck gets blasted by a shotgun? Like what the fk was that? My eyes are bleeding from the scene. Unoriginal and a 13 year-old's idea of edgy. Shadow the Hedgehog something something? This is the equivalent of the subtletly level of Jared Leto's Joker having a DAMAGED tattoo on his forehead.
The problem is that she could likely actually look decent in a 2D style but the 3D... ugh...
Okay, so teeth-pullingly awful villain design aside, the premise that "someone" made magic unusable to prevent it from being stolen and entirely controlled by "a dark purple alicorn with two-toned mane who said MAGIC was theirs" who definitely isn't related to Twiggles at all despite looking like her adult form dropped into a tar pit is perfectly fine and usable, so I like that.
So, that's my take. Watch MYM, the good parts are really good and the bad parts are fun if you don't facepalm too hard.
I did it, I figured it out. I know who the villain is!!
Sorry for late reply...
Something I would like to add to 3.
It also takes some of the energy away and limits what can be done with the characters and some of the scenes.
Also...
I find myself having no serious attraction to G5 at this time.
Not because of anything in paticular, but rather a combination of little things. There is a GOOD chance I will become more interested if they do the characters and world decently...
and a 100% chance if they bring back changelings... which I doubt for some reason... don't know why.
I will definitely still watch, but it will be more to keep up with the community than personal interest at this paticular moment.
Who knows, perhaps it will draw me in.
G4 did... I guess only time will tell.