Make Your Mark Review (spoilers) · 3:55pm May 27th, 2022
I'll start by saying that while this is not going to be a positive review, I'm going to try to keep it constructively negative beyond "this sucks", as I think the problems are fairly clear and easy to point out. And if you liked the show, that's great. I don't think less of you for it! I can be sometimes critical of things that don't bother most, and this review's going to reflect that.
I'll lead off with the short spoiler free version:
4/10, very disappointing, does not bode well for the series itself.
Now that that's out of the way.
The show starts off alright. I'm guessing we're just getting snippets of the new intro theme, which is still pretty light on the classic MLP tune, but maybe the final show will include more of that. Either way, not much of an issue, and the intro is fine.
Then the problems start.
Characters:
Izzy: Look, a lot of people got Pinkie Pie vibes from her in ANG, which I agree with. Unfortunately, that translated into 'difficult to write for' the way Pinkie was often mishandled in FIM, and so the Atomic Cartoons people opted to Flanderize Izzy into being "the goofy unserious one" for the bulk of the show. There's very little sense of deeper understanding from her, she's just 'the quirky one' now. The VA's doing her best, though sometimes it comes across too much like she's doing an impression of movie Izzy rather than just voicing the character. Zipp's new VA was a bit jarring at first, but by the end wasn't an issue, same with Pipp's VA. Izzy...well, Ashleigh Ball didn't get Applejack right at first, so we'll see if she improves with practice.
Hitch: I'm going to give the new VA a pass just because I don't think even James Marsden could save this writing. They hit Hitch with the "You're the dopey comic relief" bat the hardest, so we've swung from "Competent if a little dorky sheriff" to "runs away from any slightly uncomfortable situation, acts stupid as the plot demands, with a dash of Fluttershy" as his character. Easily the biggest downgrade from the movie.
Pipp: Not really a ton of development over the film. If it's not obvious by now, all the characters are pretty one-note without much nuance, so Pipp is "unserious drama queen".
Zipp: Sunny's still supposed to be the main character, right? Cause you wouldn't think it from this special. Look, I liked movie Zipp a lot. But why the special made her the focus to the detriment of the other characters is beyond me. We already had a decent character for Zipp. Now she takes Sunny's sense of wanting to know and runs with it, while losing some maturity from the film in the process.
Sunny: Pretty much a sideshow until the end, honestly. All five characters feel like they got a maturity downgrade, so "Owns a smoothie shop and lives alone" Sunny is now more "Well-meaning teenager working a summer job selling smoothies and otherwise not being very good at anything else".
Queen Haven: If it weren't for Hitch she'd be the biggest downgrade from the film. Movie Haven is a serious character who shows a sense of responsibility and is clearly under a little strain from having to maintain a charade for her subjects. Show Haven is a kooky grandma character who can't use any technology and begs for someone to be there to tell her "Okay Boomer". As someone who was hoping for a little more to build off since I've wanted to write some fics involving her...there's absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch. I've no desire to work with this character at all given where she seems to be going, which is nowhere.
Posey: She sucks, the end. (yeah, I guess I failed at being constructively negative here) Proper characters don't do a full 180 on something they seem to deeply believe in after 1 minor shock.
Story:
Well, it's there. It's not good (or bad), but it's there. It's basically the core element of the film "ponies have to come together!" but rehashed worse, and the entire thing suffers from being 2 hours of plot crammed into 42 minutes. No one really gets any development as characters, there's no real challenge, nada.
Would a five year old be entertained? Probably. Are they going to ask to watch it again and again? I have doubts.
Animation:
Obviously we knew the show wasn't going to have the budget of the film, but this feels like a steeper downgrade than anyone was expecting, and it's clear the teaser shots we got were cherrypicked to show the best of it. Movements are often jerky (I'll link to a Twitter thread at the end that points out that the animators appeared to have time to do the keyframes only, and then had the software simply fill in the gaps). The faces often have a stuck quality with creepy smiles, and several scenes give off a very, very low quality "this is a direct to video bargain bin Barbie film" vibe (I've seen Filly Fantasia used as a comparison more than once). I suspect they've been either understaffed or had a time/budget crunch, but the show simply doesn't look good. And given that this is 'The Big Special' meant to launch the show? Whoo boy...
The Throw The Tablet Moment:
Look, shows like this are a collaborative effort. No one's doing something totally on their own. People clearly have to approve things, stuff goes through stages, etc.
In the movie, Sunny's lighthouse gets pretty wrecked, as does a lot of her stuff, including the lantern that her father spent time making for her, which we see in the opening of the movie.
Obviously, Izzy plans to fix this as a gift for Sunny. It's a great thought, and could have been a real heartwarming moment.
Unfortunately, Izzy hit her head at some point and decided that fixing it meant "run to Pony-Mart and buy the cheapest lamp on the shelf".
This is the only part of the special that actively makes me more than a little upset. This is beyond lazy. It's pure lack of care. It's a disservice to Izzy and Sunny as characters. Especially since this isn't a throwaway scene, the lamp features again at the climax!
And that's something that permeates the entire special, really. Maybe it's pay, maybe it's work culture, maybe it's the staff, but almost nothing in this special gives off any sense that the people making it give a damn beyond their paychecks.
Is that harsh? Possibly. I don't know all the circumstances, and I'm certainly not suggesting anyone needs to lose their job, or be harassed in any way. But this simply isn't good.
And the teaser at the end? Even ignoring the Donut Steel level of the character, I suspect the reason the character is in shadow is more because the design is absolutely terrible, rather than to lend a sense of mystery. And it leads into my final point.
Hasbro obviously wants to keep the G4 audience around. If they were just targeting G5 at 5-9 year old girls, they wouldn't have taken care to say that the G5 setting is a direct sequel to G4, with some mystery as to why things got to where they were.
Atomic Cartoons doesn't seem to have gotten that memo. This is a low-tier show targeted solely at 4-8 year old girls, with the ending an attempted sop to try and keep the older fans interested. And they clearly have a low opinion of the 4-8 year old girls too. I spent a fair amount of time helping take care of my young niece last year (which meant watching a lot of Frozen 2 as well as a lot of her preferred cartoons) and those shows were more respectful of their audience than this is.
(Incidentally, she watched the ANG movie and was riveted, and so I bought her a Sunny plush for Christmas that she carries around everywhere)
Back to the main point, a small teaser thrown in at the end to try and appease old fans, while everything else about the show is a downgrade from the film and the FiM average? That's not going to work.
I'm going to give the regular show a chance, but I'm not going to stick around beyond 3-4 episodes if it looks like we're traveling down the same path this special indicates. They're starting off in a hole for me. I'm not so starved for entertainment that I need to consume Content™ to stave off boredom.
That said, I'm not leaving the fandom or anything. There's still plenty of good G4 content around - a bad series isn't enough to drive me off. And again, if you enjoyed the special, that's great.
It just didn't work for me.
-GMS
PS: here's the promised link to that Twitter thread: Linky
This is just how every successful franchise has gotten run into the ground over the past decade.
Executives who don't understand what the success of an IP is based on and can't be bothered to try and maybe understand the fandom, decide to change the formula for the sake of broader appeal and more moneys, then leave the creation of their new and improved money making machine to the lowest bidding studio.
Hope dies last, as they say. But things aren't looking good.
Anyway, let's cheer up everypony. G4 will never die.
One of the things Lauren Faust explicitly set out to do with G4 was to create a show that would be entertaining for both the young target audience and the older one, and while opinions on the later seasons may vary, the show staff certainly continued to try and continue this (A Flurry of Emotions was practically written for parents) and it's a huge part of why it hit so well with such a wide variety of people of all ages, and why it stayed fun for a decade for those who started watching it as kids.
G5 doesn't seem to do that. At all. It's so stereotypically kiddy, in that awkward "how do you do, fellow kids?" kind of way. It'll be fun for kids because it's shiny and new, but in terms of staying power? G5 needs to get it together and do more than just briefly entertain the kids. Because aside from the older audience, kids grow up, and if G5 becomes "too kiddy" for them, they'll move on.