So, on the one hand, after initial reports that Equestria Girls was not going to be made by the regular pony team, it looks like we've got Meghan McCarthy writing, David Thiessen directing, and Daniel Ingram doing music. So that's promising, as far as it goes.
But... first off, it's set in high school. Part of the appeal of Friendship Is Magic for me is that it depicts its characters as people, doing people things like having jobs and making friends and so forth. Putting them in high school means the movie will probably be about high school things like cliques and endless social climbing and complicated, backstabby games that make Versailles look like a friendly game of checkers.
And Twilight has an apparent love interest. That's dangerous. There's a long tradition of female characters becoming defined entirely by their romantic relationships, and it exerts a powerful gravity that can be difficult to escape.
And then there's the apparent plots: Twilight is a fish out of water who doesn't understand how humans do things. Yay. That's not a story I've seen ad nauseam. Oh, but we have another stunningly original plot: there's a mean girl who is inexplicably the top of the social ladder despite everyone hating her because of how mean she is. Woo.
Oh, and I sincerely hope the song for the trailer wasn't an example of the kind of music the actual movie will have, because it was kind of awful.
I mean, I get it. The implied viewer for this trailer is clearly not me, it's the sort of five-year-old girl who sees a trailer for The Smurfs 2 and thinks, "That looks good! I want to see that!" It's entirely possible there's a lot of things in the movie to appeal to me, and they just didn't put them in the trailer because the trailer's not for me. And certainly the movie implied by this trailer is nowhere near as bad as the movie implied by the aforementioned little blue annoyances.
But so far, this isn't particularly promising. Cautious pessimism continues.
I just tell myself:
ReplyDelete1. The initial trailers for A Canterlot Wedding made it look like just a boring wedding episode.
2. I did see some hints of an action sequence, with that magic blast.
Also... this actually does tie into my random headcanon that the Mane Six are actually teenagers, who are emancipated because Equestria doesn't have higher education so the age of adulthood is lower (like it was in human societies, only a few hundred years ago).
My plot speculation: The stolen crown she's been sent there to retrieve is the prom-queen crown, and that's how they justify the prom-queen-contest storyline.
Also, Sunset Shimmer gets taken back to Equestria at the end, and that's how she becomes a pony.
As I said, it's entirely possible that this is simply a matter of the trailer being meant for someone not-me. However, it's also quite possible that the movie is meant for someone not-me and I won't enjoy it, either; that actually looks fairly likely.
DeleteI try not to evaluate things on whether they do or do not support my personal speculations about the show--take that too far and you end up with the notion that the best episodes are the least surprising, which seems counterintuitive at best.
I also thought of both your plot speculations. I really dislike the second (although I consider it fairly likely), because that just means we'll have a multi-episode version of everything I hated about "One Bad Apple."
Maybe you damn bronies shouldn't keep assuming it's all just for you, forever and ever. DHX staff is leaving thanks to attacks made by rabid, insane bronies to who, the show had become the most important thing ever. Bronies in their self-entitlement destroyed MLP. I hope you are happy
ReplyDeleteI'm overjoyed! MLP has been, apparently, destroyed. I shall have to tell my vast army of minions who obey my every word that the battle is over and we are victorious.
DeleteOr, you know, maybe you should go yell at the people actually harassing DHX staff, instead of randomly attacking anyone and everyone who dares criticize or question something related to the show.
Also: Bronies in their self-entitlement destroyed MLP.
DeleteOh yes, it's been so thoroughly destroyed it has a limited theatrical-run special and a full 26-episode season coming up. If that's what "destroyed" looks like, clearly we need much more "self-entitlement." (Which is different from regular entitlement how, exactly?)
Canterlot Wedding...
ReplyDeleteAnd despite my comment yesterday, on second thought, there's nothing to show for sure blue-haired dude is a love interest. Maybe he's Human!Shining and she is simply latching onto the most immediate source of familiarity.
No, everything about the trailer frames him as a love interest. If you look at trailers for other high school dramas, his positioning is where and how the love interest shows up.
DeleteI don't think he actually looks that much like Shining Armor, personally. Very different hair style in a slightly different shade of blue. And, of course, he's too young to be human!Shining--assuming everyone (except, for some reason, Twilight?) has a counterpart in the candy-colored-humanverse, human!Shining would probably be off at police academy or something--he's enough older than Twilight to be out of high school by now, either way.
I look at that video and I see something that appears indistinguishable from a fanfic. It's got a shift to high-school setting, diegetically-inexplicable "alternate universe" human copies of all the main characters (who at a glance appear to not have the ponies' memories but form a gang of six friends anyways), standard fish-out-of-water humor, what is apparently an OC love interest...
ReplyDeleteThe fact that it's animated and has people from the actual show is the only thing that makes this not a Crack Fic.
Well, okay, but in fairness you could apply that argument to half the episodes, too. Including some really good ones--"Wonderbolt Academy" comes immediately to mind.
DeleteI guess you're right on that count. I guess it's more that this is a plot synopsis that I have never seen in any context BUT a fanfic, and most of those I've seen it in either bank on their oddness or stink. But then again, we all know that the Friendship is Magic staff have never ever beaten the odds on turning out something good from an iffy-sounding premise, right? Except that one time they did it to a whole series of course...
DeleteNot to mention a redoing "Mane Six vs. the Tribbles" and "Mane Six vs. Q," both of which should by all rights have been disasters.
DeleteBut still, always better to expect disaster and be surprised than the other way around.
Oh, you know things are getting unpleasant when Equestria Daily makes a full post asking fans to stop harassing the staff.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I saw that, hence today's PTotD.
DeleteCopied from another pony blog:
ReplyDeleteIt seems like “brony” is becoming almost derogatory, if only because the annoying people get labeled as bronies and everyone else is just a pony fan.
because most pony fans realized that freaking out because they were fans of a cartoon was stupid and stopped associating with the people who called themselves “bronies” and took everything way too seriously
basically most of the people who still call themselves bronies are absolute shitlords who act like this children’s tv show is their entire lives and get offended and whiny when they are not pandered to by the creators constantly
(disclaimer: i’m generalizing a lot because there are a lot of great people who like ponies. it’s just that a lot of them have seemed to start distancing themselves from the fandom itself and i can easily see why).
The author of this blog seems to be a great person and would also do well to put distance to brony name and perhaps less passionately trash some episodes of a. Children's show from an adult perspective.
I'd just like to say that I have not observed this phenomenon at all in reality. The loudest people in any fandom are the idiots, especially between seasons, but I haven't seen anyone trying to distance themselves from the name.
DeleteI have recently seen a man (who, on the same blog, called himself a "brony" a year ago) describe himself as "a dude fan of the show" but "not a brony". So it does exist to some extent. I don't know how common it is.
DeleteIt seems like “brony” is becoming almost derogatory, if only because the annoying people get labeled as bronies and everyone else is just a pony fan.
DeleteCounteracting that is exactly why I refuse to stop calling myself a brony.
basically most of the people who still call themselves bronies are absolute shitlords who act like this children’s tv show is their entire lives and get offended and whiny when they are not pandered to by the creators constantly
This is flatly untrue. For example, it does not describe a single member of the D.C. Brony Society. You're confusing "most of the noise" with "most of the people."
perhaps less passionately trash some episodes of a. Children's show from an adult perspective.
If you're going to try to tell me how to write my own blog, at least have the guts to use a screen name when you do it.
That said, I have no idea what you're talking about. The only episode of FIM I have "passionately trashed" is "One Bad Apple," and that's (a) only in passing, because I haven't gotten to it yet, and (b) because (as I will discuss when I eventually get to it, and not a moment sooner) I believe it is actively harmful to children.
There's a difference between critiquing something and "passionately trashing" it.
Also, "you need to stop taking it so seriously" is a bullshit argument. Lesson Zero: What matters to people matters to them as much as it matters to them. You cannot change it and should not try; all you can do is accept it. You want to criticize someone's behavior, go to town--but their internality and values are off limits.
Delete>shitlord
DeleteOpinion invalidated. Please at least use grown up words when making ad hominem attacks from now on and not petty tumblr speak. Thank you.
This is apropos to nothing you've mentioned here, but looking at the trailer, I can't help but notice the apparent lack of racial diversity involved, which would be rather distressing even if I actually excited about the project. In fact, if I were cynical-minded, I'd suggest that part of the reason why they're keeping the ponies' color schemes for their human versions to the degree that they have is because it means they don't have to re-code the characters as being anything other than White while camouflaging the fact that that's precisely what they've done. And now I'm especially curious to see how the coded-as-African Zecora would translate into the new paradigm, particularly since her color scheme is especially hard to translate as skin.
ReplyDeleteExcellent point, and one I've seen mentioned nowhere else. I suspect Zecora will not be in it, though if she is I'd expect her to be a teacher at the school.
DeleteCue people freaking out at the suggestion that white people can be coded as such by any means other than skin color in 5... 4...