A New Generation trailer
(Note: the trailer should be slightly over two minutes long.
If you get the wrong video, try one of these alternative links: 1, 2, 3)
Well, here it is, folks. The full trailer for the G5 film. I've decided to stick the video above the break, since frankly there's nothing exactly spoilery in the thumbnail. However, after the break there will be spoilers as I give some (fairly brief) comments as to my thoughts on the trailer and what I now expect from the film itself when it appears on 24th September.
First reactions are fairly positive. I'm not suddenly raving about how this is going to destroy Disney and be better than Zootopia, because clearly it isn't. I'm not saying it's better made than Citizen Kane,* because clearly it isn't. However, I never expected that. What I wanted, and what it looks like I might be going to get, was a fun, colourful romp through another Equestria† that would give me an hour and a bit of escapist fun.
* Though frankly, apart from its stunning cinematography, Citizen Kane doesn't do that much for me... :P
† Okay, the same Equestria long years in the future. I'll get to that.
The animation looks absolutely fine to me. Given A New Generation is hardly playing with a Disney budget, I don't see much to complain about. Quite probably those with more animation knowledge will pick out problems, but for the most part I didn't. It is a shame that we won't be seeing this in the cinema though, as you really can tell that it was made for that rather than a TV screen. (Note that aspect ratio, for a start!) Nevertheless, to my inexpert eyes it all looks nice and smooth – that beans scene. :D
The characters seem okay, though we've known about them for a while. It really does look as though Izzy's early lead as fandom favourite is going to be maintained, as she has more about her than the rest. I do like Sunny, though, and I wonder whether she'll be my favourite of the central cast in the end. Hitch and Pipp were okay I guess, but Zipp is just slightly irritating. Hard to put my hoof on exactly why.
Voice acting... well, let's face it, FiM set an almost impossible bar to clear, and ANG hasn't done so. I don't mean it's terrible, and for the most part it didn't get in the way (though Zipp's sounded a tad clunky), but I do still suggest that if the likes of Tabitha St. Germain and Tara Strong were doing this, it would be even better. Still, it's acceptable enough and generally unobtrusive.
Set design (oh, you know what I mean) is quite nice. The central European feel of Maretime Bay – trams and all! – is an interesting choice that I rather like. A few nice touches there as well, such as the bridge height limit in ponies rather than metres/feet. We didn't see much of the other cities, so it's harder to tell, though Zephyr Heights (surely not named after Mr Breeze!) looks good. House interiors look a little boringly like real-world ones, though.
The story is the big deal, and (because it obviously depends so much on the writing) the hardest to assess from the trailer. The prologue with Sunny's dad sets the scene nicely, and considering the breakneck pace of much of the rest of the trailer I found it very touching. The rest suggests a fairly standard "get a gang of misfits together for an epic quest" story, but there's a reason those are so common.
The G4 link is perhaps the most controversial element of the entire film with the fanbase. I was one of those who was initially hoping for a clean break,* but we're clearly not getting that. It remains to be seen whether Twilight and co are simply an inspiration to Sunny and the film's other modern heroes, or whether their past stories will link directly into the current ones in a "Pillars" kind of way. I'm still on the fence about this.
* Or at least most of one. G1 was canon (to a very minor extent) in G4, after all!
All in all, I reckon I'm slightly more hyped now than I was before. It probably helps that my expectations weren't sky-high in the first place. As with the 2017 film, I was expecting a straightforward bit of animated fun, not anything spectacularly original or different. This looks to be a fairly standard kids' fantasy adventure, but honestly, most of MLP over the past 40 years has been just that.
FiM was lightning in a bottle. I don't think that lightning is going to strike twice, and this trailer hasn't disabused me of that notion. However, for me at least, what we see here does suggests that A New Generation can be an entertaining diversion with moderately cute characters and a lot of colour. That may not be enough for everyone, but I suspect it will be for me. I am looking forward to next month.
Eh, comment wasn't that brief - your wrote over 800 words, more then I can squeeze into one comment!
ReplyDeleteI'll give some brief (ha!) thoughts below, but I would encourage anyone here to read my full thoughts on the trailer and the film here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/959703/my-little-pony-a-new-generation-trailer-and-film-thoughts
It's extensive enough, befitting me, as I haven't commented on the G5 film publicly otherwise.
I'll talk the animation first. This thing's budget can't have been above $20 million, and for that it's very impressive, blowing both Hollywood films of similar budgets (The Star and Sausage Party) and any of the frequent CG animated European-made-and-funded films out of the water. Heck, stack it next to Descpiable Me 3 or the upcoming Sing 2, films with $80 million budgets, and it's quite close in many respects! The environments are rendered great, especially the forest. The art direction is mostly super-generic, some places more so then others - the Central European feel of Maretime Bay is soothing - but the bland house interiors, and just about everything in PegasiVille, register as poor choices. Still, Boulder Media's done some fine work - proud to salute the home team for that.
As for the characters? Rigging, modelling, the actual movement, all fine. I still find some of the design choices misjudged - Imalou's style of pony faces errs a bit too close to humans, and it shows in the facial proportions. Still, most of the cast get off scot-free compared to Zipp - this isn't new to the trailer, but someone gave her narrow-slanted eyes (think hard about why they would do that…) without adjusting her facial proportions to match otherwise. Every second staring at her face is a trip to the Uncanny Valley, more so with some specific facial expressions.
The voice acting is mixed. Izzy is helped with an actual experienced voice actress (many cartoons, Peni Parker in Spider-Verse, etc.), and would be a moderate performance in FiM. Hitch's voice still doesn't match his design well (too old-sounding!), but James Marsden can act. Sunny makes no effort to not sound like a 2010s human, standard for modern animation, but despite abysmal dialogue editing there for the trailer, there's enough to vouch for something workable. Too little to comment on the minor roles - excited to see what Phil LaMarr does with his character, though the pegasus Queen's actress has her work cut out with that flashy, "hip" personality.
No beating around the bush - the voice acting of the two pegasi is bad. Those are the two actress chosen for being "hip and socially relevant" to kids, and it shows - Pipp's energy is all miscalculated and especially poor next to Izzy's, and the YouTuber playing Zipp cannot voice act. Or she hasn't here, anyway. Though a great performer would have trouble with Zipp's bland personality that press releases have stated is athlete and scientist, but which we've yet to see any evidence for, especially the latter. Oh, the reason Zip sounded so clunky? Listen to 1:18 again - her two lines have different affected voices, one going for a deep male inflection, the other for a female raspiness. No handle on the character at all.
Let's move off the technical aspects. This trailer basically seals the deal, confirming how much Hasbro wanted a typical modern CG kids' animated film, all shrill, bright, manic and vapid. This isn't just trailer editing, I've seen enough to be able to read between the lines - this is honest to the film's content. Were it not for the brand name, this film wouldn't hold any parentless adult's attention for long. It's especially disappointing, given how the G4 film, for all its issues, stuck to the show's sincere, respectful guns, and didn't talk down to its audience, but simply presented a fantasy quest without the need for modern bells and whistles.
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DeleteThis film is only interested in kids in the single-digits, in essence. Not that I expected it to be interested in gunning for a 27-year-old ghost or nothing. Hasn't stopped many other animation and kids' properties from capturing said ghost's attention!
The actual story itself is fine - I don't even mind using the atypical "getting back the lost magic" angle, and assembling a band of misfits on a road trip quest, with a heist along the way, normal stuff. Some cool conceits, like donning fake horns while undercover in unicorn territory. And in some respects it improves on the G4 film. Having a smaller cast of characters suited to the runtime, daring to make some more important rather then everyone even (Sunny and Izzy are clearly so much more prevalent then everypony else, and I approve, not just because it means less of the awful desperate-to-please pegasi sisters), all smart choices.
My major gripe with the story is more the world and setup. Can you tell this was conceived in the late 2010s, with a racial segregation plot, and is desperate to be a message movie? That's going to date this much worse then the modern performances of much of the cast. That is all I want to say on this fact, as it depressed me the more I dwell there.
I too was hoping for a clean break from G4, a fresh start is like virgin snow - it is abundantly clear that the link here is a background detail and little more, and could have easily been just its own backstory, same details, just not G4 characters. That will make it very easy to ignore when watching the film, but it's still a bristling choice, clearly done as an audience shortcut rather than as anything organic.
Other positives. I adore the conceit of a Prologue with child Sunny. It's so Disney, but here's a tradition worth adhering to - seeing your young adult protagonist as a kid before the story proper simply works, and can make their journey all the more resonant. I expect them to dance around Argyle's offscreen death, of course.
In fact, the early stretch of the film, before they reach PegasiCity, has much I like. A limited cast of characters, promising chemistry between Sunny and Izzy, a few jokes that land (as ancient as it is, the "this isn't my kid!" bit works - the bean can and despondent unicorn jokes were also neat), there's a lot to like here! Calling it now, the early stretch of the film is going to be much better than the rest. And Izzy just looks like such a better character than everyone else. Mostly because everyone else is a checklist of market-relevant traits, while Izzy, despite being in the Pinkie Pie model, actually has some personality. The solid acting that WON'T date badly, and having the best design and facial/hair rendering, helps wonders here.
Let's wrap up. The back half of FiM, and especially the last two seasons, let such a bad taste that I was content to let MLP lie dormant for years, maybe come back at the end of the decade. Course, it's like Transformers now, an evergreen property Hasbro will also have something out for. Hence a theatrical film four years later (guess it beats the 31-year gap from before!), and two years after the show ended.
Since, as mentioned, this is mostly playing copycat to other "shrill babysitter" animated films (though largely without the platter of toilet humour, innuendos and pop culture references aimed at different audiences with contempt), I expect to mostly sit through it in stony silence with some mild compensating factors. You all know I WANT to like this film, I wouldn't have spend so many words otherwise. It'll likely be bad but not outrageously so, and quickly forgettable. Between this and my main blog, that's my final word until Sep 24.
P.S. The YouTube compression's effect on the textures is sore. Confining this to streaming is such a big casualty there, doubly so with the black borders from the CinemaScope ratio.
A mere 1,400 words from you here! ;) You won't be surprised to read that, while I take broadly the same view as you do in several respects, I am feeling happier about the film overall. As I said elsewhere, I do wonder whether one aspect is simply that you have been in and around kids' animation much more than I have and so some things that still feel relatively fresh to me may be more "Oh, here we go again" to you. I'm also not as bothered by any... political aspects unless they're truly clunkily intrusive. Though I suspect the "tribal division" stuff (and even the outright racism angle if you want to go that route) has been done better in G4 fanfic over the years. Not to mention the original "Hearth's Warming Eve" story.
DeleteSo yeah, I'm going to hold my position a notch or two above your expectation of "bad but not outrageously so, and quickly forgettable", and feel like it may be "watchable and fun, if not exactly ground-breaking" instead. For now, at least. We'll see next month.
After some reflection, a few points to add.
DeleteMy general comments about the film looking to be the typical "shrill, bright, manic and vapid" kind that most kids' animated films are these days - this is nothing to do with plot, but far more to do with tone and awkward, jarring shifts between jokes and story mechanically, for their separate moments in the plot. I think Present Perfect put it best in his blog yesterday:
"Like, it's gonna be a family-friendly summer movie, no two ways about that, so you can surely expect a lot of "they tried" outdated pop culture jokes that don't hit home. […] And there's definitely going to be a lot of the standard Hollywood sass and smarm in place of character traits that seems to also happen a lot in these movies"
"Sass" and "smarm" encapsulate exactly what I mean by being shrill, bright, manic and vapid, and being desperate-to-please and hold kids' attention. Not in quite the same way as Pony Life, not like they're on a sugar high and would have an allergic reaction to coherent storytelling. But still the case.
All this isn't a case of familiarity breeds contempt, as you suggest - these kids of approaches have been sour since they became widespread.
I'm also not as bothered by any... political aspects unless they're truly clunkily intrusive.
Yeah… about that… I didn't want to dwell on it, but the chance that such elements won't be, based on all the evidence, is very, very low. I wouldn't be so bothered myself, it it wasn't crystal-clear how intrusive they're going to be. As I always say, message pictures tend to make for bad movies, because they get so focused on the message, they neglect having actual Character to the props we're following.
That said, I do want to state again: parts of this look fun, at least in the "passably watchable, mildly amusing" mode. Some of that being Izzy. Okay, most of that being Izzy - her standing out is mostly due to two other leads being very bland and two being trainwrecks, but she's stand out regardless. I normally stay away from Best Pony things, but she is so clearly going to be Best Pony. For once, EqD voters are on the money. She's adorable and irresistible and just a hoot. Clearly anyone involved with her found that contagious - as mentioned above, she has the best voice, best acting, best design, best rendering, best character animation and best writing/jokes.
Oh, the facial designs? I'm not saying I haven't got used to them since February. It's mostly a tiny but persistent itch at this point, one I can easily ignore, and which I suspect I will easily when watching the film (some exceptions - the profile shot of Sunny at 1:45 looks SO OFF, in a way that shouldn't happen, models for film protagonists are refined over months to look good from every angle). Except for Zipp - I think the fact even you found her "off" says a lot. Uncanny Valley, every face she makes.
Not dwelling on how the plot, scenario and setup is a dead ringer for Onward, just without the dead dad, I think this film will make an inviting comparison to Smurfs: The Lost Village (totally unrelated to those abysmal live-action films). A film I actually kind-of liked when it came out in April 2017, though not as much since. Chances are no one here's seen it, but regardless, I'm getting a very similar tonal vibe. That film does lack the most alarming points here (message intrusiveness, G4 connection, terrible pegasi characterisation). It did have silly wordplay and goofy slapsticks over the usual three-tiered approach of jokes I keep mentioning. Though as impressive as the environments are here, they can't compete with Lost Village's magical forest, a truly dazzling set of locales that's endlessly aesthetically pleasing and imaginative.
Anyway, I am looking forward to some parts here. Perhaps I'm setting my expectations low so, when it's weak but not bad, I'm satisfied? Maybe!
After seeing the trailer once and writing my own excited reaction to it, I gotta say, it's a really good trailer. Gives you just enough info about the substance of the story, alongside a ton of fun character beats, to make you excited to see the movie. :) That's what a good trailer does!
ReplyDeleteOkay, but I do appreciate that they aren't playing up any links to G4, to the extent that I believed there were none until I read this post. :B Is it just the pins on her messenger bag you're talking about, or did I miss things?
Sunny has figures of the Mane Six by her bed in the scene with her dad at the start. Her little light green bag also has Twilight's cutie Mark embossed on it.
Deleteor did I miss things?
DeleteOn top of what Logan mentioned, some previews of storybooks or Junior Novelisations have explicitly stated that the tales Sunny's Dad tells her as a filly do mention Twilight and her friends in regards to the three types of pony once living in harmony. Also, the figures Logan mentions are present not just in the flashback, but by her alarm clock when Sunny wakes up in the present.
I'm pretty much in agreement with you on this. As a once professional animator, I will say that the work here is solid in the Pixar style/formula, with Izzy's bean scene being a display of real talent. I also liked that they had the ponies canter at one point.
ReplyDeleteProduction design is (IMHO) pretty much spot-on and attractive.
I didn't want to judge the character designs until I saw them in motion, but I did appreciate that there was an attempt to make all the faces subtly different. Now that I've seen them move, I like them a lot. There's one exception to that, but I didn't like Fluttershy's eye shape in the beginning, either, so I may get used to Zipp's. Izzy is incandescent in every way, and Sunny feels (so far) thoroughly likeable.
One possibility I haven't heard in relation to the G4 presence is that they may not be real in this universe. They may be semi-legendary like Ulysses or Gilgamesh or comic book/animation characters just as they are in our universe.
This may turn out to be entirely from the standard mold of unremarkable kids summer movies, but it's got ponies in, and that makes a huge difference as far as I'm concerned.
TL:DR, I'm more hopeful after having seen the trailer.
I hadn't registered the cantering. Very nice! As for the beans, I really like that scene but not having the pro knowledge you do I had no idea whether it was particularly impressive from a technical point of view.
DeleteOoh, the "semi-legendary" theory is an interesting one. I haven't seen that, either. I know the official picture book has been scanned and uploaded in full out there somewhere, but I'm trying very hard to stay away from that level of spoilers. Makes it a lot more fun if I can!
but it's got ponies in, and that makes a huge difference as far as I'm concerned.
Well, yes. I doubt I'd be spending much (if any) time on this if it was a film about a bunch of cute hedgehogs or something. And I like hedgehogs.