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| Great little touches here: the graffiti, the patched bags, the sky, the lighting, the posters |
28 Nov 2015
My original rating: ★★★★ (for the whole two-parter)
IMDb score: 8.6
Thoughts: War! What is it good for? As it turns out, a really rather interesting episode. Starlight returns (of course) and again shows what a properly dangerous villain she once was. Her trying to stop the rainboom provides a nice time-travel setup, while the way she manipulates Twilight into briefly implying to the Cloudsdale fillies that bullying is good shows her cunning. We get time travel, we get filly flashbacks, we get Fluttershy brandishing a spear, we get so many things. Yes, it's Packed With Stuff in the manner of many FiM season finales, but this first half is actually exciting more than confusing. As for that war world... the limitations of a TV-Y show mean it can't be that violent, but that just makes Dash's metal wing all the more startling. It was a huge talking point on this episode's release. Some nice animation touches also, such as the uncomfortably washed lighting in that world's semi-deserted Ponyville. Nice music in this ep, too. Twi could do with remembering Spike can't (yet!) fly rather more often, though... that gag really didn't merit two goes. But oh, how I wish this episode had had a proper cliffhanger break as S6's finale (albeit accidentally) did. So much speculation we never got to have. Anyway, this episode is great. I'm tempted to give it the full five, but it's not that great. Happy to give it a very easy four, though. I could watch this again with no problem at all.
Choice quote: AU Applejack: "Who in tarnation are Pinkiebow and Flutterdash?" [Nah, I can't quite justify putting Spike's "Well, that didn't work" here. Darn it.]
New rating: ★★★★
Next
up is "The Cutie Re-Mark, part 2", surprisingly enough. It's common for people to see that as less successful than this first part. Me? Well, we'll see.
For a long time – I mean a really long time – I had built this two-parter up in my head as the absolute pits. The episodic nature of the alternate timelines, where all the details and time spent on them ceases to matter once we’ve left them, was certainly a thorn in my side (not to mention the fanservice-y nature of them). And it doesn’t really feel of a piece with either “The Cutie Map” or any of the season’s map episodes either (though I’ll admit, thematically, plenty of Season 5 episodes reinforced the importance of cutie marks, personal choice and such that play a part here). First real sign of Josh Haber not being overly concerned with matching the blueprint.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the three biggest issues all came from Starlight. We all know her backstory (a recycled element from “The Cutie Map” that was sensibly dropped) is so, so weaksauce, to the point I was not remotely surprised to discover it was plugged in at the last minute. Leaving it out would have been better; we’d have been disappointed to not see where she got her reasoning, yes, but not knowing is often better than any justification, and sometimes in real life, beliefs come gradually over time, not from a single event. The ending song montage summing up her reformation rather than leaving it for next season is a problem too. But the biggest, by far, is how much the conclusion just straight-up ignores how much of a nuclear terrorist Starlight is, treating it like it’s nothing in Twilight’s easy forgiveness.
Notice something? Those are all exclusive to Part 2. At the time of writing, I haven’t yet watched it, so who knows how it’ll fare this time, but as regards Part 1, I must say, it’s really solid. It’s really refreshing to get a two-parter not stuffed to the gills with characters, and if that means basically writing the Mane 5 out, well, it works; their presence through their warped future selves is still quite the strong contrast. More so, the issue of wasted time and details in the timelines doesn’t apply to this part. Neither we nor Twilight/Spike know what’s going on in the Sombra war timeline, the focus is on finding out what happened from what Starlight did, they only hit on using the scroll to return after AJ’s tale, and we do need one concrete example of how badly things can go.
Thus, I was immensely surprised by how much I was invested and wrapped up in this one with minimal complaints. It really uses the angle of changing the Mane 6’s origins and the time spent at the Rainboom event, where it all began, for maximum emotional effect; Starlight’s pure rage and anger really comes through; the non-rushed pacing lets the effects and weight really sink in, and so forth. Obviously the time travel logic really doesn’t hold up, but then again, how often does it in fiction? I could do with stronger dialogue for Twilight that played into her personality more, rather than being strictly her bland business princess self, but by this point in the series, one has to make their peace with that. And hey, Spike is a central and meaningful character! Always nice.
Of course, the odds of anyone actually watching these episodes separately, much less thinking of them as individual parts (they were written as one script and only separated at the polish drafts), is very small, so the fact of me rating this individual part strongly is largely a moot point. It’s no “The Cutie Map”, not either part of it, and Haber is still an odd choice to write for this – if his comedy tics are largely absent, there’s still a fair shake of autopilot writing with the concepts. But, it works; in isolation it actually exceeds “Twilight’s Kingdom” at allowing the spectacle and stakes, in a more minor mode to largely overwrite plot, character and logic concerns. Hope Part 2 doesn’t drag it down too much…
"The Cutie Re-Mark - Part 1" – Production Changes
ReplyDeleteI'm cutting straight to the script for this episode, which is already super, super close to the final episode (though the bulk of that closeness came from a revised outline). For the rest, I decided to do a Fimfiction blog on the original, substantially different version of this two-parter, one much better constructed then these summaries, newcomer friendly, the works. Available here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/989240/how-the-cutie-re-mark-changed-timeline-plots-are-tricky. It's a doozy!
One thing; despite “The Cutie Map” script being locked three months before this episode was started, the Premise and first Outline still use Starlight’s prototype name of “Aurora Glimmer”.
SCRIPT
Don't know what it is about Josh Haber, but his 1st draft scripts are just really close to the final episode, and this is no exception. More evidence for why he got the Story Editor gig? Bits scrapped after this draft:
The speech scene has very little matching dialogue, and doesn't yet explicitly state how the Mane 6 got their marks. The CMCs and the Mane 5 are in the audience too; thus, Twilight discussing Starlight with Spike afterwards is with all her friends in the school corridor, and longer due to involving more characters.
Starlight flies in this draft via conjuring Hermes-like wings on her hooves.
The war-timeline Ponyville has Mrs. Cake, scarf pulled down over her head, running through the street. She speeds up once Twilight calls for her, shutting herself in Sugarcube Corner.
The backstory of Sombra's rise has Luna defending in the south, with a visual of a boulder almost crushing her before Pinkie and Maud smash it up.
Expectedly for a 1st draft, the explanations for the time-travel logic are slightly different and delivered differently too.
The 2nd draft changes all the above and adjusts nearly all other dialogue differences too. Only one that leaps out here is Starlight saying to Ice Cube Twilight that she's planned to live out her life in the past, satisfied with her revenge. The Polish draft makes a few more tweaks, but only a few were needed - several chunks of a few pages go by with no edits.
ANIMATIC-STAGE CHANGES
Though the script lacked all the war battle action that wasn't under Applejack's narration, it's very light on both notable cuts and little trims too. Side effect of all the visuals that require lengthy descriptions here but which are registered instantly onscreen. Even most cuts are partly visual revisions.
* Twilight’s slide of the Mane 6 getting their marks cuts away to a montage of scenes from “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”. It’s also shown that her speech is in the same room she did her test and got her mark. Also, the opening scene of her practising the speech was in her castle, not the classroom.
* Twilight and Spike first land in Cloudsdale during the race, and when Dash and the bullies whiz by, step away from the cloud on the racecourse. Thus, there isn’t a scene dissolve to the race. Spike is also ecstatic as the race progresses, shrugging off Twilight’s reminder they know how it ends by saying “that doesn’t make it any less exciting”. Is Twilight one of those folks who only watched a given film once? Hope not!
* In the war timeline, Sweet Apples Acres isn’t obviously a factory from the outside. Later, off Twilight saying there’s no war in her timeline, AJ quietly says she’d sure like to live in a world like that (such a powerful line, that).
* Starlight’s smug speech included her saying she planned on reestablishing her equality village here in the past, but she’d gladly get her revenge again if Twilight insisted on meddling.
* Spike pointing out Starlight calming the bullies was just him noting the race hadn’t started yet. It was Twilight who saw Starlight, bolting quick enough that Spike had to scramble to grab on.
[animatic-stage additions and revisions and final thoughts below]
[continued from above]
DeleteThe board artists were just on point with this episode. Lots of good visual gags, or beats to break up speeches, plus all the time travel visuals, much of the war visuals, and so on, were all board additions. Other visuals were seemingly revised to be easier to animate. Take it as a given that if it wasn’t utterly dialogue or plot essential, it was added or altered at this stage. Some of my favourites additions:
* Moondancer’s cameo of rousing Spike, and him accidentally inserting a slide of himself sunbathing, then the correct one upside down.
* Pinkie entered the throne room just after Twilight and Spike vanish, shrugging and eating the cake was a board gag. Showing the duo going through time was added here too, the script cut straight to Cloudsdale.
* Spike waved to Carrot Top in the war timeline, who then shut the blinds.
* The machine line inside Sweet Apples Acres, and the long focus on it, was added/expanded here. AJ keeping busy with barrels, and Twilight magic-dragging her at the scene’s end (she was about to go back to work) were added too.
* Everything in the war timeline backstory that wasn’t under Applejack’s narration was a board addition. Namely the battlefield fight, Dash’s metal wing, her struggles and being saved by Pinkie and Maud (resurrected from an earlier script draft where those two saved Luna from the same, at a defence in the south).
* Starlight originally spent most of her speech to Ice Cube Twilight stomping on the block. The episode added the comic beat of her realising too late they’d sunk through, and floating under; in the script, she did it without missing a beat.
Lots of praise for the animatic, and while there are a good few notes, they’re mostly about making things visually clearer, and largely in the opening speech. Having the slides of Twilight’s friends getting their marks, moving Starlight a little to the back, fixing no dialogue for Pinkie’s cake gag (they weren’t sure if legal/union would allow grabbing dialogue from another episode, but evidently they were able to), etc. Also, the war flashback apparently used music from Conan in the animatic. Discovery Family’s Standards and Practices notes, naturally, mostly concerned the war flashback, DHX getting away with it by falling back on the “show the feeling of the fight without depicting physical violence” techniques from “A Canterlot Wedding - Part 2”.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Most of the issues with the two-parter come from the following episode. There's little to say against this first part, and after the earlier outline (tempted to look at that blog yet?), it was smooth sailing. A couple of smart revisions and cuts early on gave us a dense and short-enough script (less than 28 pages), and required very few cuts, even having space for a short-but-nifty dialogue-free battle scene in the war timeline.
I'll save complaints that apply to both parts for Part 2; the only thing I would have done different with this script is lose the scene of Twilight practising her speech (the rare case of an outline-idea of stretching the start over multiple scenes surviving all the way through), it doesn't add anything. That would allow my two favourite cuts, Applejack saying softly she'd like to be in a war-free timeline and Starlight's plan for a new village, to be kept, among other things.
I've seen a lot of un-nostalgia for this two-parter lately. I have no idea what people are talking about, we got canon AUs and that's all I ever needed :D
ReplyDeletealso have this episode on the brain lately as I'm working on a deck based on it :B
I've always liked this one, and to me, Starlight was the series' most effective villain, because she was a supreme manipulator. She was right about the bullies, and that stopped Twilight in her tracks. That's the best kind of villain: the one who isn't completely in the wrong. Though once we get her ultimate reason for doing so, it's underwhelming, if at least a good setup for some of the abandonment anxiety issues that pop up with her later. I've always looked back on this one fondly.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the AUs were what nailed this one for me, but it didn't hurt that the portrayal of Starlight was so good. I wish her eventual revelation wasn't so trite, but solid motivation is there in what we saw from the season opener, even if it was too complex to expose in a quick scene readily understandable by 7-year-old girls.
ReplyDeleteStanding alone, I'd personally give this one the full five stars.
@ Mike: "The board artists were just on point with this episode."
Weren't they just? Damn, but MLP had some fun and invested boarders!
Oh yeah, I chose the header image this time for a reason. (As opposed to my normal panicky "Argh, what have I got?" approach.) I'm pleased the metal wing was passed. It has all kinds of interest behind it -- not least the implication that tech may have advanced quite a bit from the canon timeline. Wars often do that, so I can easily buy it. And those wooden warships in the sheep-disembarking scene. I still want to find someone's written a fic set on one of those those!
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