 |
| "TV-Y show and we still get killed on-screen, and they wonder why we're angry..." |
28 Nov 2015
My original rating: ★★★★ (for the whole two-parter)
IMDb score: 8.4
Thoughts: This isn't as good as part 1. Not a controversial statement, I know, but it isn't. This is where Packed With Stuff does detract from the quality. And, yeah, Starlight's reason for her ending up running Our Town is rather weak,* though I'm not quite as hard on that aspect of the writing as some: it wasn't just that Sunburst got his cutie mark first, as is occasionally stated, it was that he instantly went away and Starlight never saw him again, implying he didn't even come to say goodbye. Speaking as someone with social anxiety, that's not some minor thing you'd lightly brush off. Okay, becoming an evil cult leader is seriously overdoing it, but it's not just the "friend gets cutie mark first" aspect. The episode as a whole is action-packed and at times really pretty exciting, with Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis both charismatic villains still—but you don't want to look at it too hard, as is often the case with finales. Twilight being the single most important figure in existence† is frankly irritating, and I like Twilight. Still, the "wasteland world" has stuck in a lot of people's memories, including mine. I can't find this outright bad, as it's just too entertaining, but it's clearly worse than part 1. The pacing doesn't help: it rattles along nicely for two acts, but then it's as though they realised about eight minutes from the end how much still had to be squashed in. Oh, and the song is really not very memorable. Dropping the episode's rating to three stars, albeit a high three. (Edit: this episode. The finale as a whole still rates four.)
* Even so, "It's Maud's fault" (which as we'll see later, is partially true!) would be even sillier
† And her friends, as iisaw points out in the comments. Sloppy there from me
Choice quote: Starlight to Twilight: "Spare me your overblown ego."
New rating: ★★★
And finally that's all for Season 5! As I did after S4, I'll make one or two season wrap-up posts before I move on to Season 6.
Dramatic conflicts stumbling the landing are nothing new, in MLP or fiction in general. You build up great tension, stakes and character involvement, where part of the enjoyment is from the mystery involved. And while you want to know the answer to some questions, it's often the case that no answer can be satisfying enough.
ReplyDeleteEven before we get to this episode's back half, though, this one is stumbling relative to Part 1. The time spent in the Sombra timeline there, even if the details were largely superficial, still had a clear purpose, given how little Twilight & Spike knew, that they were trying to find their friends, and only hit on the idea of using the scroll to come back. Now that they have that info, it doesn't apply to either of the timelines here; that Twilight doesn't say "we know how to fix this, let's go back now" after Zecora believes her is one thing, but that an attack occurs right after reaching the village and they retreat really shows how much wheel-spinning it involved. The Nightmare Moon timeline at least inserts Twilight being too magically spent to beat the Timberwolves (and, presumably, to time-travel), but that only goes so far, especially when the commercial break uses Nightmare Moon as a cliffhanger, yet we're out of there two minutes later.
Look, episodic road-trip narratives like this are tricky to handle at the best of times. But having seen the outline that didn't waste as much time with them (there, Twilight and Spike were surrounded by Nightmare Moon's guards after coming out of the map, and they left right away), it sticks out for me. Moreso because of the different direction this episode takes after this point; had that felt of a piece with this "let's keep seeing all the alternate futures" part, it wouldn't be as egregious. Maybe if it had condensed the first half to the first third, giving far more space for a satisfying conclusion, we'd be getting somewhere. These timelines are interesting in isolation, make no mistake, and small wonder they're been so fertile for fanfiction (the Chrysalis one far less so, oddly enough). But "less than the sum of its parts" is very apt here.
Anyway, the other, properly major issues about Part 2 all still hold true. Ending song montage not leaving that material to next season, brushing over nuclear terrorist-level crimes, and terrible, weaksauce backstory pulled from an early "The Cutie Map" draft, they're all there. Obviously they weren't as bad as I'd built them up to be the last few years, but they're still major fumbles. A little less so, one one separates them from the radically off direction the show would take going forward, especially with Starlight, relative to even how she is here, never mind "The Cutie Map". To be clear, I do enjoy many aspects of that Starlight, but she just doesn't mesh with her Season 5 incarnation at all, no matter how much the writing tries to convince us she does.
Naturally, the issues that were present in Part 1, namely Twilight just being written so blandly, stick out more when they're surrounded by dodgier material. Oh, and the sunny conclusion brushing over all the darkness within, not to mention how the restrictions of the TV-Y rating are very keenly felt in this one, creates some juxtaposition it never reconciles.
Does all this make Part 2 a bad episode? No, not nearly. It's still tense and gripping, with narrowed spectacle different to prior two-parters, and the voice actors and animation are working overboard to sell it. I still got invested in the proceedings, make no mistake. Hay, it's not even the worst finale to this point, not with "Magical Mystery Cure" floating around (and I’d easily watch this over the dull “Princess Twilight Sparkle”). But it is awfully sloppy, and with hindsight of what was about to happen to the show, it's enough to mark this as the definitive endpoint for Friendship Is Magic in many ways.
"The Cutie Re-Mark: Part 2" - Production Changes
ReplyDeleteIf you're even mildly curious as to the original version of this two-parter, I strongly encourage reading my blog on the matter: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/989240/how-the-cutie-re-mark-changed-timeline-plots-are-tricky. What a way to close out this Production Changes series, eh? Right here, we'll stick with just the script-on changes, of which there are very, very few of note.
SCRIPT
Even just the 1st draft differences of note are few in number:
* Upon reaching the resistance village, changelings disguised as half the Mane 6 are already there, so the attack starts even sooner.
* Nightmare Moon doesn't yet hold Spike hostage in this draft.
* The beat of Twilight offering her hoof, and Starlight taking it, happens after she relinquished the scroll, right as the vortex sucks them up.
* The scroll is burned at the end rather than getting sucked into the vortex.
* In this draft alone, the song's end showed Manehattan, Canterlot, Appleloosa and Griffonstone (their Map missions?).
Those and most other differences get changed in the 2nd draft. It introduces a lame gag of Pinkie sending a firework out a window in celebration at Twilight & co's return, but this gets cut a draft later, also where the scroll now vanishes as it does in the final episode.
Also, Sunburst was named Sunray until a 3rd locked polish draft, almost certainly following legal clearance.
ANIMATIC-STAGE CHANGES
The script being so tight and dense left minimal runs for cuts or additions.
* The first notable cut isn’t until Twilight’s speech to Starlight at the end. It’s just longer enough, spelling out points that have well sunk in, to be noted.
* The song is 50% longer than the version we got, a middle interlude where the Mane 5 have individual lines, among other things. The lyrics before that are a perfect match, while those after a close match. The visuals are very different, and merely a suggestion, common for songs in scripts.
Not as many visuals this time around were invented at the board stage, as most were in the script in surprising detail (for this series, anyway). Notable additions and revisions include:
* Zecora demonstrates time changing by making ripples then separate rather than diverting a stream.
* Twilight fending off pursuing changelings as she runs for the map.
* The episode added Twilight trying to blast the timberwolves, and failing due to exhaustion, a good shorthand for why they didn’t hop back into the map right away.
* Nightmare Moon originally trapped Spike in the same tapestry Rarity was tidying (earning a “Really?!”) rather than magic chains. This also added her blasting the wolves. Weird this wasn't there originally, given Twilight’s dialogue about getting past them…
* The Tirek/Discord timelines originally had those villains chasing fleeing ponies, rather than blasting the earth/chasing Clown Celestia & Luna.
* The Mane 6 discussing Twilight’s adventure originally happened walking around the castle grounds, Starlight watching from an alcove above. As it happens, quite a few Season 5 script scenes around the castle were moved; maybe DHX hadn’t yet designed ground sets from all angles? They did by Season 6.
Only three animatic notes from Hasbro; one concerned Starlight having Twilight-level power, which DHX amended by adjusting to have more dodging and her beams only making Twilight strain, rather than pushing back her magic. Another was a visual beat of Twilight realising she needs a new plan, and finally, holding on Starlight before she takes Twilight’s hoof a beat longer. Standards and practises’ notes all concerned intimidating moments in the changeling timeline, plus the timberwolves.
[final thoughts below]
[continued from above]
DeleteOverall Thoughts
Short enough to fit in one comment? Whoa. For better or for worse, the writing quirks, sketchy nature of the alternate timelines, horrible backstory for Starlight (plucked from an early draft of “The Cutie Map” - were they so pressed for time they had to raid the vault?), tacky reformation speech, squeezing her reformation into a song: they were all there from the start.
Honestly, the thing that leapt out at me most was how fewer visual additions/tweaks there were. Differences will happen with different storyboard artists for each episode!
But yes, yet again, another Haber script with hardly any changes throughout the process, after the initial hurdle of a story that everyone signed off of in the outline stage. Hindsight shows making Josh Haber the Story Editor next season was a big mistake (though some of the quality drop does go to Jim Miller too), but with several episodes written that smoothly, you can see why it might have seemed a good idea to the powers that be at the time.
Of course, all that's ignoring the early version of this episode. Which… yeah, it's a doozy. Even the earliest version doesn't really link to "The Cutie Map" or the map episodes, or the initial plants of Tree of Harmony saplings, any more than this one does. Did Haber willingly ignore all that, did Meghan McCarthy change her mind about what was planned, or did they not have a concrete plan, meaning the sapling setups in the map episodes were just for some story possibilities? Who knows. In any case, it's very telling of the process, even if it doesn't fully tell how or why we got the episode we did.
It occurs to me that all the bits with Starlight's backstory, and especially her reformation montage, I apparently consider to have happened in a different episode than all the cool stuff with changelings and Nightmare Moon. <.< Y'know. Like they should have.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll do ya one worse re: her backstory- It also means that Sunburst never wrote her. Like, not even once. No wonder she had a goth phase.
And the thing is... this is one of those completely untrue cliches that seem to be immortal despite being dead wrong. People who have been traumatized in that way don't become evil cult leaders; they usually withdraw socially. (so, yeah, the goth thing tracks.) Sunburst was more likely to become a Big Bad, because evil cult leaders almost always come from privileged and bored narcissists.
Deleteyou had better write this
DeleteI'll put it on the list. ;)
DeleteI just assume that Starlight is lying about her reasons for becoming a world-wrecking monster to excuse her megalomania, and that keeps this at four-stars over all for me.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as much as I love the character, Twilight isn't all-important here, it's the synergistic friendship between the Mane 6 that avoided all the Bad Ends depicted. They really are critical only tous ensemble.
On the second point, I can plead nothing but tiredness leading to sloppy reviewing.
DeleteOverall the two-parter is still a four for me. It's just too exciting to be lower. Indeed, this part isn't far off a four. I just feel a bit let down that the last act drops off so significantly. Maybe I was spoilt by "The Cutie Map" at the start of the season.
Ah, I gotcha! Yeah that's pretty much what I feel about it. 4-star overall.
Delete