S04E25-26: Twilight's Kingdom

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Re: S04E25-26: Twilight's Kingdom

Postby Amethyst_Gem (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 12:54 pm

Headless Horse wrote: I can only hope they're going to use it as a teachable moment about letting go and cherishing memories and so on. They won't have any trouble bringing the feels if they decide to milk it. But I'll be fascinated to see whether they think that's appropriate material for the weekly texture of this candy-colored horsie cartoon.

Whoops, I posted this before adding anything to the quote, give me a few... :-I :ponynet:
There, that's better. :yay:

FiM has had some pretty emotionally intense moments already in the course of its run, and they've gone through some pretty complex and tough emotional and social conflicts and circumstances.
That said, not sure if they've ever really gone over the pain of loss yet, which is what such a contemplative episode would have to face. I would love for Twilight to acknowledge the library as also a living tree that she cared for. That would be really sweet. :allears:
Headless Horse wrote: I think they're treading new ground here.[...] What I'm saying is, this was a choice on McCarthy's part, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is part of a new vision that she's going to try to bring to bear.)

I still believe that there is a great deal of dramatic 'epic' influence from the original series as well. It was like having to watch ponies go through the toughest paper & pen RPG campaigns sometimes! :psygum:
That said, there is a lot more than just G1 going on here. I'd have to say this might be the most satisfying season finale yet. There's a whole world of possibilities waiting out there for the Circle of Friendship Knights of the Friendship Table now. :awesomedash:

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The elder sisters
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 3:55 pm

Headless Horse wrote:E: And the other aspect is that I'm pretty sure the destruction of the library was done purely for dramatic reasons that originated with the writers, not from some Hasbro mandate.

Are you sure? It wouldn't make much sense for Twi to have two living places in Ponyville.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 4:00 pm

I'm not sure, no, but why would it be against Hasbro's interest to have two places for a character to live?
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 4:14 pm

Not Hasbro, but the writers feeling uncomfortable with such a prospect. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 4:20 pm

Who says she is going to live in the new Castle? All we saw was the Justice League meeting room.

:-I I declare Castle Friendship Library and Convention Center officially open.
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Postby Doctor Wheeze (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 4:24 pm


I want to see a follow-up with Twilight in a full princess getup, wavy hair and all, sending her own apprentice to live in the regrown library :allears: :flutterunsmith:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 4:51 pm

You know, one thing I've been wondering is why Ponyville ended up being so empty. Sure, Twilight told her friends to get everyone else to stay indoors, but why was Ponyville's population apparently spared Tirek's wrath when so much of the rest of Equestria was attacked on-screen? Given how Meghan McCarthy tweeted the “We cannot show Twilight punch Tirek in the face” note, I wonder if there had originally been scenes of Tirek attacking Ponyville ponies that got cut due to possibly being too violent or too frightening or whatever. With that in mind, maybe the destruction of the library was a more acceptable way for him to still have some impact on Ponyville.
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 5:03 pm

Fizzbuzz wrote:You know, one thing I've been wondering is why Ponyville ended up being so empty. Sure, Twilight told her friends to get everyone else to stay indoors, but why was Ponyville's population apparently spared Tirek's wrath when so much of the rest of Equestria was attacked on-screen? Given how Meghan McCarthy tweeted the “We cannot show Twilight punch Tirek in the face” note, I wonder if there had originally been scenes of Tirek attacking Ponyville ponies that got cut due to possibly being too violent or too frightening or whatever. With that in mind, maybe the destruction of the library was a more acceptable way for him to still have some impact on Ponyville.


Ponyville is a tiny backwoods town and likely not high on Tirek's list.
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 5:08 pm

One thing I'll always remember from watching Saturday morning cartoons; a parental discretion warning.

:moonie: Goosebumps is rated TV-Y7 because it might be too spooky for children under seven.

It shares a rating with Barney and Teletubbies. (and yet, somehow we're here)
So - can't show Twilight landing a punch, can't show a character writhing in agony in some sort of fireball. I don't think they can have any dust and scratches on anyone as a result of tumbling debris.

Those limitations are really only a distraction, though, increasing the age rating wouldn't make for a better show.
(Besides, it's not like Goku had anything really interesting to say. :smirk:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 5:12 pm

The Doctor wrote:
Ponyville is a tiny backwoods town and likely not high on Tirek's list.

It's definitely bigger than Appleloosa, though, a city which we did see Tirek attacking.
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Postby SlateSlabrock (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 5:34 pm

Headless Horse wrote:(I'll note that this is nothing new for Hasbro, of course. Their notorious MO was always to kill off the old generation of toys, often in quite gut-wrenching ways, to usher in the new ones. That goes for G1 Pony too. But I don't know if anything Hasbro has killed off in the past has ever had quite as much emotional baggage tied up with it, with the notable exception of Optimus Prime—and of course in his case the show was already an apocalyptic war drama, not a character-driven comedy about tea parties and fashion shows. I think they're treading new ground here.)

My gut says that if we do get any sort of acknowledgement, it's going to be an aside from the animation team. In fact, I wonder how much of that scene was scripted, and how much was the artists cutting loose. Perhaps the writers and artists knew they'd get this sort of reaction, but the show very, very rarely tackles depressing issues head-on. Now, if it had been Fluttershy's tree-house, I'd give it more favorable odds.

Fizzbuzz wrote:You know, one thing I've been wondering is why Ponyville ended up being so empty. Sure, Twilight told her friends to get everyone else to stay indoors, but why was Ponyville's population apparently spared Tirek's wrath when so much of the rest of Equestria was attacked on-screen?

Maybe it's like Cookie Clicker -- as soon as you get the higher-level upgrades, it's not even worth buying the cheaper ones anymore.
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Postby Chaos Sonic (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 6:08 pm

Durandal wrote:
But that doesn't keep him from having lots of backup plans that he can switch to if things change

Headless Horse wrote:He planned the seeds thing, right? :pinkieshrug:

What I mean is, I don't see him as a Chessmaster type. He doesn't plan things out twenty steps in advance. He probably just has a bunch of short-term plans that he comes up with just because they'll fuck with people.


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Postby citric (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 6:22 pm

So...what exactly was Tirek's game plan after he'd finished sucking out everyone's magic?
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Postby Ransom (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 6:40 pm

citric wrote:So...what exactly was Tirek's game plan after he'd finished sucking out everyone's magic?

He told the princesses he was going to rule everyone, I thought. But presumably the answer, is, whatever he wanted. He had all the unicorn, earth, pegasi and even alicorn and chaos magic around, and nobody could do anything to stop him. If he wanted to play Godzilla and smash everything, go ahead. Rule the world and make everyone spend all week building you giant house sized mugs of beer, who's to say no?
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 6:50 pm

I thought his end game was just complete destruction of everything.
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Postby SlateSlabrock (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 8:26 pm

In his G1 appearance, he wanted to bring about eternal darkness, but that's passé now.

Then again, which supervillain in this show has ever had a sustainable post-victory plan?
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 8:34 pm

King Sombra probably would have been able to keep the Crystal Empire under control if he had regained power. On the other hand, Nightmare Moon would have killed everyone with her eternal darkness and I think Chrysalis and her changelings would quickly run out of love to consume if they were able to subjugate all of Equestria. It's hard to say what would happen if Discord had never been beaten, but I figure he'd be able to forcibly keep ponies alive so that he could continue to mess with them.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 9:18 pm

It's usually pretty self-defeating to try to think out what the endgame of any cartoon supervillain's world domination plan is. What's the point of ruling everyone if everyone hates you? What's the point of covering the world in darkness as a symbolic gesture of spite? What's the point even of creating no-rules chaos when chaos itself is bound to become its own status quo? Who wants to live forever in a depopulated, post-apocalyptic wasteland?

Kids' media usually gets away with these megalomaniacal villains who don't need to have any better excuse for what they're doing than "they hate the things the heroes stand for", because they're bound to either be defeated within half an hour, or develop a personal grudge against the heroes against which their plan for domination becomes just an unattainable cipher goal and little more than a bit of schtick. But at some point in the teenage years of the target audience, writers start to have to think of better motivations for their villains. You get a lot more of the personal vendettas, the skewed ideologies, the targeted plans for creating what the villain literally thinks will be a better world (the Hitlers and Ozymandiases and Voldemorts and Claude Frollos of the supervillain landscape). Writers have to figure out a convincing trajectory for where the story will go if the villain wins, because they know the audience is old enough to be expecting a story where there's a possibility that he might win.

But for a kids' cartoon, they don't have to worry about fleshing out what it would actually mean if that happens. And in the case of Pony, they usually slather on a thick layer of character, which soaks up all the attention we might otherwise be paying to what their evil plan actually entails.
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Postby citric (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 11:02 pm

So what about other cartoons? We're talking about FiM :pinkieshrug:

Tirek is clearly stated to be sucking up the magic so he could gain a stronger form, which leads one to assume he had something in mind after that, whereas with the other villains you could chalk their less-than-constructive-to-the-future actions up to love of destruction or sheer spite. Was Tirek going to control the weather, give magic to the ground and raise the sun and moon himself? Was he content to rule over a barren dead hellscape full of ponies that hate his guts and have nothing to lose? To hunt down his traitor brother and beat the stuffing out of him? Fit himself through the mirror to Canterlot High to thoroughly ruin Sunset Shimmer's day?actually, considering Sunset Satan maybe they're somehow related
I really feel like further elaboration would have improved his character a lot. That or a villain song. :hiiiii:
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Postby Juju&Lulu (?) » Mon May 19, 2014 11:16 pm

Well when he was pretending to be Discords ally he said he wouldn't care if Discord turned their world upside down once he got the necessary power to become his ultra powered self again.

Also in the original story he and Scorpan came to Equestria looking to steal magi, presumably to become all powerful. It's possible he wanted to take over other worlds and was only interested in Equestria for the sane reasons the changelings were, only it's magic in general instead of love.

Although now I think it's safe to say getting revenge on Scorpan has been added to his short list of goals.
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Postby Ransom (?) » Tue May 20, 2014 3:40 am

Well just as an exercise in thinking, upon sucking up alicorn magic, and effectively winning, he proceeded to start blasting a forest to the ground. Was he just showing off, mad with power, or inflicting terror on his subjects.

I think revenge on Scorpan is a definite possibility, but given that the motion of the celestial spheres, the magic to make things grow, to control the weather, and magic in general were in his command, he could essentially set himself up as a deity and, with Discord's magic, reshape it to his liking. I'm imagining a barren landscape looking a lot like Apokolips with him on some massive throne and a legion of slave ponies.

What's another question is...if they didn't have the last key...what would Twilight and friends do?

Live the best they could under Tirek's hoof?

:fluttersmith: Sure we're slaves working day and night building monuments to Tirek but at least we have our friendship.

Try to rescue the Princesses? Then come back with Cerberus and a legion of beasts from Tartarus seeking amnesty?

Escape to the Everfree Forest and either hide there among its wild magic or see if Zecora has something...anything they could use?

Escape Equestria to start a new life, presuming Tirek doesn't put it next on his menu? Seek help from non ponies? Griffons? Changlings? Dragons?

Actually, if all the dragons we saw in the migration actually united, given that this is a species whose babies bathe in lava, that might actually stand a punchers chance. Unfortunately the dragons seem to be mostly Tolkienesque as adults and not exactly given to working together amongst themselves, let alone ponies (although that's probably fortunate for Equestria as it stands).

Then there's the glaring obvious one....take the Elements of Harmony back from the Tree of Harmony. It survived once, but was it strong enough to survive it again? If not, what of the consequences if it did die?
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Postby Homeswirl (?) » Tue May 20, 2014 5:50 am

Just an aside, but is this thread ever going to move to the Episode Discussions subforum?
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue May 20, 2014 6:24 am

I'd assume it would be sometime tomorrow , they usually go to that subforum on Wednesday.
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Postby Gnot Syndrome (?) » Tue May 20, 2014 10:33 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:You know, one thing I've been wondering is why Ponyville ended up being so empty. Sure, Twilight told her friends to get everyone else to stay indoors, but why was Ponyville's population apparently spared Tirek's wrath when so much of the rest of Equestria was attacked on-screen? Given how Meghan McCarthy tweeted the “We cannot show Twilight punch Tirek in the face” note, I wonder if there had originally been scenes of Tirek attacking Ponyville ponies that got cut due to possibly being too violent or too frightening or whatever. With that in mind, maybe the destruction of the library was a more acceptable way for him to still have some impact on Ponyville.


It would make a lot of sense if the staff were told to ignore the Ponyville ponies. I noticed that they didn't show the main 5 when Tirek was draining them, just Discord looking away out of sadness. Given how visceral some of the other drainings seemed, (like SA being grabbed by the muzzle, legs quivering, and collapsing), I would think that seeing the show's beloved main characters going through such a sad and enervating experience might be a little upsetting to younger audiences.

I mean, damn:

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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Tue May 20, 2014 11:59 am

Doing it off-screen was a good choice, classic filmmaking. It's the most significant of the "drainings", the most heartbreaking, the one we were most hoping wouldn't happen, and here it's gonna happen anyway. The audience knows how it works. They don't need to see it per se to know what's going down. And doing it off-screen and conveying it through reaction shots and music actually adds to the weight of the moment rather than taking away from it.

A lot of films these days have become so drunk on the power of CGI to depict anything they want that they never for a moment consider not showing something even if that choice would make for better drama. Consider Star Trek: Into Darkness. We get this great, unbroken, unobstructed view of Kirk wrestling with the reactor core, wailing on it and kicking at it until finally it clunks back into alignment. It looks great. But looking great actually detracts from the tension and drama of it. What if we couldn't see what was going on exactly? What if there was smoke everywhere, if it was a tight cramped space where he could barely get to what he needed to work on? The technical details of the fix he's doing are unimportant anyway; why bother even showing the workings of the machinery so clearly that we can see in an instant when this giant metal thing clicks back into place? Why not tell it mostly through close-ups of Kirk's sweaty and agonized face as he fades under the radiation? Better yet... why not just do it all off-screen? Have him disappear into the swirling smoke while Spock and Scotty pound on the walls in despair, and let the tension mount through the power of the unknown until at last we finally see Kirk's shaking hand slap up against the inner window and he gasps "ship... out of danger"? Wouldn't that have been more gripping, even if we couldn't see every lovingly rendered little CGI detail of the fucking reactor?

To take an opposite example, imagine how crappy the climactic scene of Apollo 13 would have been if the camera had stayed with the astronauts in the capsule all throughout atmospheric reentry. Imagine if, just because the filmmakers could show the cool effects of falling to earth in the middle of a fireball, from the novel perspective of looking out the windows at it, they had? Imagine if we had the astronauts' sweat and worry and dialogue shown to us first-hand until suddenly the tension lifted and we knew they were going to be okay? The whole scene on the ground would have been pointless and devoid of tension, is what would have happened. Instead the filmmakers knew that the best way to create uncertainty and dramatic tension in this case would be to cut away—to stay on the ground, as blind to the status of the astronauts as the real people were, and to hold that moment of uncertainty and blindness for so long that you've just about given up hope... and then you hear a crackle over the radio, the music stirs to life, and there's a familiar voice saying "Hello Houston, this is Odyssey. It's good to be home." And the whole of Mission Control and every other scene erupts in tension-destroying cheers, eyes streaming as families know they will be reunited and engineers are vindicated in their work and ingenuity. You know immediately, as a viewer, that they could have stayed with the astronauts the whole time. But boy aren't you glad as fuck they didn't?

It's little things like that that the Pony team clearly knows about, filmmaking techniques that they understand and respect, that they have no real need to apply to a silly kids' cartoon but do so anyway, that elevate it into being something really special. Whether it's down to Jayson Thiessen being way more gifted than his career to date would suggest, or something about the convergence of standards and inspiration left as a legacy by Lauren Faust that is so strong that it's going to perpetuate itself as long as the show lasts through pure momentum, it really has every right to be looked at by other creators as an example of striving for excellence no matter what it is you're trying to accomplish.
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Postby Dexanth (?) » Tue May 20, 2014 12:23 pm

Homeswirl wrote:Just an aside, but is this thread ever going to move to the Episode Discussions subforum?


This thread endlessly entertains me! But probably at some point yes. Just, you know. Not quite yet.
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Postby Wonkadoo (?) » Wed May 21, 2014 1:08 am

Headless, you're a cool guy and all, but you have absolutely no taste.

I thought that ending was hammy and overblown when I first saw it in Memphis Belle. To see it dragged out again for Apollo 13 just a few years later really made me cringe. I have a hard time imagining Pony playing it straight.

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:-D We're waiting for Rainbow.

:fancyhat: Gosh, I hope she's okay.

:nnngh: Oh, so do I. She should have been back ages ago. She could be lying out there, hurt, with no one to ...

:whatsup:

:v:

:glare: Very funny.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Wed May 21, 2014 3:48 pm

So, like... they should have done it ST:ID style, because it would have been more novel?

Whether A13's climax was cheesy or not (I hadn't realized it was not well regarded), I personally thought it was way more effective at doing what it was doing (by putting you the viewer in the shoes of the helpless spectators on the ground, not the equally helpless but at least in-the-thick-of-it astronauts) than if it had stayed in the capsule the whole time.

It worked in Gravity because that whole movie was supposed to feel like it was just her and a GoPro, basically. But when you're dealing with this interplay of viewpoints and shifting of dramatic tension from place to place, I think it's at least a good technique that works well in appropriate situations.
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Postby Big Boss (?) » Wed May 21, 2014 6:49 pm

The other problem with Apollo 13 is that, you know, the ending's kind of spoiled by reality. Doesn't mean it's not tense, though.
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Postby Frith (?) » Thu May 22, 2014 12:17 am

Ok, I finally forced myself to write something about this episode.

I think that ”epic” and ”grand” are the most accurate words to describe this episode. This was definitely the most epic episode in the series so far. Usually I don't care much about epic battles and grand villains because those aren't things I want from this show. But those things suited really well in this episode because this episode was season finale and season premieres and especially finales should always be a bit special compared to the ”normal” episodes.

What I really liked in this episode was that the story revolved around Twilight's struggle to find a place for herself as a Princess. It fitted really to her character arc and it also provided us some really heartwarming moments like the song “You’ll Play Your Part” which was really good song, one the best songs in the series so far.

As for the other characters, I really liked how Discord was written in this episode. Noting how he can sense magical imbalances was a nice touch and I also liked how he became the one to give Twilight her key because he got finally some character development. Some of his interactions with Fluttershy were also really sweet.

The main villain, Tirek, was a good villain. His motives didn't make much sense but he was memorable which is the most important thing for villains in the shows like this.

Another song in the season finale, ”Let the Rainbow Remind You”, was also really nice and it was really nice to see again the characters who gave the mane six their keys.

So overall, this was really good ending for really good season. At the moment I would say it's as good episode as A Canterlot Wedding which is my favorite two-parter in the series.
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Postby VoidChicken (?) » Thu May 22, 2014 12:20 am

The actual return wasn't nearly as dramatic.

"Apollo 13, this is Houston, do you read?"

"Sup."
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Postby WandereringPony (?) » Thu May 22, 2014 1:57 am

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Tirek practices his hammer throw with Twilight.


Faces like the one Twilight is making here is how you know Sibsy worked on the episode. Much like Twilicane, it's totally her style.

And as far as "What would Tirek have done if he won?" Left to go find revenge on his brother, leaving Equestria drained of it's essential magics in eternal darkness. World remains grimdark post-apocalyptic wasteland for centuries, leading to endless Fallout comparisons before someone reboots the series with the next generation finding the long-buried Elements of Harmony and heals the land.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Thu May 22, 2014 2:40 am

VoidChicken wrote:The actual return wasn't nearly as dramatic.

"Apollo 13, this is Houston, do you read?"

"Sup."


And FWIW, I just watched Memphis Belle and I don't even see any similarity between its climactic scene and the Apollo 13 one. :pinkieshrug: It stays with the crew the entire time, through every little moment of stress, with only a couple of brief cutaways to people on the ground. None of it is materially told through omission or off-screen at all. It's exactly the opposite of the point I was trying to make.
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Postby Wonkadoo (?) » Thu May 22, 2014 5:11 pm

It's been a while since I saw Memphis Belle, but I distinctly remember the film cutting to the ground crew during a tense moment as a narrative trick to make us think the plane had/would crash. Memphis Belle may not have been doing what you liked about Apollo 13, but Apollo 13 was definitely doing what I disliked about Memphis Belle.

Memphis Belle at least had the excuse that the plane was actually in trouble. The Apollo 13 capsule went through its descent and splashdown with no difficulties. Cutting away from the capsule served no story purpose other than to add tension without having earned it.

I had forgotten the detail about the heat shield. Nonetheless I think my complaint holds up.
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Postby Rainbow Crash (?) » Fri May 23, 2014 5:02 am

In Apollo 13, there was the risk that the heat shield had been damaged in the explosion and they had no way of knowing if it would hold together during re-entry. That's where the tension comes in. Don't know how you thought it was just a standard landing. Just look at what happened to the space shuttle Columbia to see what small damage to the shield can do.
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Postby Highbrow Dash (?) » Mon May 26, 2014 8:54 am

Each one of us has something special
That makes us different
That makes us raaaare

I have this giant fucking castle
That I don't even
Have to shaaaaaaaare
:excite:
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Postby Ransom (?) » Mon May 26, 2014 12:54 pm

Highbrow Dash wrote:Each one of us has something special
That makes us different
That makes us raaaare

I have this giant fucking castle
That I don't even
Have to shaaaaaaaare
:excite:

:twience: What do you think now, jocks who picked on me in elementary school?

But she does share though. After all, her first act is to let the whole town in.
Ransom
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Joined: Mar 24, 2012
Gender: Male

Postby acksed (?) » Mon May 26, 2014 4:19 pm

Highbrow Dash wrote:Each one of us has something special
That makes us different
That makes us raaaare

I have this giant fucking castle
That I don't even
Have to shaaaaaaaare
:excite:

Ahahaha! Wiiin. :lol:
:rainbert: "Rarity, you look ridiculous."
:vogue: "I'm going to ignore that comment out of a desire to help you."
acksed
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I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm reallyreallyreally mad
Joined: Nov 25, 2013
Gender: Male

Postby Amethyst_Gem (?) » Sun Jun 01, 2014 8:32 am

Villain Duckfaces o3o
Image
Tirek with cutesie doll face... :starity: :vomitpony: :hiiiii: :sweetielarm: :amazing: :eep:
Discord looks comparatively dignified :excellent:
Amethyst_Gem
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Joined: Apr 01, 2013

Postby Wayoshi (?) » Sun Jun 01, 2014 4:55 pm

This thread should have been moved awhile ago. :rainbert: :v:
Wayoshi
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Paper Fluttershy
Stare Masters
Joined: Oct 26, 2011
Location: Boston, MA
Gender: Male

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