Bremen wrote:A core part of MLP is that violence is
never the answer. The characters might try it; another core part is just because the main characters are female doesn't make them helpless; but it's not the solution to the problem in the end. An easy way to reconcile those two is that when the characters try violence they lose (which is often true even of the Mane 6; witness the fight in Canterlot Wedding, Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep, or Twilight's duel with Tirek, though the latter was more of a draw).
I think the princesses are one of the big casualties there. Part of it is Worfing, sure, to show how dangerous the bad guy is, but a lot is just that the show is always going to be brute force fails but positive love/friendship/hope saves the day, and that usually comes down to the mane 6.
Doesn't keep it from being annoying when it happens
constantly but I understand why the show writers do it.
A different approach while keeping within that framework might have been to have Celestia lose the fight but be taken prisoner, and through the movie have her compassion slowly make inroads with Tempest. But A) that still doesn't address the "Helpless Celestia" problem, and B) The movie is probably meant to be more about Twilight.
I mean, I'd counter it with 'Violence kind of has solved a bunch of premieres and finales'.
Nightmare Moon & Discord got shot with giant friendship lasers, Chrysalis ate a love laser, Sombra got vaporized by re-empowering the Crystal Heart, Tirek got tasered by Rainbow Power, and Chrysalis ate ANOTHER love laser.
Now, the power source for all of those was positive emotion/bonds of some kind - but the villains never surrendered, they were blasted into oblivion. The key to all of them is that alone one may be powerful, but the greatest power comes from forming true bonds of friendship & love with others & working together to conquer foes.
As for the Worfing? If you look at the # of Worfs, all but one of them are Meghan. The only one that wasn't was the S6 finale, and that one was far more 'Set up the plot fast' than anything else. Had they had the run time I'm confident that the shortcuts employed wouldn't have been so and the whole Changeling Abduction would have been sold much better.
But yea, it's part of why since Meghan has been moved off the show the show has moved away from Worfing, because the newer writers are finding ways to handle The Princess Problem that don't involve capture/imprisonment/etc.
Really, what it comes down to - if you look at Meghan's writing credits, she wrote a ton of really strong stuff in S1/S2, but from S3 onwards...not so much. I really liked Power Ponies, but that's about it, because otherwise she really was just writing the same story over and over with a new coat of paint.
And that's my issue with the movie : It's the S2/S3/S4 Finale/Premiere/Both all over again, with a new coat of paint. From all the spoilers I've read tonight, the entire journey the mane 6 go on is ultimately basically pointless, and thus is just time padding.
Which sucks - because the art is gorgeous and I know the non-writing portions of the creative team look like they've done an amazing job, but when your script is fundamentally flawed...
I mean, we have:
1. A main villain with no motivation beyond 'Haha I want power!'
2. A secondary villain who is more powerful than every main character and takes on the Power Elite and wins effortlessly.
3. A ton of characters who don't fit the design aesthetic till now - The Storm King, the Pirates, and most egregiously, Capper - who all look completely out of place compared to Equestria as-was.
4. A giant fetch quest that, from what I can see so far, is pointless - in the end, Twilight is captured, and the only thing the fetch quest does is let the Mane 5 come home with new allies to rescue Twilight
5. A finale that boils down to 'grab the magic staff' leading to
6. The villain dying because he betrays his sidekick and Twilight saves her, and said sidekick jumps in front of the grenade meant for Twilight and the Big Bad is destroyed in the backlash (But not Tempest because she is Redeemd and so is saved).
7. Status quo restored completely.
It's a bunch of setpieces where character agency is continually deprived from both main & supporting cast members. I mean, the Princesses are most egregious - the whole 'Turned to stone' is like the single biggest version of Damsel in Distress you can possibly use - but it happens to Twilight & arguably Tempest as well.
The problem is most of the characters are going off of fairly dull extrinsic motivations - Power / Fix my horn / Save Equestria - compared to more compelling ones.
It's why the original Star Wars trilogy is far better than the new, because every character in there, both hero & villain, has a personal motivation & personal arc that guides their journey. Here? It's clear they were originally trying for that - the artbook makes that very clear - but all of that got basically watered down into the dull milquetoast that the story has become.
The Doctor wrote:Tough to ignore the issue when the writers are so blatant with it. But fine, I'll just pretend they're not in the movie, and just ignore the issue.
Look, I get you guys are frustrated, but so am I. And it's helpful to vent a little bit about it.
I am not saying 'You need to ignore the thing', I am saying 'It would be helpful to vent in a more constructive manner'.
But fine, I'll just pretend they're not in the movie, and just ignore the issue.
-> There's no real way to engage with that, it's just 'Hey, this is shit, shit, shit' and even if you are right...that kind of response only appeals to people who feel the same way and want to basically say variations on the same thing over and over.
It's why I have the above - illustrating why I'm frustrated because the show can & has been so much more in terms of story & characterization, and the movie is just resorting to a bunch of trite tropes now.
And that makes me sad - In part because I wanted a movie I'd love, but moreso because it means there's a no-win situation. The movie flops? Great, the franchise I love just took a major gut punch that might be fatal. The movie somehow succeeds anyway? Great, that means the studios take the wrong lesson and continue to think they can churn out shitty writing if it has enough flashy lights.
The only 'win' I see is 'It is barely profitable, and it is obvious the reason it wasn't more profitable is that everyone says the story was weak and had it had a stronger story it would have been amazing'.
