After almost 7 years, I rewatched Rainbow Rocks.
It’s not as bad as I remembered. I still don’t think it’s a good movie, but back in 2014 I used to despise that film. Now that we have the 9 seasons of the show and a MLP film that isn’t about Equestria Girls, I have zero reasons to have the resentment I had many years ago.
I think Rainbow Rocks has a lot of interesting ideas that could work in a movie. For example, I still like the idea of the entire high-school to distrust Sunset Shimmer. But I think it has two problems:
-The story was waaay more focused on the music concert than Sunset’s redemption arc.
-Whenever the film shows Sunset Shimmer, it uses the dialogue to indicate that Shimmer was a villain in the previous film in a very repetitive way, with lines such as “oops, no offense”. I think there was a time where they repeated the same line 3 times in less than 2 minutes.
Because of that, I kinda wish Rainbow Rocks was more focused on her than in a very boring concert with very boring pop songs.
Speaking of that, if your film is called “Rainbow Rocks”, wouldn’t you expect at least some rock songs instead of 100% pop songs? I know the electric guitar is played in some songs, but it wasn’t that noticeable. We only got songs where the singer is like “OH WOWOWOW” and I don’t think it’s that convincing for a pop song. After hearing all the songs, I’m gonna listen to some Destiny Potato, a rock band that mixes rock with some instruments (like a music box and an accordion) to give some variety and uniqueness to their album.
The villains don’t have a lot of personality. All I’m gonna say is, repeating many times “you’re the worst” and having saturated color schemes is not enough. If you’re gonna create a dynamic with two or more villains, give them interesting or funny lines. Compare the Sirens from Rainbow Rocks to any villain duo from the Disney animated films. Beauty and the beast, The lion king, The great mouse detective, Aladdin, the dalmatians film. They have different sizes, deformed facial expressions, different motivations, different ways of executing a plan, different goals, different ambitions. The relationship between these villains is conflicted because of some disagreements (like Cruella with these two men), but they use different lines in the context of their respective scenes. Those writers didn’t repeat the same line over and over again, the characters don’t repeat “no, you’re the worst” over and over again.
Probably the worst part of the film (although it’s surprisingly tolerable this time compared to what I’ve seen in the later seasons of MLP) is Rainbow Dash. In the first film, Twilight reunited a group of friends that was divided by Sunset Shimmer. By understanding, empathy and comprehension, Rainbow Dash went back to be the friend of the mane 6. So, why does she have to go back to be so antagonistic to her friends in the second film? It doesn’t make sense. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if part of her attitude was translated to Rainbow Dash in the show just because people love it so much. After Rainbow Rocks came out, we got an episode where Rainbow Dash is so desperate to her turtle that she ended up destroying Cloudsdale. And in season 8 she got an episode where she fights against Applejack just for a trophy.
The animation is still as stiff as a Barbie doll. There are very few moments where a character is very expresive with his or her body, but I think it was difficult to do it when the source material is not enough in the first place (which is a multicolored version of Barbie). The only improvement the film has from a technical level is some uses of After Effects, but that’s it. There are very few creative uses of shots and angles, and some of them are in some songs. The rest is just medium shots, close-ups and long shots.
To be honest, it’s hard to be as invested with the film as the fans. That said, I see why people would love it. It was the film that shows Sunset having a redemption arc in a situation she wasn’t ready to deal with. And sometimes it has likeable characters. I just kinda wish there was something more.
Back in 2014, I despised that film because of a lack of alternative (there was only two MLP movies and the two are basically Equestria Girls, and we had to wait until season 5). But nowadays, even though I don’t like it, I find it more tolerable, probably because today we have many alternatives. And I think it’s much easier to understand the fans right now rather than in 2014. And, hey, if it wasn’t for Rainbow Rocks, we probably wouldn’t get Legend of Everfree, wich was the film that made me like Sunset Shimmer.
Because of that, I can’t be that mad at this film. I like the first and the fourth one more, but that’s okay.