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stevetwisp · 6 years

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I love all your vids analysing mlp!! A thing I've been thinking about while watching the earlier seasons is how much the characters and the show formula has evolved. Any thoughts on that?

oh yA YA I GOT LOTS O THOUGHTS ON THAT!!

thesis: both versions of the show have it’s strengths but ultimately season 8 is built for a different audience than season 1 was originally built for

my personal feelings on this vary as my little pony, as a whole, ignoring the context that it exists in, my little pony is an evolving show, where it’s genre evolves with the age and roles of it’s protagonists which is really exciting !!! the only other story that comes to mind when thinking about this is adventure time and then probably harry potter, i’m sure there are more out there.

but my little pony is special because it wasn’t always intended this way. and while part of me is like, it’s very cool i like the idea of a story that can blossom from humble beginnings and into a full fledged story with nuance and meaning

the other part is frustrated with the role that fandom played in the ultimate warping of the show.

now i just want to say, “pandering” or “fanservice” in these cases at least, it’s not necessarily a bad thing and it’s not always a bad thingbut it does feel like… bringing in an outside element when trying to conduct an experiment.the experiment is now contaminated and we’ll never know where the show would have ended up without that outside influence and there’s a bit of a sadness in losing the trail we could have gone down.

ok with that said

there is no stronger season (there are weaker seasons, im looking at u s4), but season 1 isn’t inherently better or vice versa, because they aren’t really comparable.season 8 is no longer the same show subscribing to the same “laws” that season 1 abides byhow can we compare the friendship lessons, when we’re learning different lessons completely?

it’s why i like to describe the show as a spectrum that goes from dealing with close interpersonal relationships, broadening all the way out to how your actions reflect into the society around you- while also broadening the types of characters you might interact with. (which is why i believe the later seasons especially season 8, are SO interested in mental illness and how it functions against other characters)

which is really interesting because! … well, you know i’ll use myself as an example and if you relate to this well then you’ll see what i mean

now i got into MLP because it was cute, the songs were nice and the art was incredible. but there was something so calming about having the moral laid out simply for you at the end of the episode. and not only that but these morals also dealt with relatable issues, you know, disagreements with friends, having more good things than can go around, etc. etc.

and i personally became drawn to this as a sort of guide to life. the MLP universe is soft and inviting and if i can take these lessons to heart, maybe i can make MY world soft and inviting too.

so now you’ve got a bit of a fandom who are consuming this media in hopes that it will teach you something new about dealing with that unsavoury world outside your door. and while the show flounders a bit with it’s new found audience (IM LOOKING AT U SEASON 4)

by the time starlight comes in, this new form of the show now has a true audience surrogate and now the show has taken a decisive turn into where it wants to be. show morals become a little more grey, we around recounting old lessons but from different points of view, we’re broadening the scope in which to look at the show.

we are moving from internal relationships to external relationships as it grows with the needs of the audience.

i think it’s interesting how we start watching the show thru twilight’s eyes, she’s the main character and we relate to her and as we go thru the seasons we grow up with her, but the show is gentle with us at this stage, we are still so youngso when starlight comes in, we now have to be aware of our faults and the impact we have on others, this character we looked up to, twilight, has now become a literal teacherguiding us through our everyday as we struggle to overcome our past mistakes and move into a new generation

and the best part about this is that they approach it from the point of view of, well, what if you have something that can really hold you backwhether it’s where your from or how your brain is wired, they don’t try and tell you that YOUR the problem, they simply try and install you with the tools to cope and the knowledge to prepare you for the future.

they are aware that the audience watching right now FEEL like they are the villain. whether it’s because your one of those fans, or whether it’s because you live in a place where you can’t be yourselfthey take that idea and they tell you, it’s okay if you think you are bad. we know that all it takes is a friend to change things for the better.

this is quite a ramble so i’ll wrap it up here but;the early seasons of my little pony are so SO important, it’s a formula that i think works extremely well, it’s accessible for almost all audiences and i truly want to push the idea of making children’s (and even adult’s) television way more educational than they currently are.

it’s sad that the show doesn’t subscribe to this formula anymore, but in abandoning the formula they allowed for the story to grow and change outside of it’s assigned box and that’s something to really celebrate! art is about it’s evolution through the years and my little pony is a fantastic example of that and it’s impact on people.

i’m excited to move into this era of long form story driven animation but i’d be lying if i said i didn’t hope that someone out there is still working to forge a new kind of story experience based on the formula of bottled episodes.

edit: also i will be uploading a new video soon i wanna get one or two done before i move and then after that i wanna do them weekly once we’re settled

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ryanmeft · 5 years

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Movie Review: The Current War

Imagine a History Channel special, or perhaps one of those educational classroom videos but with A-list actors, and you’ve pretty much got a hold on The Current War. Too much of the already-slim hour-and-forty-minute runtime is spent on visual razzle-dazzle to really get at the heart of the story, while the portrayal of the people involved is largely surface (and mostly fictional). The battle over who got to power America is one of the most compelling stories in this country’s history, absolutely begging for a great movie, but this isn’t it. As a massive nerd of both the normal and historical variety, I almost can’t imagine there’s anyone who doesn’t know the basics of the Edison-Westinghouse feud; it’s such a cornerstone of the geek world that I expect Disney to buy the rights any day now. Thomas Edison, who refined (but did not invent) the light bulb, got into a tiff with George Westinghouse, whose name you might see if you look at your grandparents’ old appliances. At issue was whose electric current could better power the nation. AC and DC don’t just form the name of a band you hear at sporting events---they represent two distinct ways to provide people with electricity, and at the turn of the 20th century they formed the basis of a true battle of the titans, waged in front of the press and in public demonstrations. Direct current, argued Edison, was safer and more reliable; Westinghouse argued the same for the alternating current system. The details of differences between the two are the stuff of science textbooks rather than film reviews; as in love as I am with the story, I’m no engineer.

This fight is often depicted as a battle between the greedy, careless Edison and the more egalitarian, noble-minded Westinghouse. The Current War opts to depict both as complex men with many scars and ghosts, each of whom really and truly believe their system is the safest and best. Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) is obsessive to the point of rudeness. Other than his wife Mary (Tuppence Middleton), his two children and his bluntly honest-but-loyal assistant Samuel Insull (Tom Holland), he has little use for other humans, other than as tools used to fulfill his visions. This extends to himself: his own welfare can absolutely be sacrificed for the advancement of his genius. Cumberbatch essentially imports his Sherlock Holmes wholesale, giving us an Edison who seems barely aware of the world outside his laboratory, though with a touch more ambition: he is willing to lie to the press and to the courts to win a fight, and unlike Holmes is certainly aware of his own fame and legacy. His employee and later rival under Westinghouse, Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) is not fleshed out in any detail, but then, he isn’t the focus.

Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) is portrayed, by comparison, as interested only in the good of the country, and willing to burn money to see his vision of energy realized. He’s a less compelling character, at least in this movie, than Edison, who seems to have absorbed most of writer Michael Mitnick and director Alfonso Gomez-Reion’s attention. His wife, played by Katherine Waterston, is also curiously underutilized considering who was cast in the role. Shannon’s portrayal is even-handed at all times, and his most compelling moment is a flashback in which he gets himself out of a Civil War-era jam with clever trickery and a knowledge of mechanics.

Yet that sequence falls prey to the movie’s central issue: an over-reliance on editing gimmicks. It is dribbled in in three or four minute-long chunks over the movie, when it would have had more impact if it were presented succinctly, in a single scene. Throughout the film, Gomez-Rejon seems intent on visually emphasizing the wonder of the age of electricity, rather than fleshing out the people behind it. At times, the film even takes a short break from the narrative to show us montages of things lit up by the new power source, or even more oddly still, seemingly unrelated bits of film footage---something shown to us long before Edison begins talking about the movie camera, so that their inclusion is jarring. These asides sometimes extend to the people themselves, who regularly break the first rule of a great historical drama: they know they are living in the past. Both Edison and Westinghouse regularly say things aimed squarely at audiences in 2019---things that, as forward-thinking as both men could be, they would not have actually said, because they were not seers. The movie even wraps with a word from Hoult’s Tesla where he seems to be speaking directly to us, like one of the animatronic Presidents at Disney World. The filmmakers seem to think that we won’t understand the import of what is happening unless someone speaks it out loud.

Mitnick, who reportedly finalized the screenplay over sixty drafts and ten years, has a script that shines when it focuses on Edison and Insull, and the sometimes heated interplay between the two. Yet with only an hour and 41 minutes to work with, the movie zeroes in on costumes and gee whiz shots of technology’s power instead of spending the time necessary to really let us into this fascinating era…and that’s after executive producer Martin Scorsese’s pull allowed Gomez-Reion to cut time from the original version, which seems strange to my eyes. This story needed more time, not less. It would have been suitable to the big, nearly-three-hour historical epics Hollywood used to be able to make, before endless cycles of franchises wore away audience attention spans. The treatment it has gotten is full of data and has one excellent performance in Cumberbatch, yet ultimately ends up devoid of illumination.

Verdict: Average

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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#benedict cumberbatch #tom holland #michael shannon #nikola tesla #thomas edison #george westinghouse #nicholas hoult #the current war #Martin Scorsese #michael mitnick #alfonso gomez-rejon

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