Rainbow Rocks: The Non-happening Review

Part 1 Of an ongoing series of HN reviews of Rainbow Rocks

So, today was the day they came to take our waifus away.
Except, they didn't.
Welcome to the non-happening that is Equestria Girls 2: The Search for More Money.

Today I attended the Rainbow Rocks premier with Capper. The audience was mostly families with small children, and about 3 people besides ourselves in their early 20's. We were excited to see the screen declare that the movies was "Rated R", but were disappointed to find that it was a fuckup by the theater, so there would be no sexytimes (Flash was equally disappointed).

Anyway, the movie began with all of the clips that we had already seen, played in proper order, and then had a short opening credits that utilized the "Rainbow Rocks" song we heard on the recently released soundtrack.

From then on, we watched in nail-biting anticipation of that scene.
You know the one. The one we were all worried about. With Flash embracing twilight, cheeks flush.

Well it happened. And in that moment, it didn't.


Trixie saved the day, by cockblocking Brad in the moment we expected a kiss. That is what Seth is celebrating over at EQD right now.  Flashlight is postponed yet again. We were all told that we would "like what the writers did with Flash Sentry", and if by that they meant "leave him mostly ignored" then yes, we were ecstatic. Flash barely had any discernable character that was truely his own, yet again. He is seen being aggressive and snarky, but those traits are only caused by the Dazzling's Siren Song Spell which caused the entire school to be on the rag (except for Vinyl Scratch, but we're getting to that). So Flash is still a non-character.

The fan service is right upfront and center for Rainbow Rocks. Trixie gets plenty of screentime, and her character is actually done well and she is a crucial part of the plot (arguably more-so that Twilight herself in most cases).

Derpy is there, she doesn't talk, but she does play one of these. Vinyl Scratch (which we will call her because she isn't addressed by name) becomes the savior, and a member of the band. When the Mane 7 (yeah, 7 because Sunset Satan is a big character now), get trapped below the stage, Vinyl rescues them, as she was the only person unaffected by the Siren's songs. This is explained by Spike, who is absent for most of the movie, because she never removes her headphones.

 Vinyl saves the day AGAIN when the girls need to go Tenacious D rockoff on the sirens, and need to play their instruments. Vinyl drives up with her car, which transforms into a literal DJ booth Bass Cannon.

Rainbow Dash uses the phrase "20 percent less cool" in the dialogue. Just so you know. Her overzealous amount of self-centered bitch behavior saturates the movie and becomes a major plot point as well, when the band is tore apart by it, and Applejack's disdain for Rarity's dresses. The Daft Punk helmet happens too. Pinkie lives with her sister Maud, who is seen trying to feed Boulder crackers or something, so that's neat.

The songs were decent, and weren't shoehorned into the film like they were in the last one. On most occasions, we don't even hear the entirety of songs that were released on the soundtrack, which could explain WHY it was released before the movie itself. Twilight explains that the Sirens were banished by Starswirl the Bearded 1000 years ago, when everything was fucked up. She explains this from her Brand New Castle Playset, which can be seen for just longer than it should have, bearing down on the tiny houses of Ponyville below (which is about ALL we see of Ponyville in this movie). Twilight tries science and makes the portal work whenever she wants it to now, plugging the plothole of "30 moons" which wrecked the last movie.

And by plugging that hole, it opened up the Equestria Girls franchise to more continues.

At the end of the movie Twilight says "this isn't goodbye, it's just bye until the next time", confirming she can and will return whenever she wants. Sunset Shimmer's diary acts like a cellphone, glowing and buzzing an identical book that Twilight has, whenever she writes in it. So it's a texting device now. Sunset asks Twilight if she can write to her for friendship advice, which re-introduces the "friendship report" mechanism from the first 2 seasons, now that Sunset Shimmer herself is trying to learn about "the magic of friendship" too.

The villains themselves actually have intelligence and personality compared to "Evil Sunset" from the last movie. Their goals are well-defined and actually seemingly obtainable, (they want to use the equestrian magic, to force the world to do their bidding) and they would have gotten away with it to if it weren't for those meddling kids and their dog. Sonata is just as ... uhh ... charming? (Read: ditzy) as we have come to think of her as? She likes Tacos. So that's neat.

The story is predictable, but not boring, and reasonably well-paced. Some of the art effects get interesting as well. All in all we really can't find anything structurally wrong about the film to complain about, outside of the fact it exists, and regular pony movies don't. As an anon in one thread said "it's not happening". There is nothing to be particularly excited about, nor is there to be upset about. Waifus remain untainted, for now at least.

There IS a sequel heavily-implied by the ending of the movie after the credits, (remember way back when we warned you that EQG was going to be a trilogy?) when human-world Twilight is seen "connecting the dots" and looking at a seismograph and commenting "there is something going on at that school spike".

So yeah, that's a thing. I could prattle on about the story itself, but you can pretty much guess it if you've watched the preview videos or have ever seen a movie before.

So I guess what we're saying is, we are, for the first time, lowering the happening-level.

We now return you to the hiatus. Which is really painful to think about.

Oh, and PixelKitties had a cameo sort of.