M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

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M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Wayoshi (?) » Wed Jun 26, 2019 4:59 am

Rainbow Dash has been invited to the Rainbow Festival at Hope Hollow as a guest of honor. She and her friends hop on a balloon, but when they crashland, no one is there to greet them. The mystery grows at sunrise when the entire town and the ponies in it are revealed to have been drained of color.
This thread is for discussion of this TV movie. This episode airs at 11:30 Eastern / 8:30 Pacific on Saturday, June 29 and will run for 90 minutes with commercials!

This is NOT animated by DHX, but Boulder Media. It is widely reported that there was a plan for a second pony movie in theaters, but the first movie (the Storm King arc) did not do well enough for Hasbro to commit to another theatrical release, and this is what has resulted instead.

Official preview clips and images are okay to post, as is speculation about the movie.

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by The Doctor (?) » Wed Jun 26, 2019 11:48 am

Everyone loses their color is just so :ponydrugs:

If I can pull myself away from the new FFXIV expansions, I'll watch on Saturday

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Adiwan (?) » Wed Jun 26, 2019 12:07 pm

It's a fashion choice and lifestyle. The Mane 6 shouldn't be so judgemental even when they had other experiences with desaturation.
What have they to say about are less saturated like Maud Pie, Mudbriar...
SHAME! :unimpressed:
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Aramek (?) » Wed Jun 26, 2019 12:18 pm

The Doctor wrote:
Wed Jun 26, 2019 11:48 am
If I can pull myself away from the new FFXIV expansions, I'll watch on Saturday
Same.

Kill angels.

Watch ponies.

Go back to killing angels.
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Captain Rufus (?) » Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:59 am

I'll sleep. Then maybe get groceries. Possibly mostly because I want this new Jaws boardgame at Target. Then possibly watch horsie TV movie before work. (If vidya it would be Bloodstained.)

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Jun 29, 2019 11:46 am

I wonder if Rainbow Dash fell for one of those letters of Neighgerian princes once. :ponder:
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:18 pm

Maybe it says more about my mental state than anything, but I seriously enjoyed this.

Anyone who's been on our Discord server has likely seen me expressing my worries about how hopeless the world feels anymore, between global warming promising an end to society within the century and ever-increasing political strife both domestic and foreign, and it's weighed incredibly heavily on me within the past week. Redeye was kind enough to remind me that even if the world feels like it's ending, that I still matter to other people and I can still make things better even if I can't save the world.

Whatever sucked the hope out of Hope Hollow (which wasn't directly explained, though I think the uptick in calamity and chaos ever since the sun failed to rise for the Summer Sun Celebration nearly a decade ago would do it) felt much the same way to me. It was enough to where seeing five of the Mane Six bringing that hope back to various townspeople reminded me of the consideration I'd just recently been shown. I was glad that ultimately there was no problem with the rainbow generator, that it was a beautiful artifact but not the source of some kind of curse on the town or anything.

Overall, I was glad for 66 minutes of FiM's virtues on display. I feel we've never gotten something quite like that before (even the movie had a big adventure) and appreciated that it happened before the end. :allears:
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:31 pm

Did anyone notice at the beginning the weird mix of the show's style and the movie style?
I swear I could see that some background ponies and backgrounds were in the same clean Flash style while the foreground ponies were in the movie style. After the Mane 6 drove away it was in full movie style.
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:46 pm

I wasn't super thrilled with this right away, but the more I think about it, the happier I am with it. This was a story about the townsponies of Hope Hollow, and the ponies here were wonderfully realized despite the small amount of time they got in the spotlight. The Mane 6 were just there to move the plot along, but that's okay. Kerfuffle is probably my favorite out of all of them, with her passion and talent for colors shining through even in the grayscale world she found herself living in. And the fact that she was an amputee without making her story revolve around that fact was a wonderful touch.

Overall, an interesting demonstration of the show's emotional center and ability to bring hope to people who lost it.

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by PonyHag714 (?) » Sat Jun 29, 2019 2:27 pm

I thought this was a cute story, nothing too heavyweight for sure but a nice way to kick back and spend an hour or so with the ponies.

Torque Wrench was my favorite character. Ponies should wear utilitarian clothes such as coveralls and overalls more often, it suits them.
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Captain Rufus (?) » Sat Jun 29, 2019 4:34 pm

That was a cute bit of Pony. The 6 help Pony MinnesotaDakota get its spirit back. Outside of lots of obvious recolors from the regular series it was quite nice and the new characters were pretty darn likeable.

Just a heartfelt well meaning special in a time we can all use it.

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Perpetual Motion (?) » Sat Jun 29, 2019 7:15 pm

Random thing I liked: That bit about the photos being out of order. I actually picked up on how conspicuous that pony in the corner of the photos was, but wasn't quite able to put it all together before Twilight did. It's always cool when clues to a mystery are organically dropped early on obviously enough for the audience to pick up on without being so obvious that they take you out of the story or kill the tension.

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:35 am

Adiwan wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:31 pm
Did anyone notice at the beginning the weird mix of the show's style and the movie style?
I swear I could see that some background ponies and backgrounds were in the same clean Flash style while the foreground ponies were in the movie style. After the Mane 6 drove away it was in full movie style.
You're right.

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By the way, here's a frame that will play better once the iTunes version drops and they lose the Discovery Family bug.

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Sun Jun 30, 2019 2:20 am

p.s. RIP Generation B

I'm not sure how to feel about this episode. The good news is that the emotional core is spot-on. Like the map episodes, we have a town in trouble, and the solution is to help people reconnect with each other. Tried and true formula.

The new characters are also pretty fun. They're different from typical ponies without being really over-the-top. They also have some wild cutie marks.

I think pacing is tricky for these EqG-length episodes. The first EqG movie tried to cram too much into 66 minutes, and all their problems wound up solved by pulling out magic coincidences. On the other hand, because it's three times the length of a normal episode, we expect more from the story.

One thing that sticks out is the lack of an A/B plot structure. An example is "The Crystal Empire": While Twilight needs to hunt for the Crystal Heart, the others help the townsponies by putting together a festival to lift their spirits. In this episode, Twilight is trying to fix the rainbow generator, but that's ultimately a red herring that takes her out of the action for the whole episode. Adding a more balanced A/B plot might have helped with my impression of the episode being slow-paced... and that feeling might fade when the digital copy drops, and we don't have the longest commercial breaks ever.

I think on balance, I liked this one. General criticisms: The jokes were a little bland ("I can't see!"), and the "song" explaining Hope Hollow's problem was more of a rambling monologue with backing music. But I was frustrated when the movie made the main characters extremely zany just to irritate Twilight, and here they feel much more like the team we expect them to be at this point in the show's life. I give it a B and a "wish we could have more of these where the newer writers had more time to earn their sea legs."

By the way, just need a transfer student for a bingo.

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Jun 30, 2019 8:52 am

SlateSlabrock wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 2:20 am
The new characters are also pretty fun. They're different from typical ponies without being really over-the-top. They also have some wild cutie marks.
I wonder if Torque Wrench had her mark embroidered on her overalls or if that wrench icon was perhaps a clothing brand logo.

Speaking of her, I found myself thinking a fair amount about her. Equestria is an industrial society, as evidenced by their biggest cities and their massive rail network, but it's not something we tend to think about much. Torque Wrench, between her appearance reminiscent of Rosie the Riveter and how she was introduced with a welding torch applied to some piece of the crashed balloon, immediately made me think of that. I thought it was interesting how hers is a role we might never have seen in S1 and how, in a way, she is emblematic of the way the show moved forward from the particularly old-timey fantasy aesthetic used back then.
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Octavia (?) » Sun Jun 30, 2019 11:03 am

I liked that it wasn't some big evil villain to cause the main conflict. It was something they all did to themselves that they had to come together to fix.

My one beef is it just wasn't as funny as the show usually is. I dunno if they just didn't have time to squeeze in jokes to make the story work or if the writing just wasn't on par. :pinkieshrug:
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Jun 30, 2019 11:21 am

Octavia wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 11:03 am
My one beef is it just wasn't as funny as the show usually is. I dunno if they just didn't have time to squeeze in jokes to make the story work or if the writing just wasn't on par. :pinkieshrug:
Maybe putting in jokes would've detracted from the feelings? I would love to hear more about how Rainbow Roadtrip got produced and what the goals were in making it. I know there's the rumors of it once having been a potential movie sequel, but who knows how much that had been worked up before being cut back down and how much was developed for its current format.
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sun Jun 30, 2019 11:44 am

Personally I think that the title "Rainbow Roadtrip" is hugely misleading. It's not a "roadtrip movie" in any kind I experienced before.
One can justify the title to some degree but it lacks the necessary roadtrip tropes in my opinion.

This resembles more of a classical D&D adventure when a party enters a village and something is off.
Naming it "Hope Hollow" would be fine enough, maybe it is not marketable enough to the younger demographic.
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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by The Doctor (?) » Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:52 pm

The problem was that this was what you expected to see in 2010 when someone said "hey, check our MLP".

There was nothing special about this. Everyone was a bit dumbed down to their most basic traits, and the story was just pretty dull.

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Mon Jul 01, 2019 5:46 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 11:21 am
Maybe putting in jokes would've detracted from the feelings? I would love to hear more about how Rainbow Roadtrip got produced and what the goals were in making it. I know there's the rumors of it once having been a potential movie sequel, but who knows how much that had been worked up before being cut back down and how much was developed for its current format.
I think it's just that humor is tough, and I suspect the show's developed on a really quick schedule these days. No time to polish, and maybe the writers they pick just aren't gifted with that skill.

Also they still haven't released it in digital format. :ohrarity:

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Re: M02: Rainbow Roadtrip

Post by Applepie2017 (?) » Wed Aug 21, 2019 6:21 am

But...
This one's too young

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