I have suggested in the past that part of the reason for MLP’s successful reboot is actually *anti-*nostalgia. The original MLP was practically an icon of the crappy advertisements foisted on a generation of kids under the guise of entertainment. Just by being cleverly written, with real adventure stories and substantial characters amidst the cuteness, it’s an indictment of the cartoon wasteland that birthed its original incarnation.
Maybe other reboots didn’t attempt the same transformation. Maybe they didn’t succeed at it because their writing wasn’t up to the task. Or maybe they just weren’t derided enough for an unlikely redemption to draw attention to them.
You’ve got me curious now about the original MLP. Is that streaming somewhere?
Whoa. :eek: And that wasn’t even the end of the fight! Looked clearly to be a riff on climactic superhero movie fights.
But yeah: I definitely expected it to be much more consistently in the “convince them to be friends” vein. Was that the case more in the first season or two?
Well, here is a clip from one of the earlier series (possibly not the first, I donno.)
Here is a compilation of opening sequences from various generations of the show. (BTW, this season is the last of the current generation of MLP, which is getting rebooted again after that.)
(spoilers ahead)
Refreshing my memory with this list, most of the conflicts were between main characters–the first few seasons featured an explicit “lesson” at the end where the main character Twilight Sparkle wrote a letter to her mentor describing what she learned about friendship in the episode (think something like the “knowing is half the battle segment from G.I. Joe, but integrated into the episode.) There were a few bad guys” that showed up in one off episodes, but they were for the most part just “chased away”–no dramatic defeat but no making friends either.There were no “big bads” in season one other than the one in the two-parter that opened the first season (the “big bad” being the sister of the aforementioned mentor) who was indeed convinced to be friends.
The second season had two “big bads”, neither of which were convinced to be friends. The first one was in the two part season opener and it was John De Lancie as (pretty much) Q. The second was in the two part season finale. That two-parter is actually one I’d recommend to someone who just wants to sample the series and get an idea of it–it has most of the elements of the series–interpersonal minor conflicts (and cooperations) between the primary cast members, a “big bad” and fight scene, and several songs. It can be seen here, broke up into a playlist of 13 “chapters.”
“Big bads” are actually fairly rare in the series and some of them are returning characters from earlier seasons who end up becoming friends and recurring characters. (Probably because of fan popularity, like how they could never really get rid of Spike on Buffy.)
It’s kind of a superhero slice-of-life show in pastel pony clothing. Twilight Sparkle was already in roughly the same weight class as a Kryptonian in the first season. The other members of the Mane Six aren’t that powerful, but they’re not slouches, either. You could write a superhero profile for any of them.
They do tend to lean toward “make friends” and interpersonal issues, especially in the earlier seasons, but even so, there were action scenes and some outright fights. Even the “make friends” incidents tend to touch on some tropes that you see with superheroes: Defeat Means Friendship, I Know You’re in There, and Heroic Spirit come to mind. Even the nonviolent confrontations sometimes qualify–Professor X doesn’t beat his enemies into submission, and neither does Fluttershy, but they win just the same.
If I have to watch the old MLP (which I watched some of them new back in the day…) now, they’re intolerable. Cheap 80s animation, overly sentimental. But when I was the target demo? They were the shit. My kid loved all the other generation movies and shows they show on The Hub (or whatever it’s called now), but I didn’t like to watch them too.
And it was the same for Strawberry Shortcake. Loved her as a kid. Can’t stand the old stuff now, don’t like the new ones very much. Kid loved it all, but has outgrown them.
FiM has a lot of the elements of Loony Tunes that make them eternal (ignoring the stuff that hasn’t aged well, like the sexism and racism). Slapstick, bad guys who do more than just steal a pile of berries or some dumb shit. Edgy humor and stuff aimed at grown-ups.
Original show runner/series developer wanted to do more adventure stories and Hasbro wanted to focus more on the friendship stories. The basic compromise is that the seasons would (mostly) open and close with two-epsiode epic stories built around a villain who is a danger to Equestria, and the rest of the season is mostly friendship episodes, especially in the first two seasons.
Even though the first few seasons of episodes had ending with Twilight writing a letter to Princess Celestia about the friendship lesson she learned, the episodes are not really built about didactically teaching about friendship. A lot of the eps in the first two seasons are basically built around taking two of the Mane Six and bouncing their contrasting personality traits off each other.
Since her now-ancient childhood friends Apple Rose and Goldie Delicious call her Granny Smith, I would assume she was called Granny Smith as a filly and she was named for the type of apple.
Mayor Mare is the one you have to ask that question about.
Reboot doesn’t have anything to do with how long the show is gone. It just means starting a new continuity. The word reboot means “to start over from the beginning,” after all.
I’d expect a different art style, probably different actors, and the characters will all start fresh again. Possibly a different focus. Though I’d hope they learned from the popularity of FIM and don’t give it the “Titans Go” or new Powerpuff Girls treatment. Don’t make it wacky random humor, or they’ll lose a lot of the people who want to watch it.
As for the OP’s question: they made it more intelligent and less infantalizing than the other shows. It’s more akin to the shows we grew up with in the 1990s. And it has adult bonuses, with references and such to other stuff.
And it didn’t assume that girls aren’t into action and only want boring fluff, like the previous generations of the show. They kept the relationship stuff, but didn’t make it everything.
