What To Know How Clever The MLP Team Is?

[Feather Gem 967]

They made King Sombra have no personality, and no background story.  They made him extremely boring.

Why?

Because they wanted to destroy him in the end.  And if ponies liked him, then they would just be disappointed wouldn't they? 

So they made him unlikable.  (I'm sure some like him but whatever)

BUT

When he was destroyed, his horn was not.

So if anyone DID like him or want him back, they still had the opportunity is bring him back.

 

Now that, I thought, was really well thought out xD

[Harmonic Revelations 8,835]

How creative. "We don't want anyone to like this character, so we'll give him zero character development, that'll show them!" is probably their train of thought.

[Prismatic 49]

It's somewhat hard to associate a personality with somepony that has less than sixty seconds of 'in the present' screen time.

 

Nonetheless I think the color scheme makes him unlikeable more than anything.

[Agent153 50]

Would make sense. From his design and the fact that all he did was growl and snarl, makes one think sterotypical villian. Still kinda sucked that they hype him up, make him do nothing, and then kill him off.

[Leafeon 2,702]

Actually, the staff were aiming to build him as an ominous presence. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

However, this failed because they built him up as an actual character, not something we know nothing about, as we know a lot about him.

 

Having a character just to kill off is one of the worst things possible. If that's what they meant to do, and make sure no one liked him for that reason, that's just as stupid.

Edited January 26, 2013 by Firebolt

[Dusty Soul 2,611]

Clever thought, I was wondering why they would show the horn.  IMO Sombra was a great villain with pretty good execution, he didn't need to do much because all of what he did before had lasting effects, such as the intimidation.  He came back, but all of what he did was before the show began.   

[Coffeesaxophone 11]

Sombra had his potantial for becoming a developed villan, but maybe it is better this way that he didn't get development.

 

(sarcasm) The thing we MUST be grateful for is that a cheap copy of Silly Putty got the best character development ever! (sarcasm)

[hawkflame 3,310]

I don't think that was necessary.  You can make a character compelling and develop a personality for them without making them *likeable*.  And they showed they could pull that off already, with Chrysalis.  She was a good villain because her twisted and nasty personality really shone through, and you could root for her ultimate demise because of what you saw her put Twilight through. 

 

It's hard to hate a character if they're not established as a *character* to begin with.  Chrysalis was a character.  Sombra was an ominous force.