My Little Pony Equestria Girls is a brand new full-length feature introducing an exciting new dimension to the incredibly popular My Little Pony brand. When a crown is stolen from the Crystal Empire, Twilight Sparkle pursues the thief into an alternate world where she transforms into a teenage girl who must survive her biggest challenge yet… high school. With help from her new friends who remind her of Ponyville’s Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy, she embarks upon a quest to find the crown and change the destiny of these two parallel worlds.
Is this really as bad as you all thought it would be? Click through the jump to find out!
Scroll to the bottom to avoid spoilers!
So, here it is. The disturbance in the Brony Force. Ever since Hasbro dropped a copyright for the term, "Equestria Girls," bronies have been seething, writhing, gnashing and a whole bunch of other words I rarely see outside of pretentious artfics and clopfics. We all know that bronies, in a general sense, tend to flip out at threats to the status quo, and for at least some good reason. A whole lot happened just right at just the right times for this show to end up as awesome as it is, bucking trends and being something wholly unique, to the point where anything that looks to upset the apple cart, we fear it may signal the show becoming more generic. But even beyond the brony tendency for butthurt, there were admittedly a lot of signs that this was gonna blow like Rob Halford after an all-night coke binge. High-school human ponies, a parallel universe, Spike being a flippin' dog, "Brad." Let's face facts here, people, the odds were stacked against this pretty solidly.
Now, I'm not trying to put myself on some pedestal by saying that I'm immune to jimmy rustling, but I did join Commander Firebrand for a few glasses of Brony tears every now and then. I resolved myself to go see this movie, and I did... at the movie theater on Fort Benning... in the middle of the day... on a weekend... while wearing a brony shirt.
F**ks given: Zero.
So, I saw it, and yes, I was the only adult male in attendance without a little kid. Surprisingly, I didn't get any weird To Catch A Predator looks from the parents, but I did get a few knowing nods from the dads. Huh. So, all that said, the question of the hour: Was it any good?
STORY: Twilight and company show up in the Crystal Empire for... some reason. No, I'm not being snarky here. The movie theater derped and skipped the first little bit. I only saw about a minute before the opening credits. Army Strong!
Upon arriving in the throne room and being announced by THE ONE PONY IN THE CRYSTAL GUARD WHO LOOKS DIFFERENT WHO I'M SURE WILL HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IMPORTANCE IN THE NEAR FUTURE, they are immediately sent to bed by Celestia. Um... okay. Anywho, after lights out, a mysterious figure breaks into Twilight's bedroom and snatches her crown, the Element of Magic, and runs off. Twilight gives chase, but the thief, a pile of bitchy Spitfire vomit known as Sunset Shimmer, and the crown, fall into a
To sum up, Twilight learns that Sunset came through with the crown, but lost it. Now, Principle Celestia( and yeah, I do love that) has the crown, and will only give it to the Princess of the Fall Formal! Because... LOOK, A MOOSE!
So, because she has to become Princess of the Fall Formal to get the Element of Magic back—that, that actually hurt to write—she enlists the help of the counterparts of her friends to convince the student body to vote for Twilight.
And they only have one day to do it in.
And that is the single biggest problem with this movie. Look, I don't know what it is about DHX. Give them 22-minutes, and the write a 55-minute season finale. Give them an hour and ten minutes, the write a 2-hour movie! The pacing in this movie is horrible. Now, it's not nearly as bad as Magical Mystery Cure, but it's still very obvious. Entire backstories are given in one or two sentences of exposition, character motivations are either forgotten or glossed over, leaps of logic that would make Evil Knievel poo himself! No scene has time to breathe, because so much is happening, or needs to happen, that we simply can't sit to let things sink in. We have to blaze on to the next scene!
A good example is the big reveal about Twilight's true nature. This isn't a spoiler, because you knew this was going to happen at some point. Anyway, the human versions of her friends are told her big secret—in a very hilarious manner, by the way—and at first, they are skeptical. Then, SpikeDog talks, an instantly, everyone is happy, and accepting.
Um... wut? Look, I get that the talking dog is a pretty good indicator that not all is as it seems, but still, they just totally accept the fact that the girls standing before them is a pony princess from a parallel universe where everyone has a pony doppelganger and ponies talk and fly and use magic and she came here through a magic mirror to stop an evil pony from getting an ancient arcane artifact and the only way this can be prevented is for Twilight to become princess of the Fall Formal and if she doesn't both worlds could fall under evil control forever.
Seems legit.
The pace problem is really the point that causes all the other issues. The subplot with... ugh, Brad is so woefully underdone that it becomes a stereotype that would have Lauren Faust rolling in her proverbial grave. When it comes time to convince the entire student body to vote for Twilight, the writers fall back on the MMC formula: a musical number that does in three minutes what should have taken 15-25.
It also means that several scenes that could have been amazing to see, and sources of potential drama, are missing, and some concepts are brought up and then dropped. At one point, human Applejack mentions that she's seen Twi's human counterpart before, even with the same dog. Ooh, could this lead to some genuinely hilarious and possibly tense scenes between Twilight and her counterpart?!
Ain't nobody got time fo' dat.
And then, there's the ending. Oh, dear lord, the ending. I will not spoil, mainly because I don't want Spangle to firebomb my house, but the ending is so rushed and vague that it almost killed the movie as a whole. Again, what needed to be 20-30 minutes took five.
CHARACTERS: Here's where the movie earns back major points; most all of the characters felt like themselves. This should be no surprise, since it was written by the FiM staff, but again, we were all fearing the worst, right? Come on, admit it: you were having nightmares of Applejack and Rainbow Dash getting all giggly over boys and make-up. Well, fear not. The Mane Six all acted much like you'd expect. The best example I can give is how Rainbow Dash decides to help Twilight become the Princess: she challenges her to a soccer game, saying Twilight has to beat Dashie to win her support. Naturally, Twi gets her little humanized rump kicked. However, afterwards, Dash agrees to help her, because, "Of coure I beat you! I'm awesome! But the Princess needs to have drive and determination, and I wanted to see if you had it, and you do." Classic Dashie,if I do say so myself.
Twilight herself is, as I said, delightfully adorkable. Watching her try to use a computer, write her name with her mouth, and a number of other things you see in countless HiE/PoE stories are acutally hilarious here, because they are pulled off so naturally. She'll be talking normal, doing everything right, then bam, she tries to eat an apple without her hands. Great. Past that, she feels exactly like she should after the events of season three. She is still awkward, but mature. Spike only has to reign her back a few times, and even then, Twilight does her little breathing excersize from Games Ponies Play, and cools off. She retained her character growth, and I loved it.
The biggest success in this area is Spike. Anyone who reads my stories should know that I have a huge heterosexual man-crush on Spike. I love the little guy, so when I heard he was going to become a dog in this, I had a very tempered reaction:
But, much to my shock, they did it... actually rather well. I find it kinda hilarious that this, the movie where they make him a flipping dog, is probably the best example of how to write Spike. He's thoughtful, helping Twilight adjust, serves as an anchor to reign her in from the brink of panic. He serves as Twilight's inner-monologue, the voice of reason that helps her see the answers. And yes, he still swooned over Rarity. Although, knowing his true feelings for her and the nature of the act for dogs, him asking her to scratch behind his ears seemed a little... uh, yeah, moving on.
The support characters are all done well, as well. Principle Celestia and Principle Luna are great. Celestia is a bit more jaded, as you would expect a HS principle to be. The first time Twilight meets her, she gives off this air of, "okay, yeah, what do you want, I'm busy" that feels so disjointed from what we know about her, but in a way that feels totally natural. The CMC show up for a bit, and while I cannot say what they did in the library, I will say you will laugh. We see a whole bunch of background ponies humanized: Vinyl Scratch, Hoity Toity, Photo Finish, Carrot Top. But two are missing that I can't help but feel were omitted purposefully, and in a way because of us. First off, no Derpy. That one, I can kinda see, given the whole "Derpygate" debacle. The other, however, is Lyra. That one I can't shake the feeling that it was a little... eh, not a jab, but maybe the writers sticking their tongue out at us playfully. "Hey, bronies, guess what? We humanized all the characters, but you know that one character you all love, the one that you have decided is obsessed with humans and fingers? Yeah, she's not here." Well played, DHX, well played, indeed.
However, all is not well in the land. There are three issues that bugged me, and held back the story:
1. Snips and Snails are the henchmen of the villain, because... quantum, I guess. For real, we are given no reason as to why they are used this way! In the show, Snips and Snails are dopey, kinda dumb, and a horrible cliche of bumbling comic relief, but they aren't bad guys! Oh, sure, they sided with Trixie, but that wasn't out of some form of spite or malice, just normal childhood hero worship. Why were they chosen to be the lackeys? If only there were two other characters they could have used. Some kind of... I don't know, bully characters from the show, ponies who have served as school antagonists multiple times, that have never been shown in any light other than as bad guys. Hmm, but where could we find such characters...
W-what? Who put that there?!
2. Sunset Shimmer. *sigh* Where do I even begin? Long story short, we know nothing about her, and nothing we can infer makes any sense. Okay, so we learn that Sunset has been in the human world for a long time doing... well, being a beeyotch and making people hate each other because... quantum, I guess. Hey, some tweens just want to watch the school burn. Now, she wants the Element of Magic for... uh, Generic Evil Plot #27, revenge against Princess Celestia involving arcane, forbidden magic and, for some odd reason, teenage human zombies. Yeah, lord knows how a world with magic will be able to stop the onslaught of acne-ridden high-schoolers.
Seriously, this is supposed to be the big villain?! She makes no sense, has next to zero motivations beyond a nebulous desire to take over the world—OF COURSE!!!—and does nothing that feels threatening beyond simple HS stuff... which is another issue I will get to. My point is the FiM universe has had some great villains: Discord, Nightmare Moon, Chrysalis. Why not use one of them? Hell, why not use this opportunity to do a bit of development for King Sombra?! It could have been great! He desires to make others depressed, and to do this he drives friendships apart, making everyone in the school distrustful and sad. It would have been great, and would have made sense in a high school setting! But no, instead we get this blind bag reject with virtually no character. And by the end, we still know virtually nothing about her, how she planned to execute her evil plan, why she needed to bring the crown back here in the first place, why she was here in the first place, how she got here, etc. It's just a waste of what could have been.
3. Probably the most aggravating is... ugh, Brad. I know his name is "Flash Sentry," but just look at him:
Doesn't he just... look like a Brad? And that is the crux of the problem with him, he has virtually no character, but what we do see is beyond annoying and shallow. I think he has like, at most, a paragraph of dialogue total through out the whole movie, so he has no real defined character. This leaves us with what the animators and writers must have intended: basing his character of pretty much just his visual appearance, which does not bode well. Again, just look at him. He's every single tween Disney Channel pretty boy stereotype you can imagine: the spiky hair, the trendy clothes, the freakin' guitar, and to top it all off, he shows up to the dance driving a Mustang. Everything about him seems engineered to make tweeny-boppers want to swoon and me want to punch him in his perfect little jaw.
And to make it worse, Brad seems to be the *sigh* lurve interest for Twilight, and I say seems because that's all it can be. They share, literally five to seven lines of dialogue before he is asking her to the dance. Really, DHX? We were that desperate for a romantic lead? You do realize that a girl can have an adventure without having a romance subplot, yeah? That's what I meant about Lauren Faust rolling in her grave. She designed this show to buck stereotypes of girl's cartoons, and ol' Bradley here is the shining example of the worst one: that the female lead has to have a boy she can crush on.
That is the worst thing about him, his affect on Twilight. Every time he shows up, Twilight gets all giggly and twirls her hair in her finger like an idiot. Twilight Sparkle—Element of Magic, Princess of Equestria, savior of the world on multiple occasions—is reduced to a blubbering pile of stupid... by a boy. Wow. Just... just wow.
He serves no purpose beyond the obviously and unneeded love interest. The one
thing he does for Twilight, when he saves her from trouble, could have
easily been done by Rainbow Dash or Applejack. Hell, it would have made a
crap-ton more sense if it was them!
ANIMATION AND MUSIC: Again, I am not an animator, but I liked what I saw. Every movement of the characters seemed fluid and real. You can tell they put effort into the animation. My only nitpick on the art style is that all the girls have the exact same body type. Now, a friend pointed out that all the ponies in the show share the same thing, but in the movie I point to the dudes. Some are big and muscular, some are skinny and nerdy, some are in between. Hell, even some of the girl characters have differing bodies. Why not the girls? I just see it as a wasted opportunity. Be honest, when you thought of the girls as humans, didn't you always picture Pinkie as a bit... pudgier than the others? I mean, not fat, but just a bit thicker from all the pastries and sugar she eats. And Applejack as more built and muscular, Dashie as lithe and fit, etc.
When I was looking up why they kept their pony skin colors, I found that someone said it was to avoid trying to put na race on them, so as to avoid any backlash about whitewashing. I can accept this, they wanted to be more diverse... but then why do they all have the same body type, and at that, one that seems to reinforce nearly every body shape cliche that we try to keep girls from believing? Why didn't we use this opportunity to show a group of friends with a pudgy one, a muscular one, a fit one, tall one, short one, and... however you would show Twilight? Again, something they could have done.
The music, I thought, was catchy but... eh. I know what they were going for, the "High School Musical" Disney Channel, Nickelodeon teen soft-rock thing. Not my bag, but it wasn't offensively bad, just... eh.
OVERALL AWESOMENESS: When I sat down to write this review, I went into it fully ready to give a big thumbs up. I truly enjoyed watching it. Seeing these characters on the big screen was great, there were some genuinely hilarious moments, and it was just all-around a good time.
However, as I wrote the review, I realized that when I thought back on it critically, I could see all the major flaws in both the story and the concept. Look, I get that Hasbro wants in on the Monster High/ Bratz tween market, really, I do. But what they failed to see, or chose to ignore, is that that world—human-like high school, dances, cliques, etc.—is, on a fundamental level, incompatible with the world of Friendship Is Magic—a world of high fantasy, mythology, and magic. Now, yes, there are some themes that can coincide, like friendship conquers all and you should be accepting of people and la-dee-da, but those are just that: themes. Basic, general ideas that have little to do with the characters.
And that is the biggest issue, shoving these characters into a high school drama situation is uncomfortable and, if we're being completely honest, a bit insulting to them. Twilight Sparkle is a friggin' princess! Why is she having to deal with HS drama?! These characters were not designed for this environment. Hasbro should have just created an IP for this instead of trying to shove pony onto it.
Beyond that, several plot elements felt just plain silly. Why is Sunset Shimmer, an evil pony who wants to take over the world, spending years at a high school in an alternate reality making everybody hate each other? Why would five people who were such close friends never freaking talk to each other, instead choosing to ignore them for months? If all it took for her friends to believe her true story was seeing Spike talk, why didn't Twilight just have Spike talk to Principle Celestia?
End spoilers!
Final call?
I did enjoy it, but after careful, critical thought, I realized that I enjoyed it not because of what it is, but in spite of what it is. And what is it? A slightly obvious attempt to cash in on the surprising success of Friendship Is Magic by slapping Twilight Sparkle's face onto a Bratz doll. It's enjoyable, for sure, but it's not FiM.
So, what did you think of it? Let me know, down below!
PONY STRONG, HOOAH!
From front to rear, disappear!
SEMPER FILLY!
