Points of Canon: Legends of Everfree (the movie) · 10:16pm Sep 25th, 2016
This is a Hard Spoiler, because officially the movie has not yet been released.
What’s up with that, anyway? Book turns up several weeks before the movie, movie turns up a week before the official release, soundtrack is here already…
I’m not going to blank out the entire text with spoiler tags, and if you are seriously concerned about spoilers, you have probably unfollowed me already anyway.
Since the book follows the movie quite closely, and I’ve done the book already, I’m only going to concentrate on what’s actually different here, particularly on small details. I doubt I’ll see a lot of useful things, since this is a pony movie with no ponies in it, and Pedestria offers considerably less surprise in terms of worldbuilding, but let’s test this theory…
- In any world, Twilight is from a wealthy family. I mean, do you have a bedroom with a fancy circular window above the bed? Me neither.
- In the bus, Bon-Bon and Lyra are doing something interesting. Lyra has her hands in front of her and mumbling something with her eyes closed. Bon-Bon is hiding her face behind a book and staring at her. Hmmm.
- Can anyone, based on the opening wherein the bus traverses what has to be a road somewhere in the US, localize the landscape to a state, or at least a group of states? It kinda looks like Gravity Falls to me, which would imply Oregon, but I’m sure I’m just imagining it. Yes, this could be important. Another clue: Twilight says the place isn’t near any fault lines.
- How exactly do you get two spruces to spiral around each other like that anyway?… There are multiple cases of that around the camp.
- Celestia and Luna are sitting right next to that sundial that was the trigger for Pedestria’s version of Luna’s Banishment. Doesn’t look like much, to be honest. Notably, half the phrases about the sundial are missing in the movie version entirely, flipping the meaning around and making it sound like Celestia was the one against it.
- Filthy Rich’s portrayal in the movie is even less sympathetic than it is in the book, due to facial expressions and background music – all the way to mustache-twirling levels.
- Trixie is sitting on a log and reading a book with a wrench on the cover. I wonder, does the Equestrian Trixie have any mechanical aptitude?
- Timber’s great-grandparents are wearing strangely modern-looking clothing, more like 50s to my eye than anything, which is a bit late. In any case, the great-grandfather is wearing suspenders, and modern suspenders were invented in 1820.
- Only Rarity can go climbing in high heels, I suppose.
- The origin of the stray bolt of magic that activated the geodes is detailed in the book, but in the movie, it’s a floating, swirling thing that isn’t a bolt and it isn’t clear where it came from either.
- Something that really wasn’t clear from the book is that the stones are actually tiny and Gloriosa spent most of the story wearing them around her neck. Also, she was using five out of seven and left two in place, which is something I missed. Likewise, the book gave me the impression there were seven separate pillars, but actually, there’s just one and it’s a dead ringer for the Tree of Harmony, as if someone cut it down the middle.
- The magical girl outfits the Humane 7 get are actually pretty bad. :)
1. What? I like obscure explosives.
It just occurred to me that Pinkie essentially got the power to infuse sweets with oxygen. I.e. produce oxyliquits in place.1
Did anyone else get a Donald Trump vibe from Filthy Rich? I'm not trying to make a political statement here, but that's who he reminded me of, and I can't tell if it's an actual quality of his EG counterpart's design, or if I'm just making the connection because Filthy has apparently already been assigned the role of unsubtle Trump analogue in upcoming comics.
Considering that the story was later revealed as being fictitious, I'm gonna chalk this one up Timber not knowing his fashion history.
Wait, what? I must've missed that. I was dead certain that it was the Tree of Harmony, and that that would've been the final reveal, but I never noticed any similarity between it and the pillars. I'm going to have to go back and look at that.
Edit: Upon rewatching, I'm not sure where you got "cut down the middle." It does kind of look like a tree stump, though... Jeez, do you think the Tree of Harmony in the human world was cut down? That... would explain some things.
4226899
I might be imagining it, but that's what it looked like to me, the same kind of vaguely near-pyramidal trunk, just with more random junk on the sides, as if the entire canopy of the Tree fell down in pieces around it.
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oi65.tinypic.com/11kvapz.jpg
Hmm... it's a tough call. Certainly, there are similarities in design theme, but... only broadly. Myself, I don't see the fallen canopy, for one.
Ugh, I'm just bummed that Sunset is not an alicorn, and her power is pretty shitty. Ma-ti, the crappiest Planateer from Captain Planet, had a more powerful version of Sunset and Fluttershy's powers combined.
At least Sunset gets Flash back, I guess that's a participation trophy.
I will say I noted that the Spruce's ancestors had cutie mark symbols in like the 1820s, so that suggests they're not just a trend. If Pedestrians don't actually get physical cutie marks on their butts and then add them to their clothes, it's certainly some critical cultural thing.
You know what else is weird? The Pedestrian Cutie Mark Crusaders and all the other foal analogues (except for Snips and Snails, but they are older here) aren't present. Kind of surprised to see that.
4226899
Yeah, he just seemed like generic evil capitalist to me, and his accent sounded southern as well, which is new. Seeing how 1-Dimensionally they wrote Filthy Rich made me wish he had turned that camp into a spa resort.
Now we're cooking with gas! Ok so we know the Spruces have been her for centuries. What if there was some magic in this world, and they hacked apart this magic crystal tree to sell chandelier crystals or something and that disrupted the magic in general in the world. I feel like it's a pretty big coincidence that a crystal cave in the middle of the Everfree forest happens to have gems right in the middle, like they would eventually grow up and sprout from the leaves of a Crystal Tree as fruit.
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If Diamond Tiara had been present, that would have required some much more emotionally troublesome conversations with Filthy Rich, so clearly they decided it was easiest to leave the whole generation out.
Can anyone work out how far away the camp was? The trip in the credits is ambiguous, apart from being long enough to justify a bus, long enough to fall asleep, and long enough to fit in a song. Rainbow's statements later are potentially more precise: she lost her super-speed when she got near town, and gained it again when she approached the camp again. This limits the distance to one a fit human could cover in a few hours.
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Imagine that someone chopped the tree down, but instead of falling, everything above the cut turned into sand and fell down instantly, producing thick piles. That would be the impression I get.
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I’m pretty sure even she doesn’t want him anymore.
That is a good and important point.
I’m not aware of the kind of rules in effect in the US at the time the movie can be conceivably thought to be set in, but my impression is that for younger children, the camp just doesn’t have enough staff to babysit all of them as legally required.
Compared to what I was permitted to do when I was a kid, modern children are practically in prison.
They’re literally sprouts from a cut down, but still living trunk. At least, I think that’s what the art director was going for.
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That’s why I asked if anyone can pinpoint the state, the city that Canterlot High is in would inevitably have to be in the same one. :)
The camp is 50-100 kilometers away from the town, no more. Buses with children are legally required to obey more stringent speed limits, IIRC, and there’s one more clue limiting the distance: Twilight was planning to run away from the camp by calling for a taxi.
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That southern accent was weird. On the one hand, I guess it kind of makes sense that the Rich Family would sound southern, since they settled the apparently southern Ponyville at the same time that the Apple Family did... but on the other, Filthy Rich has never sounded southern before now, and neither has the rest of his family.
Not to mention that Ponyville doesn't even seem to be a thing in Equestria Girls, so one has to wonder what the Rich and Apple family histories are in this world. Did the Rich Family even make their fortune the same way? Who knows. Ancient history between worlds is probably nothing alike if Celestia is a regular human woman who was born only forty years ago at most, so why would recent history be the same?
These movies make my head hurt sometimes.
No. It couldn't have been that recent. If magic had disappeared from our world two hundred years or so ago, we'd read about Victorian scientists and philsophers positing their theories as to why magic failed, and how the loss of magic affected the great empires of the day and their wars, and we'd treat the existence of magic as historic fact. If magic was still an active force in their world in the last few hundred years, then EG humans wouldn't consider it fiction, or treat it as some completely new, mysterious thing.
Granted, Canterlot High and Crystal Prep alike were both quick to accept that magic was real and didn't act like their whole worldview had been shattered, which is a point in favour of this being a formerly magical world, but the magic must've still died a much longer time ago for it to have had time to fall into myth. I'm gonna say that if it was the death of this world's Tree of Harmony that did it, then it must've already been dead for a long time before Timber's ancestors moved in.
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I... kinda see what you mean, but to me, they just look like regular old stalagmites.
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She seemed kind of interested before she ran off, but no blushing cheeks, which are a pretty clear marker on this sort of thing.
I think DannyJ has the right of it: Having the younger kids would include having Diamond, which might complicate Filthy Rich by making him seem like a human being.
Oh shoot that totally fits! Better you anything someone plants a sprout in that hole where the statue used to be.
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You have a point. I suspect something killed that tree a millennium ago.
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That one music video short in which Pony Twilight found a Discord plushie at a human world carnival gives us at least one potential culprit.
It all fits together! Pedestria is what the world would've been like if Discord won and killed the Tree!
Truly, Equestria Girls is the darkest of all alternate timelines.
4227771 That's an idea. Of course, as a spirit Discord would be the first to go if magic died. What if Celestia and Luna died without magic and got reincarnated at a time when magic would return?
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Man, I am not ready to develop a serious theory on what happened to magic in the human world. The idea that it's dependant on the Tree in the first place already goes against my understanding of magic.
4227785 We've done good work here, let's revisit the idea later when we have more data, either from stuff about the Crystal Tree in the show, or stuff about how the Rainbooms' powers work.
As always, Oliver's blogs shall remain the premier location for discerning analysis of small fictional horses.
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Sounds like a plan.
⛧once again, the writers err with "an alumni"
Pinkie Pie's inner mindscape is sure …Pinkie.
Pinkie Pie "not touching the ground".
Derpy ("Muffins") comforting Flash seems to be A Thing?
Camp has cell phone coverage. Somewhat unusual?
Twilight's forehead glows when she uses strong magic.
Guestbook uses cutie marks to ID Pedestrians.
⛧Kinda dark implying a nailbomb there.
I object to calling those things geodes.
Not much to say here.