Thoughts On Equestria Girls

So with today being Saturday I decided to go and see Equestria Girls at the movie theater. Small problem was that the movie theater that was ten minutes away from me wasn't showing it so I had to drive thirty minutes to a different one that was showing it. Minor complaint is minor. I took my ten year old cousin(Also fan of the show) with me and was on my way. Two things took me completely by surprise when I left the theater. The first being that the theater that I went to was 10x better than the one I usually go to. The second being just how good the actual movie was.

Going to try and keep this Spoiler free.

Now I'm not saying Equestria Girls was perfect but it was genuinely an incredibly fun movie to watch. All my fears about what I thought the movie was going to be began to melt away with the opening song( A remix of the opening theme from the show by Daniel Ingram himself). Now what I told myself before I entered the theater was that I was probably only going to enjoy the pony parts. I did but once again I was taken by surprise by stand out moment from the human segments and found myself smiling and laughing at the Main(not mane given the situation) Six's antics during many points throughout the film. I will divide the rest of this post into different sections for convenience. Just keep in mind that most of what of what is written below consists of my opinions on the film.

1) Plot:
I'm going to keep this section brief and simple in an effort to avoid spoilers. The story of Equestria Girls revolves around Princess Twilight Sparkle having her crown stolen by Sunset Shimmer. The crown is taken through a magic mirror by Sunset Shimmer with Twilight having to go after her in order to make sure Equestria can defend itself. Twilight ends up in a human world with a human body and with the help of some familiar faces she must win the Fall Former at Canterlot High School in order to regain her crown. Now for the most part this plot works well and keeps the movie interesting despite a few pacing issues.

2) Twilight Sparkle:
The movie picks up a short time after the Season Three finale left off which means that Twilight Sparkle is indeed an Alicorn dun dun duuuuun! Twilight's wings provide some comic relief at the beginning of the film so its good know that DHX definitely has something planned in Season Four for our newly feathered Princess. Moving away from the wings (Which Twilight loses when she enters the human world) Tara Strong once again does an amazing job voicing both Twilight's pony and human form. While in pony form Twilight acts just as she would in the show except wit the addition of wings and being a Princess. That being said she transitions perfectly from pony to human with the outcome being that she remains her adorable dorky self. Give our egg head hands and feet and you have some good moments when Twilight attempts to take her first steps in her new world. Cut to a few minutes later and Twilight begins meeting up with her pony friends human counter parts which I'll cover in a different section. What follows is Twilight attempting to adjust to the new world that she now finds herself in. This leads to some humorous moments of Twilight trying to fit in such as her hand writing and discovery of computers. Now enter Twilight's crush on Flash Sentry aka Brad; while the movie does establish that there is a romance going on it never dwells too long on that subject focusing instead on the plot of the film. The romance segments don't add too much or take anything away from the film although there is a brief segment at the end of the film involving Flash Sentry with Twilight that got a good laugh out of me (Twilight never was a good dancer but Flash is too much of a gentleman to correct her). Over all Twilight fits in perfectly in the human world and I was left with a small thought in my mind when the film ended that perhaps it wouldn't be too bad if Twilight revisited this world at a much much later date.

3) Sunset Shimmer:
I'm just going to cut the chase here, Sunset Shimmer was an adequate villain given the situation. Without revealing to much Sunset Shimmer (voiced by Rebecca Shoichet who is also Twilight's Sparkle's singing voice in both the show and film) was once Celestia's student just like Twilight is currently. Some stuff went down and she ended up no longer being Celestia's student and went her own way. At the beginning of the film Sunset steals Twilight's crown for a purpose revealed much later in the film. Her interactions with Twilight are surprisingly minimal throughout the film with her mostly interacting with our protagonist through other methods*Cough*Cough*youtube*Cough*. Of course a Villain such as Sunset Shimmer would need lackeys and that's were the duo of Snips and Snails comes into play which I'll discuss later in my negatives section. Rebecca Shoichet definitely succeeds in helping Sunset Shimmer comes off as the typical mean girl in High School with greater ambitions than being Prom Queen. Her screen time however is usually filled with her plotting against Twilight Sparkle with little to no character development. Near the end of the film when her villainous plot comes to life she turns into your stereotypical villain by throwing away any character development she had before in favor of a dastardly plan that, while surprising, is a tad bit ridiculous. At the end of the film Sunset Shimmer ends up getting a similar treatment as another antagonist in the third season of the show. For what she is Sunset Shimmer at least gets the job done of creating conflict but is still no where near the top of my list of villains from the show.

4) The rest of the Mane 6:
Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Apple Jack, and Rainbow Dash appear for brief segments as ponies in the beginning and end of the film. This segments however show that our ponies stick true to how they act and behave in the show with Rarity obsessing over Twilight becoming a Princess and with Pinkie Pie being well Pinkie Pie. There is a scene early on in the film with the pink party mare that involves a reference to another Hasbro show that had the theater laughing greatly. For the brief time that we see Twilight's friends in their pony forms they remain true to the show with little to no deviation.

5) The Main 6:
For the majority of the film we see Twilight's friends in their human forms. Their human counterparts are still voiced by their same VA's from the show along with the same Singing Voice's .By Human I mean just hands and legs with no wings and horns. Interestingly enough though the other girls are not on friend terms when Twilight first meets them. This provides Twilight with her first challenge of reuniting the five girls in order to fight back against Sunset Shimmer's plans. I'm going to state this bluntly, Twilight's friends transition perfectly into their human counter parts. Despite them being human they still act exactly as they would in their pony forms except as humans with a good amount of new additions to how they act thanks to the new world. Good examples that I saw throughout the film are them using cell phones, laptops, and the internet with comedic results all around. Their interactions with Twilight were always a boost to the film whether it was for comedic effect or for a more serious tone. The Human Main Six seem perfectly natural and do not in any way bring down the quality of the film what so ever but instead give it an interestingly fresh new take on the personalities on the ponies we've come to know and love.

6) The Human World:
I have to commend DHX Studios for what they did with the Human world. They brought it to life in such a way that one would think that it had always existed alongside the pony world. Once again everything just feels natural and not forced which helped me as the viewer immerse myself into this new world. The majority of the movie takes place in Canterlot High School in the city of Canterlot with a handful of scenes taking place outside of the school grounds. It would be easy to assume that all DHX had to do to populate this new school was take the minor and background ponies from the show and humanize them. While this does happen it should be noted that only a small number of ponies from the actual show get humanized while the rest of the students are completely new creations. It would seem that when choosing which ponies to humanize the good folks over at DHX chose only the ponies that had a healthy amount of spoken lines from the show(ex: The CMC, Big Mac, The Great and Powerful Trixie, etc...) and the ponies that were popular with the Brony Fandom (ex: Photo Finish, Vinyl Scratch, etc...). Almost all of the ponies that got humanized received good human forms with only two exceptions. The Human world that Twilight visits seems to be modeled after our own with the existence of cars, computers, smartphones, and other forms of technology. I was satisfied with how the human world was portrayed in the movie with it being kept simple but with enough detail to keep the viewer immersed throughout the duration of the film.

7) Songs:
Daniel Ingram is a master at what he does. Recently he received a lot of flak for the Season Three finale of the show with jokes being made about how he wrote the entire episode. A while before the films release Mr. Ingram tweeted that the songs for Equestria Girls were going to rock. Most of us in the fandom (Including myself) most likely didn't take it seriously. Now that I have seen the film however and heard all of the songs featured in it I can say that Daniel Ingram was mostly right when he said that they would rock. The film features five unique songs and a reprise that worked in favor of film. Most of the songs in the film were enjoyable but were some what forgettable with the exception of the song Help Twilight Win The Crown. I honestly can't wait for remixes of this song to come from the Brony Fandom (Sim Gretina or Archie remix? Yes please!). The rest of the film is perfectly orchestrated by the talented William Kevin Anderson with background music that just seems natural for the movies High School setting. The full fledge songs along with the background music contributes greatly to the movie.

8) Negatives:
Nothing in this world that we live in is perfect, this movie is no exception. While the rest of the film hit the nail on the head many times there were definitely some noticeable misses that just seemed to slow down the film. I will list them of in the order from greatest to least severity. It is at this point that I would like to remind those of you reading this that these are opinions, not facts. I'm not going to beat around the bush, when it comes to Snips and Snails in this movie I absolutely hated them. Most of their screen time is composed of their human counter parts stumbling around following orders or them snickering annoyingly while they stalked Twilight in the film. They came off as just mindless drones whose only two purposes in the film were to be mindless lackeys and annoy the audience. Remember when I said that most of the ponies received good human forms with two exceptions? Well those two exceptions were Princess Celestia and Princess Luna or as they are known in the film, Principle Celestia and Vice-Principle Luna. I believe that they received perhaps the worst human character models out all those who were humanized. Their personalities transitioned perfectly but I found it difficult to take what they did or said seriously from how they looked. Another negative that I found with the film was the pacing but this was to be expected. The film lasts around one hour and ten minutes making it twenty six minutes longer than the shows standard two part episodes. The whole film felt a bit rushed in some parts, an example being that a new song began a minute after the previous song ended. The final negative I had with the film contains spoilers so if you haven't watched the film then please skip on down to the conclusion. At the climax of the film Sunset Shimmer undergoes a transformation very similar to Queen Chrysalis from the Season Two finale. Instead of transforming into a Changeling however she turns into a demonic monster reminiscent of a Gargoyle fueled by magic. She also turns Snips and Snails into her Gargoyle minions before mind controlling the rest of the students in the school with a plan to, and I quote, "Lead a teenage army.." into Equestria and conquer it. At first I didn't really like the character design of Gargoyle Shimmer but it started to grow on a me a bit when the action sequences began. I definitely liked her design better than Twilight Sparkle and the rest of the Main Six turning in Human Horse hybrids to combat her. I was really hoping that I wouldn't see those Human Horse Hybrids.

Conclusion

Did I like Equestria Girls? I can safely say that I did even with its flaws. I believe that a fan from the show can easily tell that a lot of effort went into the creation of this Spin Off movie. Even though this film's sole purpose by Hasbro was to sell toys in order to compete with Monster High Dolls the amount of care that went into the movies creation shows that DHX wanted this film to stand out as something fun and unique. I can safely say they succeeded in both categories. This is similar to when Hasbro handed Lauren Faust the MLP:FiM intellectual property after shooting down her idea for Milky Way and The Galaxy Girls. Instead of producing a sub par product both Lauren Faust and DHX took what they had to the next level and made it worthwhile. When I first stepped into the theater I was prepared to rate Equestria Girls as an hour special rather than a movie. Now I feel that will not do the film any justice so I will rate it as if I had just seen a regular film. I give Equestria Girls an 8.5/10 from what I listed above. I am now ashamed of myself for doubting DHX, the studio that brought me MLP:FiM in the first place. Now obviously there will be those whose opinions differ from mine but at the end of the day I believe that the film was worth my $9.85 admission price. If you haven't seen EqG yet then I recommend you find give it a fair chance. You don't have to go to a theater to watch it, though I highly recommend it, but at least sit down in front of your computers when you have nothing else to do and see what it is for yourselves. Oh and don't think that the folks at DHX had forgotten about the Brony fanbase, stick around till after the credits to see a familiar face smile at you.