Review. MLP: The Disney Movie · 7:14pm Oct 10th, 2017
Spoilers ahead.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery French writer (1900 - 1944)
If I didn't know better, I'd say that the MLP writing staff took this quote as a drivers' license and decided to punch it at 150 mph through a school zone. Minimalist fine, but when becomes everything you end gaping holes and distracting longtime fans TV show. See what I did there?
So this story stars the mane six: Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. They pull crazy shenanigans and go on a far-flung adventure to save the two three princesses of Equestria--Cadance got promoted offscreen apparently, and divorced Shining Armor. The princesses have been encased in crystal, Spyro the Dragon style, by a new movie villain. His name is Liev Schreiber The Storm King, who has terrorized the countries south of Equestria for years... days... centuries? Uh, well we don't really get to know his history. That's okay though, because there's another musical number coming up! Just one small thing, one small thing. I wish that I could remember one small thing... who the other three members of the mane six were, but they didn't do anything at all to advance the plot so please excuse the hole in my memory. It's nothing compared to the holes in the writers' memories, which are more like Swiss cheese than Changeling hooves.
Oh, you wanted to see Changelings in this movie? Sorry, the mane six passed up their new allies because the princess vaguely mentioned hippos. Discord? Sorry, he's off pranking starship captains. The Cutie Mark Crusaders pulling off some half-baked plan to do something crucial to the plot? Nope. Starlight Glimmer? Nah, she forgot that she could teleport and ended up captured with the rest of the chumps in Canterlot. Shining Armor with his badass shield power leading an army of his crystal pony subjects to save Canterlot? Nope, BBBFF now stands for "Big Brother Best Forgotten Forever." Ember leading an army of dragons as a goodwill gesture to their new pony friends? I guess you forgot my Spyro reference, apparently they were trapped in crystal too. The Wonderbolts flying in to kick some ass? Nope, they all got captured offscreen and forgot they could fly.
Instead, we get such forgettable cats as... an anthropomorphic cat! Uh... what was his name again? Tom? Garfield? Oh, Capper. I had to look it up. Then there's a group of pirates who were enslaved and terrorized by the Storm King so hard that it took an entire half of one musical number to turn them back to being pirates. Don't worry though, they're good pirates, not the steal-your-stuff kind. Or the how-I-watched-this-movie kind. Then there was Ariel some geeky seapony gal whose only desire is to make real friends on land instead of turning her seashell bra into puppets. By the way, Capper alone gets more lines than Fluttershy, Applejack, and Rarity combined. Ah, those were their names.
So we've got the ingredients together for a perfect Disney movie. Does it deliver? Well, by 2000's Disney movie standards, sure. It's a hell of a lot better than most of the direct-to-video crap we've gotten from the Big D over the years. MLP the Movie's animation is nice and colorful with lots of cool little details. A few of the facial expressions were off, but overall it looks much better than the show. I'm no animation expert, but I think I even spied a few hand-drawn backgrounds. The humor delivers, with the exception of Pinkie Pie who has basically become Jar Jar Binks by this point. The songs, while not "A Whole New World," kept my attention... along with one of the best villain songs we've gotten from MLP with Tempest, one of the few memorable songs in the movie. They way over-did it on the number of songs, in my opinion, but they got Sia! So they have to use her at the end! Sorry, but I preferred "Love is In Bloom" as an ending song to whatever tripe she sang. MLP is a big enough IP to score some good VA's this time around, and they deliver quite captivating performances. The Storm King was a great villain with an evil-sounding voice. So yeah, by Disney movie standards, it's a decent flick.
But that's the main problem with the movie. It wasn't supposed to be Pirates of the Caribbean, the Little Mermaid, or Aristocats. It was supposed to be My Little Pony: The Movie. On that count, it entirely failed. I've already mentioned the characters who are missing, but what about the settings? No Ponyville. No Everfree Forest. No Appleloosa. No Crystal Empire. None of the memorable places from the show make an appearance. Neither do any of the memorable things. No Elements of Harmony. No pets. No cool Twilight Sparkle magic spells. She even forgets that she can teleport, ending up easily captured by Tempest about 2/3 of the way through.
You know, I could nitpick this movie to death if I wanted to. I could point out all the silly little flaws like "How does the sun and moon move while the princesses are captured?" or "My god Rainbow was so OOC stupid for doing a Sonic Rainboom and attracting Tempest's attention" or "Why couldn't Twilight just grab the staff in the end with her magic?" But I don't think it will matter. The nitpicks aren't really important compared to the main flaw of the movie.
Not what's there, but what isn't.
Not the characters we see, but the ones we don't.
Not the Disney movie that we got, but the MLP movie that we didn't.
I mean, the diamond dogs exist, and Applejack owns a pet dog.
Stop making me laugh my doughy tits off at work, you asshole!
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Ah, that's right.
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I think this proves I'm too easily entertained, because I loved the movie.
Not that I disagree with your points. Makes me hype for the Cinamare Sins of it.
So, do you like the movie or not?
Also, what is your recommendation for the movie? Should people see it or not?
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I didn't like the movie as an MLP movie. As a generic kids' flick it was okay. Pay to see it if you don't mind spending $10 on a movie that you can watch online for free.
You got to remember that the movie was announced in late 2014, and so the events that happen after season 4 wouldn't be seen other then a few characters (Starlight, Trixie, Party Favor, ect) to make it coincide with the canon of the show. Like the story of Twilight and her friends going on a journey to save Equestria was most likely already been written by the time the other season came, so at this point you have two options. 1) Scrap or heavily alter the entire script to include those events or characters for a bigger role. 2) Keep most of the script intact and had some characters for continuity to the show.
If they went with the first option, I imagine it would of taken a lot longer for the movie to come out.
So your complaint about why the six couldn't get help from their allies isn't because that it was execute out of the story , but more because of passage of time during production.
Though the only complaint I do agree is that, yeah they should of at least show Discord rather than a shaded figure of him in the consort ending.
I have to disagree with you with the settings. While it would of been nice to see those locations, it wouldn't really make a difference since they were traveling to the Hippogriffs that is outside of Equestria. In most adventure stories, the hero(s) usually travel to someplace new on their journey to experience this new place rather than go to a familiar location of what you already saw before. So yeah, there would be no point for the 7 to go to those places. How would seeing the EoH be helpful, especially since there in the Tree of Harmony? We saw Angel bunny dress as a bird, and saw Tank, but still, not really a priority. While Twilight did get captured, I don't think she could teleport away since it was a surprise capture (cage trapped her from above while she was distracted) and as we saw, she tried to blast her way, but seeing that the bars were unaffected by her magic, they must of also been able to counter a teleportation spell as well.
An army of Changeling, Crystal Ponies, Dragons, Buffalo (anyone remember that they exist?) and Griffons marching on Canterlot under the leadership of Twilight Sparkle would have been EPIC. Really wish we'd gotten that.