My Little Pony: A New Generation short review (SPOILERS)

So, me and my wife watched My Little Pony: A New Generation just now. Part of me was dreading it was just going to be a complete mess that didn’t know what it was going to be as a sequel to a pop-culture phenomenon like Friendship is Magic, while the other part was hoping it’d somehow blow my mind away.

To my utter disappointment; it did neither.

The movie was just meh.

I mean part of me can acknowledge and appreciate the prologue with the nice animation by Boulder Media of the Mane Six which transitions directly into the movie, complete with Tara Strong, Ashleigh Ball, Andrea Libman and Tabitha St. Germain reprising their roles. Also, no Spike. So even after their series he’s still the butt-monkey. (Assuming any species besides ponies even exist now, despite being a “sequel.”)

The premise? That after an undetermined amount of time the three pony tribes just started to hate each other, right down to politically charged propaganda about stereotypes like unicorns frying everyone’s brains with their magic, pegasi being brutes and earth ponies being mentally deficient.

The plot? Bring the tribes back together again. That’s it. I don’t recall if they even mention the names of Twilight Sparkle once, let alone there’s absolutely no explanation how the split occurred, and there’s not even a token mention about Celestia or Luna or alicorns in general. Nor any of the historical royalty.

Even the world feels so generic. G4 Equestria at least had distinct characteristics; rudimentary technology for the most part, combined with magi-tek elements which still embraced the more fantastic fantasy feel. Here? Generic coastal town that reminded me of Malaga Spain, with televisions and high-grade industrial tech.

The pegasus city I will admit looked nice architecturally; very Art Nouveau. Still, the fact we see mythical creatures indulging in shallow social media with smartphones just really did not strike a chord. In fantasy I think most of us want it to be a fantasy. We have shallow, intrusive and invasive social media coming out the ears enough as is in reality.

The unicorns living in what looked on the outside like Fangorn Forest from Middle-Earth with a touch of Lothlorien and even the Shire with the teahouse did appeal to the druid fan in me. I get this is apparently in a vaguely defined “distant future” (on part of the G4 Equestria being called “Ancient Equestria”, what with their trains, grand architecture and magic that even time could not dispel,) but they went from grand spires to living in trees. And despite being magical creatures they became superstitious. (Blip!)

In terms of characters; while I can remember them for the most part, not that striking. Sunny Starscout and Zipp Storm were arguably the most competent. Daresay I even quite enjoyed Zipp as the level-headed one, despite being a pegasus whom I don’t doubt many were comparing to Rainbow Dash. Sunny is the hopeful, starry-eyed one who I can see being compared to being the mouth-piece of the people who want to keep the message of the franchise as a whole alive and being anti-authority (I can dig that). Just not all the special otherwise.

Izzy just felt like a Pinkie Pie clone. Scratch that; a season 3-4 and G4 movie Pinkie Pie clone. Dumbed down to the max to the point of being unaware of her surroundings. The reason I initially thought I’d hate G4 Pinkie Pie when I actually love that precious little cinnamon bun. The only time I felt emotion for her was dreading when the adventure will end. Just kinda felt like the writers were thinking they absolutely needed a new Pinkie Pie, but just didn’t know the purpose of the character (as I’m sure given how they don’t even keep regular writers on hand or even seem to check continuity.)

Hitch Trailblazer, the male lead of the group was fine, James Marsden does a fine job (I recognize him as the human lead from the Sonic the Hedgehog movie), but even he comes off as a little too thick: Trying to arrest someone while in enemy territory, let alone going all the way to said enemy territory to do their job as Sherriff. I mean that’s some KGB assassin grade of dedication to one’s job, minus the icepick.

Pipp was perhaps the blandest. She’s a pop idol, loves social media and is on said smartphone all the time to the point of causing problems and only becomes grounded (figuratively and literally) after her big show is ruined. After that she kinda just blends into the background.

The bit about magic being gone due to the ponies being driven apart. I guess I get it; Cozy Glow tried something similar in FiM season 8 (one major weakness for this being a sequel is how poorly executed the post movie seasons were). Not the best explanation really. But it addressed that the unicorns can’t use spells and the pegasi can’t fly and the earth ponies lacked their Herculean strength and fortitude without magic. Though if there was no magic to begin with, how would they still have cutie marks (which are on the right flank only instead of both sides).

Which brings me to some major inconsistencies: If the ponies were separate; where were the Windigoes? Or were they just confined to that one space in the world? The world is coined as “Equestria”, but is this just another area dubbed that or is the land we saw previously a frigid, unlivable wintery wasteland with snowcapped ruins all over? (Admittedly that’d be pretty cool in regards to the FiM episode A Hearth’s Warming Tail.)

Let alone how this split affected all the other species that we saw living in Equestria: The dragons, the gryphons, the yaks, the hippogriffs, the changelings and the kirin. Did they just bugger off and are now wholly unknown to ponykind since it was “Ancient Equestria?”

The one last bit is the, well, I guess tried and true legacy I think even G4 should have discarded: The McGuffin: Three crystals; one for each pony tribe. Of course, they first assume it’s only two, which they gleam off a broken stained-glass window in the pegasus city allegedly back from when the ponies still mingled (also hello Wonderbolts poster). What is this crystal? Where did it come from? Did someone make it? Did Twilight Sparkle create some contingency since King Sombra destroyed the Tree of Harmony and the Elements of Harmony? Who cares; it’s important!

After a needlessly prolonged scene trying to bring the three pieces together with the movie’s antagonist Sprout Cloverleaf in his pony dictator getup and literal war mech, after the heartfelt speech that the magic would only come back when everypony were together. And then Sunny becomes and alicorn… For a moment at least, as the crystals basically serve as a proxy to the Elements, the Tree and the Pillars’ artifacts; come the rainbow burst and everything’s good again: Pegasi can fly once more, unicorns can magic it up again and I’m assuming earth ponies are ultra-sturdy.

And then everyone’s fine and dandy despite what sounds like generations of hateful propaganda and mistrust that we’re still not told of how it happened in the first place. So we went from the previous status quo, that already dealt with this very same scenario (FiM season 1: Hearth’s Warming Eve) to achieve said status quo, only to once again go back to said status quo. Essentially nothing changed.

Yes, kids’ show, I know. But I think too often people just think children are idiots when they clearly aren’t, and if you market something as a sequel, then make it a sequel that actually remains consistent with the predecessor. Other than; “Hey, remember these characters you all know and love?” “Look, their toys are on the shelf.” “Look, callbacks to the previous series.”

Other than just being a name in a popular franchise: What did it accomplish? As a sequel? As a stand-alone? All in all; unremarkable. Markets itself as a sequel to something that had an impact to the likes of Pokemon, but doesn’t seem to know what it itself wants to be. Would I recommend this to anyone? If being brutally honest: No, I wouldn’t.

Frankly, since it’s a continuation to a great series that just ended up ending poorly, I just feel like I’m having G4 burnout again.

Now if you excuse me; off to read Fallout Girls for the fifth time.