), I do love fussing over stats where anything of interest is concerned, Fimfic included. Happily, I’m not alone (because duh My Little Pony: A New Generation – Review · 7:35pm Sep 29th, 2021
Izzy don't need no magic to hone in on crystals with as much accuracy as Rarity did with gems.
NOTE as of Nov 2nd, 2021: The review below no longer fully reflects my current opinion on the film. I have elected not to edit it any further. Any significant differences are noted at the bottom of the blog post.
The statute of limitations for spoilers on a movie that debuts on a streaming platform with 209+ million subscribers (many of them shared accounts!) and climbs to the #1 spot for kids and the general top 5 in many territories worldwide on opening weekend (and hits #1 on Wednesday 29th), in a franchise whose adult fandom is notorious for leaks and watching new major content the instant it debuts - that runs out in way less than five days. Plus, even in its current, severely diminished size, the My Little Pony fandom still has plenty of geeks, and regardless of the potential disparity of opinions, there will be hundreds dozens of bland, spoiler-free reviews around, saying what I would if I had to behave myself.
The point being, I don’t want to write that review, so there is going to be no hesitation about spoilers here. By all means, bail now if you must - your ghost host will be here once you’ve seen the thing.
M’kay, horsekeeping out of the way.
Sunny isn't skating away from that horse pun, no siree!
A cursory perusal of the small handful of critical reviews available for My Little Pony: A New Generation (there is even less reason in sending out screeners for your toy commercial when it’s airing for free on a streaming service, rather then for $7-12 at your local cinema) reveals that even the more reserved ones applaud the film for having important messages and themes, especially in our current era. This is wrong. I mean, it is right in that those messages and themes are there - saying the film is designed as a vehicle for them is being polite - and it is right that those are good messages to impart, but it is absolutely wrong as far as the film’s content beyond its surface dialogue and incident backing them up, reinforcing them, making the text of the piece allow these themes to seem logical and natural and not just to bring the subtext forward. Giving a kids’ movie a free pass solely because of what it imparts, regardless of how it is executed - an ethos seen nowhere in the media 4 years ago with My Little Pony: The Movie, incidentally - is even more of a pet peeve for me then the usual relaxing of standards for kids’ entertainment. Maybe it could lead to good conversations between parents and their kids on said topics after watching, I guess.
Why open this focusing on the film’s usefulness for kids? Because outside of the film being “good” for the kids making it good for the parents, this film has minimal use for an adult viewer. Sidelining the film’s effect for its intended audience and focusing on it as a consumable object for the remains of My Little Pony’s adult fanbase feels like a fool’s mission, until we get to the part where, at least thus far (I can’t speak to down the line, fortune telling is not a gift granted to the spectral), this film has been positively received by the fandom, more so then the 2017 film.
Some of the thematic imagery is… uncomfortably unsubtle.
Judging this film as a complete whole, and not individual components, that proves tricky. In some capacity, A New Generation retains most of the flaws present to one degree or another across Friendship Is Magic, especially in its last few seasons - tone mismanagement, predictable/forced scripts, declining continuity, lore and worldbuilding as the plot dictates, forced diversity messaging - and makes some of them worse, while taking many of the great constant strengths - the relaxed and intimate pacing, the impeccable voice acting, the legitimate personalities and depth of the characters - and knocking them down a few pegs. All while introducing characters with “personalities” into the mix, the kind you get when animation writers and executives decide characters shall have personality. With the disparity between my take and the consensus, I know the burden of proof is on me to explain why, so I shall do my very best to justify my take. And that which I think works too - for there is quite a lot to applaud here too.
The film begins with a prologue explicitly connecting itself to Friendship Is Magic, positing that the three types of ponies used to be friends but fell apart ages ago, and see, that’s how long it took to hit a core problem. In that show, recall, the pony’s very history is founded on them coming together in friendship being necessary to survive millennia previously, and they have to remain that way lest the world fall into turmoil. Far more distressing is how this decision completely upsets the happy utopian ending of that show, Star Wars sequel style. It’s abundantly clear that the connection to Generation 4 was pure Brony baiting, to get fans of exclusively Friendship Is Magic but not My Little Pony as a whole to check the film out. Which, hey, mission accomplished. It’s equally clear that the connection was not desired - after the first minute, nothing regarding G4 is ever referred to again except as vague background details (pointetly, Twilight is very obviously referred to purely as “a unicorn”) that make perfect sense as the world’s own history. You could show this film to anyone, adult or child, who had never heard of or seen any G4 content, and it would all make perfect sense. Happily - for an extremely specific definition of the word - by presenting a world and lore that doesn’t mesh even marginally with Friendship Is Magic, and is 99% trying to be its own thing, it’s very easy to ignore that connecting tissue if one wants (besides which, the last few seasons were a stumbling wreck I’d already written off). I’m aware many fans have delighted in the G4 connection, especially in reading the various Pixar-style Easter Eggs throughout as serious lore and continuity nods and remaining hopeful they’ll be expanded in future animated media (I wouldn’t hold your breath for more then the vaguest nods that don’t mean anything significant). But if you’re going to invent that much headcanon to paper over the torrent of plot holes and gaps of logic in connecting these two incarnations - among other things, nature controls itself here and there’s nothing to be seen of the menagerie of fantasy creatures that populated G4 alongside ponies - there’s not a plot hole in the entirety of cinema that can’t be skipped over. Said fans are already looking to what the show next year will do, having just watched this film, which is the total opposite to my approach, as someone who likes to savour and live with his animated cinema for a while. So you have an idea as to where my priorities lie, and what I think is best for the film and its target audience. Regardless, that is all I intend to say about the Friendship Is Magic connection, for I would much rather judge the film on its own merits, not as the kneecap between an upper and lower leg.
[Do not misunderstand that I am ignoring this connection, I’ve just said all there is to be said on it.]
I like to imagine Zipp's eyes are clenched shut against not the sun, but the same overbearing diversity messaging we just discussed.
Anyway, its own merits aren’t the sturdiest. In a nutshell: little earth pony filly Sunny has totally bought into her dad’s beliefs that all ponies can be friends again one day. Many years later, the orphaned mare continued to carry this sunny philosophy with her, soldiering on despite her ostracization from almost everypony in her cozy hometown of Maretime Bay. The last straw comes when Sunny botches her hijacking of Canterlogic’s presentation for pony defence gear (never mind that the different ponies have never interacted with each other in living memory) to make a statement of peace, to the degree that even her childhood friend Sheriff Hitch finds it difficult to continue associating with her. Right on the heels of this, a unicorn named Izzy wanders into town, and in her efforts to keep the new arrival safe, Sunny promptly learns that the unicorns don’t have any magic, having lost it ages ago. The two promptly set off on a quest to the dwelling of the pegasi, Zephyr Heights, hoping to find clues and to reunite all ponies again. Meanwhile, Hitch pursues Sunny, leaving an open window for Deputy Sheriff Sprout, deep set in a psychotic mixture of the same beliefs everypony else is under and some deep-seated mommy issues (his mother Phyllis runs Canterlogic), to stage a propaganda revolution and mount an offence against the other pony tribes.
Sunny and Izzy looking out for each other is nice, but not as nice as the pristine crispness of this screenshot. And many others!
This is, on the whole, not held together well - I don’t mean to dwell on the topical diversity themes, but the world and characters exist foremost as a vehicle for them, with all other concerns secondary. Besides which, even if one approves of these themes or doesn’t mind them, the target demographic prevents these themes being tackled beyond the barest surface-level. There are some slightly unusual nuggets regarding how the various racism aspects are presented at the margins, but the execution is simply nowhere near good enough to justify shackling the film to them so tightly. Given that, it’s unsurprising that the characters aren't the deepest, though there are personalities here - in the film’s most surprising development, Hitch strikes a decent balance between wanting to protect his town and uphold convention but also valuing Sunny, and he (mostly) does not get shackled as the token male in a crowd of females as the story progresses, also having arguably the strongest character arc. Izzy is very much a Creator's Pet, but she still gets many of the best gags and is the obvious standout - there is just enough warmth, depth and deep-rooted insecurity to her throughout that she is not at all the manic gremlin you might assume. Sunny is largely a typical bland dreamer protagonist in a community of conformists (it was hard to stop my mind jumping to Judy Hopps from Zootopia as a comparison, one that does Sunny no favours), but her plight and quest is still sympathetic, and she is broadly likeable. And in the early stages, the film is well-paced and self-contained enough that it is close to consistently enjoyable.
Foals always get prematurely excited, don't they?
It’s once the action gets to Zephyr Heights, however, that more rot creeps into the screenplay. For starters, the party swells to include two royal pegasi sisters, Zipp and Pipp, both of whom are not just bland, but actively horrible characters. Zipp’s shallowness makes Sunny look great in comparison, and she’s without the benefit of a protagonist’s plight or arc to make her sympathetic, plus it helps not at all that she is presented as a flawless character who can do no wrong (there is a running thread later where Hitch is out of his depth and tries to hide it, and she ribs him while trying to get him to soften up, and it is exactly as much cringe as it sounds, so thank goodness it's dropped as quickly as it's introduced). Pipp, meanwhile, is a Pony Pop Star, with exactly the kind of social media exuberance and personality that I put active effort into avoiding people like. Even after the group is on the run, she remains largely as much of a diva as ever. Congratulations, Pipp - you ended the Generation Five Worst Pony debate before it began. Humorously, the film is very visibly disinterested in these two, given how little they do once the action leaves Zephyr Heights and continues on to the unicorn forest Bridlewood. Especially Pipp, who actually contributes and speaks less than Sprout in the film, and he's offscreen for lengthy chunks.
This scene was one of the few moments that made me want to drink bleach, a feeling that popped up with every Pipp moment in the advertising. Which, yeah, easy thing for the spectral to say.
Also problematic is the pace the film adopts at this stage - the short journeys between the locations especially leaves visible scars on the film’s worldbuilding - with new plot points upon which the core conflict resides springing up left and right. Not uncommon in bright, colourful kids’ movies, and yet reconfiguring the plot into a MacGuffin hunt (which even the film itself finds rote and uninspiring) at almost exactly the halfway mark is especially bad writing, via the characters making lightning-quick plot-mandated assumptions that dictate the course of the rest of the film. It’s good that the the objects they hunt for turn out to not be the actual solution, but Jesus, that doesn’t excuse what it turns the back half into. But aside from the plot becoming more of a rickety shambles, the pace strips the film of much breathing room, giving us less time to simply enjoy spending time with the characters, possibly the key pleasure of My Little Pony.
It definitely isn't too bad, as individual moments, and sometimes even whole scenes, are paced fine, it’s only on a wider scale that this affects the film. So it at least fares better than Raya and the Last Dragon, the first comparison my mind leapt to (given the plot and thematic similarities) which was so manic that it was rushed even on the macro level. Here, the pace only truly gets objectionable in the last 24 minutes, like the film realises its got 30 minutes of content to squeeze in. Alas, a script is about how the elements come together, not how they operate in isolation. I don’t know if the script was always this length or was squashed down, but you could easily add close to 20 minutes without changing the story at all. Though 10 minutes would be enough, and even 7, if the right things to add are chosen. Either way, this affects a lot - even the mild surprises, such as when the figureheads of the three pony tribes subtly realise the mistakes of their worldviews and come together, barely make an impact, making a moment that should be powerfully stirring instead, at best, marginally probing. Not to mention the film’s light tone makes the de-rigueur escalating seriousness and sadness as it approaches the end ring mostly hollow. Mostly - a few moments do manage to still stir an emotional reaction.
Izzy, darling, you wouldn't be smiling that much if you could read English alongside Ponish, and understand what is written here.
It’s a pity, because when the film does slow down and allow for a quiet, intimate character moment, it is not without power. A mid-film campfire where Sunny and Izzy reflect on their journey and what making friends means for them is actually touching, one of the few moments where the warm and intimate relationship between those two you’d expect actually breaks through the rushed story (and the way Hitch's arc is intermingled with these two during this scene is especially lovely). And I do very much appreciate how the film doesn’t try and weigh its characters evenly, but establishes a clear hierarchy of importance - trying to balance the former was a frequent stumbling point for Friendship Is Magic.
One could fill the rest of the review simply listing all the plot holes, contrivances, and spontaneous character decisions, developments and realisations that the script commits, and be here a while. That does no one any good, and isn’t any fun to read or write. Instead, let’s jump over to the world and lore, another point of serious contention. Functionally, this film is quite similar there to Trolls and Smurfs: The Lost Village, two recent CG films very much for little kids, with similar toyetic characters and which also takes place in tiny, Hundred Acre Wood-sized locales that feel no larger than the plot dictates. A New Generation’s world is similarly compact, the entirety of the world spanning at most a few miles and having at best a couple thousand ponies, a choice absolutely with merit and charm of its own - my loyalty will always lie with the expansive world of Friendship Is Magic, but for a self-contained object with its own voice, I do approve of this direction. Yet while those other two films told stories sized to their world, this film’s diversity plot encompasses a cornerstone of a whole species’ history, trying to tell a grand-scale story of racism, prejudice and friendship unity. This juxtaposition never settles, and worse still, only highlights how many aspects of the lore and characters' decisions make no sense when examined logically. It makes it completely impossible to buy into this world as a place where the characters live when the animation camera is not pointed at them - at best, it’s a group of computer sets where scenes are acted out. And that’s without even going back to the Friendship Is Magic connection, which spanned numerous locales spanning somewhere between a country and a continent. There’s minimal rich lore to be found either, even if the film occasionally does a neat subversion (a mid-credits scene possibly alleviates the complaint of the earth ponies having no magic, even by implication - we’ll have to see how future G5 animated media handles this).
Hitch: "Does that sticker contain lore that didn't make the final cut?"
The voice acting is a mixed bag (thanks solely to one outlier, otherwise it would average out to quite decent), though it is fitting that the better-written a character is, the better their performance, by and large. Kimoko Glenn captures Izzy’s buzzy energy great, with Izzy being one of only two characters blessed with a proper voice actress (the other being the unicorn figurehead introduced inexplicably late which the film nonetheless uses adequately, voiced, somehow, by voice acting veteran Phil LaMarr). Otherwise, James Marsden is quite good as Hitch, while Sofia Carson phones in her performance as Pipp (being fair, much of that is on what the diva is required to say). Casting famed YouTuber/Viner and freshly-turned actress Liza Koshy as Zipp proves just as disastrously as you’d expect: on top of a performance so concentrated on putting on an ill-fitting voice that calling it “acting” is generous, the voice frequently fluctuates on what affected deepness and raspiness to stick with, sometimes in the same line. Hilariously, she’s the only one of the five main leads to never sing - coincidental as this probably is, I like to imagine even the producers realised that voice and acting wasn’t going to work singing (ssh, ignore how Sprout gets a separate actor for his song, let me have this moment). Ken Jeong’s work as Sprout continues his trend of proving annoying more by the writing then his own talents (this is his ninth animated feature, he did exactly what he could with the role), while Elizabeth Perkins, Jane Krakowski and Michael McKean are passable in their small roles as Phyllis, Queen Haven and Sunny’s dad Argyle. Vanessa Hudgens’ performance as Sunny, meanwhile, the film’s cornerstone, is all over the map, fluctuating between surprisingly nuanced line readings to the dead-fish reciting of others. Weirdly, she has much more trouble with the smarm and smirk moments (though this being My Little Pony, they are modest and not too plentiful), with some especially dire examples early on, then the more emotionally probing moments, which work quite well. Either way, she mostly retains energy to her vocal delivery.
I will say that the vocal performances, while unmistakably modern and of our era, are thankfully not distractingly so like many recent CG animated films, where the characters often sound like someone you ran into at a shopping mall. Except for Pipp, but given her character, that’s no surprise.
Pipp: "Do we really have to save the magic now? This here is a prime shot for content!"
Ultimately, even at its height, the best onscreen pleasures of Friendship Is Magic were always the characters and light comedy, with the other aspects being nice bonuses and usually mere appetisers to expand on in fan content (in particular, the lore and world). And clearly these two aspects have worked well enough for many viewers - many of the criticisms to this point have been noted by others, just less severely. With the characters already discussed, that leaves only the comedy, which is… decent? Given the target demographic, the edges are sanded way off, so the film wisely doesn’t go for belly laughs, keeping itself mostly to grin-inducers and mild chucklers. With the usual animated film three-tiered joke system of toilet humour, innuendos and pop culture references thankfully almost fully absent (the references are kept almost solely to background gags, some of which are quite good), that leaves very little to work with. But it also means that the humour ends up being largely character-based, and generally pleasant. Thus, the jokes fare decently - there are, at least, minimal misconceived groaners (the few that are being the few focused pop culture references). It’s not enough to increase the film’s entertainment value more than marginally, nor to compensate for the frequently juvenile dialogue, but it is there. Plus, the social media jokes are kept rare (almost all of them were in the advertising), another small miracle.
Sprout is just surprised at how few social media jokes there are as I am.
And some of the songs by Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler are good - quite good, even. Okay, two of the songs, and as fate would have it, they’re the two Act I songs. First being “Gonna Be My Day”, Sunny’s upbeat solo as she travels through town after the prologue, doing what any good musical song should do - telling us about this character, fleshing her out, and getting us to root for her, all while being entertaining (it’s startling how much more consistent Hudgens’ acting is for Sunny in the songs). The other being “I’m Looking Out For You”, a short little travelling montage number for Sunny and Izzy, the only other place in the movie where their friendship gets focused airtime, and benefiting from many of the film’s most beautiful environments (it reminded me of Trolls’ “Get Back Up Again”, and in a good way). They may ultimately be typical kids’ pop musical songs, but there’s no arguing with catchy songs that get inside your head, and even though these two numbers still have issues aplenty - the former’s visuals are saturated with more early planting for the film’s diversity themes, while the latter starts abruptly and is too short - they’re relative winners. The songs are very well integrated into the film, and keep themselves short and to the point, two descriptions that didn’t really apply to the musical resumé of the 2017 film. As much as Daniel Ingram’s musical voice for Friendship Is Magic remains winning, the change in composers and style gives the songs their own identity - a far less unique identity, but one with some merit.
I am flummoxed at how many times I've listened to "Gonna Be My Day" over the past few days. Can't get a better endorsement then that!
The other songs aren’t as strong, but are perfectly serviceable: “Fit Right In”, the second My Little Pony song of that exact title, is weirdly the only diegetic song to feel like an obligation for padding (it accomplishes nothing that affects the rest of the film), rather than covering narrative or plot points, a very strange feeling given all songs in this film were trimmed from their album versions for pacing. More specifically, not only could the plot point of unicorn disguises be covered in a jump cut, but thematically it's repeating points covered in the prior campfire scene. Given how the pacing gets right after this song, it's a weird diversion. Still, it certainly is a decent toe-tapper, and the hip-hop and rap genre mashing does have its merits and entertainment value (it's not surprising this is many people's favourite song). The antagonist’s song, “Danger Danger”, aims to subvert expectations with propaganda imagery and more genre experimentation in Nirvana-style rock riffs, but though it largely lands as a poor man’s “Be Prepared”, it's actually quite striking and catchy, making for the only stretch of the film where Sprout is an engaging character. Though it doesn’t help that the dramatic lighting used throughout is awfully oversaturated, one of the few technical missteps in the film’s look. Least it stands out!
Meanwhile, the best thing that can be said about the film’s single, “Glowin’ Up”, a piece of processed pop pap, is that it’s kept to background music during a heist scene (it makes sense in context), while the other pop number, “It’s Alright”, nominally a credits song, only appears briefly for a Dance Dance Revolution-type game which is rickety and poorly integrated even by this script's standards. At least even the pop songs are all original, no use of pre-existing music here. Hasbro steered clear of one trope of cookie-cutter CG animated features, anyway.
And now we get to the film’s animation, and this is where I stop sniping, for A New Generation is an exquisite-looking film. Unless Hasbro shelled out far more money for this then seems reasonable (based on my industry expertise, the 2017 film’s $8 million budget, and Hasbro’s past with self-produced media, I’d put its maximum cost at $20 million), it’s amazing that it looks as good as it does. There is not a single aspect of the film that looks blandly and cheaply rendered and designed in the way that most inexpensive European-animated CG films do frequently, or intermittently. With only a few gripes, I can proudly say bravo for rewarding my faith in Ireland’s first theatrical (intended) CG animated film.
Everypony's just as giddy as me at what Boulder Media accomplished. The home troops done good.
A lot of this is to do with how far CG technology has progressed, of course (it’s hard to imagine the hair looking half this good even a few years ago) but the film’s artstyle eschews realism enough to register as very smart choices. Even if I wish the design motifs were more fantastical and visually imaginative, the production design is quite stellar, doing a workman’s job of applying different design motifs to the three main locales and yet making them all fit together. Maritime Bay comes out like a dollhouse set, with the soft renderings to the buildings’ corners and lines making them feel like dioramas. Outside of some scenic landscape shots during travelling scenes, Bridlewood is easily the standout, with a misty overglow to the forest that does a lot to return unicorns to their original mythical roots (it also has the strongest control of colour and lighting). Even the generic Las Vegas city of Zephyr Heights benefits from a vast scale and a pristine beauty to the molding of a gold-plated city on top of a mountain. The colour palette is every bit as soothing and warm as the best of Friendship Is Magic, wonderfully reworked and adapted for this different style. Overall, there’s something energetic and tranquil about the imagery all at once - bright and full of detail, but with the softness of a picture book illustration. Even if the budget isn’t high enough to make it a visual gawker the way Trolls and Smurfs: The Lost Village were, that counts for a lot.
Oh, I know whether this is an actual set or a matte painting. But I'll leave it to your imagination!
It should be noted that the homely, confined production design of the sets and the cinematography - the budget doesn’t allow for many vast shots - is at marginal odds with the theoretically vast scale of the story. And the pace does take some oomph out of the environment’s impact, coupled with some questionable cinematography choices at times - you never forget almost all the filmmakers are green to feature films. Though those aspects are also handled well too - it’s easy to take for granted kinetic camera movement in CG animation, but it really is worth savouring.
The character designs are more of a mixed bag, and certainly less unique than the design principles in Friendship Is Magic, though they seem far less weird after several months of seeing them in the film’s advertising. They fare much better in the film, thankfully, with almost none of the DreamWorks’ smirk I’d grown to dread, even if the designs call attention to their deficiencies more than their merits. From the neck down, there’s little to complain about - though the ponies’ coats often blur into generic rendering, especially when motion blur abounds, they look better in close-ups, where you can make out the fuzz on their bodies (this all assumes the best quality Netflix streaming can provide, with no stuttering - in light of no theatrical release, a future Blu-Ray release is the best to hope for). Nothing on the level of Trolls, of course, but worth noting. By and large, the changes made in translating the ponies to CG do pay off, even the fur tapering off at the hooves. As mentioned before, the hair of the manes and tails always look pristine (there are two scenes sporting frizzy manes in the film, and both are the rendering highlights). And - this is a big surprise - the film hits a great balance of subtle but unobtrusive variations in the base pony model for its characters. Pipp’s shorter stature is the obvious standout, but I quite admire how Izzy is slightly stockier and taller simultaneously, while Sunny is slightly slimmer (fits her skating smoothie delivery job!).
For the curious, omitting horns and manes, the height order is Hitch, Izzy, Zipp, Sunny and Pipp. With the first three being very close to one another.
Of course, it’s hard to put off the faces for too long - there’s simply an uncomfortable human quality to the design and proportion of the facial features that never quite goes away. Since the heads too have subtle differences, some fare better then others: Izzy is great outside of some over-emoting lip animation, while on the other end, I retain a special degree of rage for the designers executives that gave forced on Zipp narrow-slanted eyes without adjusting giving time to adjust the rest of her face to match, leading to numerous trips to the Uncanny Valley, not helped by her voice. Though since the film is so disinterested in the two pegasi after leaving Zephyr Heights, it’s easy to ignore Zipp for the last 30-odd minutes. Got to be grateful for the little things. Really, omit Zipp, and the issues are no different then you'd get with any mid-budget CG animation, and often less than that.
[EDIT: New concept art from a Ponyfest stream on one of the film's character designers, former fandom artist Imalou, reveals that Zipp did not have narrow-slanted eyes in development art, making it likely the narrowed eyes was an order from up top late in the game. Would certainly explain it - no professional animation filmmakers would not notice that error and fix it if they had the time to do so, but animation was about to start…]
Once you've noticed how much more off Zipp looks, despite making an awed face similar to the rest, you can't unsee it.
Lastly, the actual character animation, how the ponies move, is mostly a success, relative to the budget, with very little movement feeling off or out of place, and the animation cheats (mostly how the ponies handle and move things with their flat hooves) are handled with the utmost grace, unobtrusive and never calling attention to themselves (the dance game being the one exception - it's clear the characters rigs weren't designed for it, further evidence on top of development art that it was a late addition). Every so often, there’s a graceful movement, like the bean can gag in the trailer, that is genuinely impressive, never mind the budget. The facial animation doesn’t always match up with the tonal delivery of the actors, especially in Sunny’s case, though with as fluctuating a performance as Hudgens’, it’s not too surprising. Her face frequently looking off at certain angles and mouth shapes doesn’t help matters either. Standard budget-conscious slips when you can only do some many passes on each shot, ultimately - just means a pervasive “oh, that’s wrong” feeling registers every now and then. And for as many off pieces of facial animation, there many more that land wonderfully - Izzy's facial expressions make for many of the film's best moments when coupled with the verbal or visual gag in question.
In many ways, this film feels tailored to address many of the criticisms of My Little Pony: The Movie. Some of these goals are met with success. Replace the overstuffed cast that mostly don’t do a thing with a smaller and more manageable cast (Pipp being the only character who is just a hang-on - the remaining nine are all critical to the story), though this film has a huge leg up as it can start from scratch, Friendship Is Magic connection excepted. Songs that exist mostly as an franchise obligation and come across as padding - they’re gone in favour of short and breezy numbers that do, mostly, shoulder narrative and character content seamlessly. And I do mean short and breezy - even with the two pop songs as background score, only 11 minutes are given over to songs.
The rest are course corrections taken too far, or misguided from the start. A (relatively) dark, brooding fantasy quest with epic stakes is jettisoned for a cutesy setting, with all the edges sanded off to the extent it’s impossible to take any moments of tension or danger seriously, or even believe in the world beyond being a set for the story. The lagging pace with probably too many moments of silence and dramatic pauses, with very few attempts at comedy - now we have a story with fast pacing that gets to breathe less (despite being 6.5 minutes shorter than the 2017 film when credits roll, this adventure has more dialogue by 100 words and change), though it sure does give more bones to otherwise-bored viewers. Generic “friendship” themes that feel rote and little different to what the franchise was saying 30+ years ago? Now it’s modern and current diversity theming around which every facet of the film has been designed.
Picking screenshots where the expressions accurately reflect one's feelings regarding what they just said/wrote - it's a gift.
It’s that last point that ultimately holds A New Generation back. Its successes and failures as a showcase for new characters, as a poppy and upbeat entertainment, as a work of animation, as a musical - for it has both successes and failures in each of these regards - are somewhat immaterial in light of the degree to which it’s a clunky message flick, founded around a franchise whose very thematic and worldbuilding foundation is in direct opposition to the setup it saddles itself with. Not as clunky as it could have been, but clunky nonetheless. Without that bleeding into every aspect of the film (and the flimsy connection to Friendship Is Magic), this would be a decent kids’ flick, undeniably flawed but pleasantly enjoyable. And if those things don't bother you, then it is. After all, I already find myself remembering parts and aspects warmly after only two viewings, so there’s something here. And enough elements deliver beyond what I was expecting, and not incrementally either. But just because there’s quite some value in here does not earn the film a glowing approval in light of its other shortcomings.
If I could sum up how I feel, I would say I like the idea of liking this film. My Little Pony has been plenty worse than this before (this is watchable in a way content in this franchise prior to 2010 is not), and the ease of judging it as its own thing also puts it over most of Seasons 6-9 of Friendship Is Magic (though it helps this film doesn't feel cynical and unintentionally bleak and dark the way that diversity material did), but as the franchise’s litmus test to see how it would fare divorced from its one prior worthwhile incarnation, it’s hard to muster up more then some enthusiasm for My Little Pony: A New Generation.
On the other hand, a few incidental voice roles are filled by Boulder Media staff and their children, and even in Irish-produced animation, our nation so rarely gets to do any voice acting (being that the content is almost all American-financed with a broad international market, skewing to young children who have enough trouble understanding their local accents). So, you know, I think that’s pretty neat.
Not much of a wallpaper person, but if any shot in the film was a candidate for one, it would be this.
Changes as of Nov 2nd, 2021: For the most part, everything in the above review is still true.
- How well each characters works, the voice acting, the animation, the music - you can still take what is stated above there at face value. Except for "Danger, Danger", I've warmed to it more, and the passion of the filmmakers in this scene is quite infectious.
- The humour has improved a little - it's still gentle, light humour not really producing laughs, just chuckles. But it's always pleasant, and especially for Izzy, the animation is on-point to make the asides land with more impact.
- The emotional intent of scenes lands better once one is used to the film - often it can result in a scene that is uneven in its successes and weaknesses. Like when Sunny loses hope back at the lighthouse, starts putting away her foalhood things, notices the indent, the lamp lights up magically, and she finds the third crystal. On the one hand, it's a typical End-of-Act-II despair>recovery moment, and it doesn't help how contrived the crystal element is. But darn if the visuals and music don't still make it quite emotionally probing. The same is true later - the action climax is a total washout, as is how Sunny realises what the key to bringing the magic back is. Yet once she starts talking, and we get the silent moment of putting the frame pieces back together, everything clicks. There are many more moments like that, with good and bad elements battling for screen space, or swapping back and forth. I just didn't give many of those good elements the time of day on the first viewing.
- The story is… not as problematic as I first considered. Still jerry-rigged and kind of a structural mess, but the pacing moves at enough of a clip and keeps the action busy that it doesn't bother AS much - less than the 2017 film, if we're being objective. Only in the film's more disastrous moments does this actively annoy.
In the end, it gets easier to ignore the parts that don't work and focus on those which do. There are still too many problematic stretches and components for the film to be enjoyable enough to properly rise above its flaws. But make no mistake, I like enough about A New Generation that I’m not tossing it out, nor the Herculean work by the artists and home studio (only took a passion of mine like animation to stoke my national pride and make me this vocal about it - who knew?). I think I'm hovering around 'Decent' now, and even if the film could be, and should be, much better and more consistent… I think I like it.
Kind of a placeholder response to say I've read this. I hope to remember to come back and address a few specific points when I've got my own (shorter) review up. But what I will say now is that was a good read, and even with points where I didn't agree with you (and you already know there are some of those) it was never just a rant. So a very worthwhile addition to ANG reviews.
An interesting review. We already agree on most points about the story, characters, themes, et cetera, and I'm certainly glad to hear about those in more detail, but your specific thoughts on aspects such as the music, animation, and voice acting were especially illuminating for me. I might've written 150K words reviewing the final seasons of FiM, but my background is more in literary criticism, not TV and film (animated or otherwise), so these aren't elements I'd consider myself particularly knowledgeable about beyond the surface level; I was rather learning as I went with a lot of those reviews, and it probably showed. So thank you for your insights. I think I learned something from them.
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Thanks a lot. I still find it's not the best-structured review, as I had to fall back on a more obviously segmented approach to the film's aspects (going from one aspects of filmmaking to the other) then I prefer to do so these days. But I do think everything I wanted to impart gets across in the right way, especially through communicating how, contrary to the review's structure, a film comes down to how everything meshes together. Think the final paragraph captured that nicely, though. And the images break up the paragraphs well and keep things from being too straight-faced.
Obviously I omitted talking about some aspects of the story in more detail because that's redundant after a fashion for this kind of review, even though it would have been perfectly reasonable to do so. Most obviously, almost all of the film's end, meaning the 20 minutes between the end of "Fit Right In" and when the lighthouse action climax ends, is quite objectionable, with precious little that works.
For starters, the DDR parody was a very late addition - it wasn't in the colour script from March 2020, which otherwise matches the final film near-perfectly (note most of the third-last row, where they meet Alphabittle in a cave):
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And that whole scene is a time-waster - not funny, requiring Sunny to act cocky and sure of herself in a way she didn't even in prior similar scenes, a massive stakes deflater after how the last crystal was obtained, and has the side effect of Alphabittle basically having two personalities: the cocky gamer bartender here, and the gruff but caring figurehead for the unicorns thereafter (in the original version, he was the latter, but a bit of a wild zen cooky type, with wild hair, Izzy's affinity for sparkles, and actually blind on top of that). And trying to have this kind of low-stakes fun when you've only got sub-20 minutes left in your film… yeah.
I don't know why this portion was changed so late, but it's a stinker. Not that it gets much better afterwards - the lack of several extra minutes catches up to the film at this point, making the shift to somber seriousness rather poor as the film has to rush now. And it doesn't improve for the third act climax, where all the awful Sprout material is put front-and-centre, and the scars of the original heavier lore regarding the crystals and the lighthouse device announce themselves through their non-existent versions here in the worst way possible.
I will note, it's better after the action climax, with Sunny's heartfelt speech and the leaders pushing the picture back together. That gets me more with each viewing.
Got off track there. But, em, yes, animated film! The rules are different, the animation gets extra points. I don't have any professional background in animation, just a well-informed enthusiast (I did go for it as a career, but that didn't pan out - don't have the discipline or drawing ability), but I'd like to hope I come across as relatively knowledgeable. Glad you think so! Same with music and voice acting, they connect to it quite deeply. And I get story and literature plenty fine - it's just that it's all there to see with this film, so it would be just regurgitating what happens in it if I dwelled there for too long. Least for this piece.
As for your stuff, well, maybe your learning the ropes in those aspects was a bit present. But there's far less to talk about the animation for a TV show, where for the most part, once the look is locked, it only changes incrementally from season to season (all one can say about Season 8 is that the frame and animation remains wonderfully busy and active, while the design mentality gets sadly less visually imaginative, continuing off the trend round Season 6 of Cloudsdale abandoning the Ancient Greek motif for American suburbia made from clouds). And you well knew what you were talking about by the time of the switch to Toon Boom Harmony! There were things there even I didn't know, no joke.
Anyway, great to hear from you! Truth be told, there's still plenty more I could say about this film, though it likely wouldn't be as professional as the above and more thoughts-off-the-top-of-my-head. Dunno if I'll ever follow through with that. But this blog will stand as a solid testament to my take - a mixed kids' film with its aspects all over the quality spectrum, and which would make for a heavily flawed but pleasing diversion, except for the effect of the morals and themes on everything. Less so the FiM connection, which I basically ignore fully by now. And honestly, I'm numb and used to the moralising in the film after three watches, so even that barely registers by now. That's proof it's not nearly as bad as it could have been, given many similar films (and the end of FiM) get worse in those aspects the longer one thinks about them, or rewatches them again.
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Didn't know that, but not surprised. That whole segment of the movie was, as you observe, deeply flawed and out of place.
Yeah, I think you said all that really needs to be said about the story here. I'm sure we could scrutinise the plot until the cows come home if either of us were inclined, but that amount of detail isn't strictly necessary, especially for a review of this length. I mean, I think you got the gist across just fine without diving into, for example, that whole subplot around the pegasi arresting their own royals.
Thanks. And it wasn't just animation and music stuff, specifically. I was also talking about the amount of research required. I mean, high school English might have you learn about an author and how their life or beliefs might have influenced the work, but that's about it. Whereas with a big production like a movie or TV show, there are a lot more working parts to the machine to consider. With each season review, I had to go a little more in-depth with the behind the scenes research to fully understand and explain what the hell went so wrong. I'm very fortunate in that regard that the object of my fascination was a show so infamous for its constant leaks.
I guess there's something to be said to that. I'd rather a film earn my apathy than my enmity.
I still don't get why so many people have an issue with diversity and "SJW" messaging like in this movie.