My Thoughts on G5 (so far) · 9:24pm Oct 13th, 2022
Ah, "My Little Pony: The Next Generation." What a great movie that was. The plot wasn't the strongest in the world, but it had heart and genuine love behind it. The characters where fun, the settings were cool and it had just the right touch of call backs to G4 to make the world interesting and intriguing about the world after Twilight's reign and the fall of "old Equestria." And then there was "Make your Mark part 1." Also a lot of fun and made Zipp a more prominent character, even if it introduced Sparky the cocomelon baby dragon, I enjoyed it and it made me hungry for more. And Now with part 2 of Make Your Mark I've decided to do what I did with my film festival post and jot down my thoughts and feelings of G5 and its future and share it with the world. No I have not seen "Tell Your Tale" for the same reason I stopped watching "Pony Life" after the first episode, it looks dopey and I hate the character models.
Now, to compare G4 to G5 is unfair since G4 was a textbook example of lightening in a bottle and the one thing everyone knows about lightening in a bottle is that it's easy to replicate (Insert sarcastic tone). But a wise man once said, "a good sequel uses the original as a jumping off point, while a bad sequel merely wallows in the original." And G5 does try to be a good sequel, but it seems to have forgotten a lot of the lessons of its predecessor, and I'm not talking about Twilight's letters to Celestia. And don't worry I'll elaborate soon.
So Make Your Mark part 2 continues the adventures of Sunny, Izzy, Hitch, Pipp and Zipp in Maretime bay. Learning about magic and friendship, you know the drill. And I will say I do appreciate some of the details that went into the lore about magic in G5. As far as any of the characters know, unicorns can/could only make things float and earth ponies had no magic at all and from their perspective, that's true. So it's kinda refreshing to see that earth ponies are basically the tribe with the strongest magic and not unicorns (even though my ponysona is a unicorn, but I digress). And the mystery of what happened to the Equestria of G4 is intriguing, With Twilight passing on a cryptic message about the big bad of the season, even though yet again the comics nail it harder than the show writers do but more on that later. As for the big bad Opaline, I like her design and I like the idea of an evil alicorn since it reminds me of the Reflections arc from the comics (which is still the best MLP media in the history of the franchise and I'll die on that hill). But as a villain she's pretty weak sauce.
Let's quickly circle back to the words "forgotten a lot of the lessons of its predecessor" for a moment. Opaline is supposed to be the scary powerful villain that brought old Equestria to its knees and backed Twilight into such a bad corner that she had to lock magic away and basically seal a small portion of Equestria so that Opaline could never find the three crystals and steal the magic. But Opaline herself acts like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, making a flaky, shy, nervous filly do her dirty work when said filly clearly doesn't have a mean bone in her body and gets flustered at the slightest interaction with the mane 5. And every time Misty fails and Opaline gets huffy I say, "Opaline, what did you expect? You basically hired an anti-social teenager to work customer service and you're surprised when she fails?" And I know what some of you are thinking, "Um actually Wit, the reason why she has Misty do her dirty work is because she was weakened in her battle with Twilight." Yeah I know, but it's still a lame excuse. Because you know who else was weak but still got stuff done? Tirek. He breaks out of Tartarus, wanders about and starts absorbing magic from ponies, slowly but surly getting his strength back and even dupes Discord into helping him and betrays Discord when he's no longer needed. And this is one of the things about G5 that annoys me, because the villains of G4 were hands on in their approach and Opaline seems totally content to kick back and let her underling fail at every possible opportunity. Think about it; Nightmare Moon, Discord, Tirek, Starlight, even the lesser "villains" like Trixie and the Flim Flam brothers were direct in their approach to getting what they want. And yes Chrysalis had a hive of changelings, but she wasn't going to let a drone replace Cadence and she's the only villain who beat Celestia in a one on one, so props to bug horse.
I also have a particular niggle about the mane 5, because more often than not they seem to get beaten with the stupid stick a little too often. I know the stupid stick is kind of mandatory for MLP, it certainly showed up a lot in G4, especially any episode that focused on Applejack and Rainbow Dash, though in those cases they didn't so much get hit with the stupid stick as much as the entire tree of idiocy fell on top of them, but G5 seems to rely on it a bit too much. I actually liked the plot of episode 2 of Hitch doing his job as sheriff to rein magic in so it doesn't hurt any of the ponies in Maretime bay, and Sunny trying to convince Hitch that magic isn't all that scary and that the ponies need practice. What I don't like is the outright ban on magic because that's just a recipe for disaster in not being able to express yourself and Sunny basically being right because the writers said so. I also don't like Opaline's grand scheme of trying to convince Sunny to be an entitled alicorn by pretending to be her inner self or whatever when Sunny should've picked up on some red flags right out of the gate. She didn't sound anything like Sunny and if Sunny asked even the most basic question to test if this was really her inner self, Opaline's plan would've backfired right then and there.
I also don't like what they're doing with Pipp as a character. In the movie she was a diva living a bubbled rich life of praise and stardom before being knocked off her cloud and forced to do things on her own and making connections with real life ponies and not just her followers. In Make Your Mark she's an influencer and that's about it. She starts hyperventilating if she isn't trending and doesn't really seem to be motivated by anything else in the series other than being praised online. And while we're on the subject, and this is probably the most pettiest of gripes I have, but what's with all the smart phones? I get that in the absence of magic technology would take its place, but it really seems like every single scene has a smart phone in it. It just makes me think that Hasbro doesn't know how else to connect with the young people then to have every character have a smart phone. "Look these ponies have smart phones, just like all of you! Isn't that cool, kids?" Where G4 had a more timeless and magical feel to it, where the fastest way to get a message from one to the other was through Spike. Yeah some ponies had phones, but they were the kind you see in Betty Boop cartoons and not everypony had one, so it made it more niche.
And I'm not sure how I feel about the new Cutie Mark Crusaders, aka the Pippsqueaks; which I thought was the collective term for Pipp's fanbase but is now used exclusively for the unicorn, earth pony and pegasus fillies that pop up every now and then. They're not characterized like Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle and they have no connections to any of the mane 5 other than being Pipp's cheerleaders or getting caught up in the plot and even then they're treated more like passerby's than characters.
Which is not to say there aren't things I think G5 does really well. Episode 2 is by far my favorite episode so far because it deals with Zipp and Pipp and any episode where Zipp is the focus tend to be the better episodes since she seems to be resistant to the stupid stick. But it touches on the relationship of Zipp and Pipp as sisters and Queen Haven wishing Zipp would open up to her and that her daughters would get along like they did when they were younger. And even though I hate Sparky's design I do love scenes where Hitch is doting over him, it's frankly adorable to see. And I also like the small touch of Sprout not being a deputy anymore and is basically doing janitorial work since he can't hide behind his mom anymore.
With that being said, I really would love it if Phylis Cloverleaf and Alphabittle came back and we got to explore Bridlewood or something, because the world of G5 feels really small. And I know G4 stuck close to Ponyville in the beginning but we were always teased with bigger things on the horizon, like Gilda introducing Griffons, Zecora the zebra from a faraway land and even the buffulo of Appleoosa gave us a glimpse at a larger world than just Ponyville. In G5 it's Maretime Bay, Bridlewood and Zephyr Heights and that's it.
"Yes that's all well and good Wit, but we've been stewing on the line, ' the comics nail it harder than the show writers' for about seven paragraphs now and we're waiting for what your point is." Oh, right. Well in the G5 comics magic is back but is slowly ebbing away because someone stole the crystals from the Brighthouse, with a small subplot that Izzy feels kinda useless in the search for the crystals and that she's a little bothered that her friends are doing most of the work and feeling left out. A little digging later and the mane 5 discover the ruins of Canterlot in a dense forest and it turns out the one behind the missing crystals is Discord. What I love about this is that Discord's mane is grown out and he looks and disheveled, like he hasn't bothered keeping up his appearance this whole time, he isn't quirky or jovial and he doesn't speak like an Alice in Wonderland character, more like he's tired and exhausted of the world around him and tells the mane 5 that he took the crystals because magic is what broke Equestria in the first place. But the absolute punch to the gut is the family of rabbits he cares for and the necklace he wears of a single yellow feather. These are the only things left of Fluttershy and you really get a sense that he's not doing any of this out of malice, but out of worry and out of the memory for the one pony he cared for the most. And there has yet to be a line in the show that hits even remotely as hard as when Discord says to Izzy, "You remind me of my dear friend Fluttershy. She also made excuses for others." See Hasbro, this is how you use legacy characters for an interesting story and world building.
But as much as I'm complaining about it, I do have hope that G5 will be better. I just get this uneasy feeling that Hasbro has absolutely no faith in G5 and are playing it as safe as possible and not taking a single risk. G4 was HUGE and an enormous success and I'm not asking for another G4 but I am asking that Hasbro takes what they learned from G4 and improve it in G5 and explore more of the lore that they say they're building on from G4. And if Hasbro fumbles that I can always read the comics.
Honestly, I had a feeling that G5 was going to turn out badly from the beginning.
In my opinion, "My Little Pony: A New Generation" is one of the most severely overrated and mediocre animated films in existence, and all the bad qualities I noted regarding it clearly rubbed onto its successors. Whatever good aspects the movie had also got wiped down to nothingness by mediocracy at its finest. The whole series wasn't even a qualifiable successor to G4, because it was neither faithful to its predecessor's style or roots nor carried enough of a reason to be considered part of the same universe as it. If anything, it really would've been better if it was completely separate from G4.
5692100
Honestly I would've been fine with a reboot. No shame in rebuilding from the ground up
5692101
I agree.
I mean, I was open to seeing how G5 could be a successful continuation of G4, but in the end...it just wasn't able to do that. Especially on the grounds that it carried little sense of faithful continuity to G4, from its overall story and world depictions to its difference in animation style.
5692103
Yeah that's another bone I have to pick with G5, but I really miss 2D animation for MLP. I'm sure 3D is cheaper but it kinda loses depth compared to 2D, no pun intended
5692104
That's how I've felt about the use of 3D as well, actually.
Even in the movie, the animation seemed surprisingly cheap and lacked any sort of depth compared to its predecessors. All of G5's computer-animated installments also looked like they were based off of cheap dollhouse and toy commercials.
And, of course, what really doesn't help the matter is that the majority of G5's villains are openly generic and have personalities reminiscent of pouty children.
5692106
Well that's what happens when your villain decides to delegate instead of doing things themselves. I don't think it's too much to ask for Opaline to go to Maretime bay herself and do... anything.
5692107
Yay. And don't get me started on Sprout Cloverleaf. The one time we even got to see him again, all he did was cause more trouble than good. Not to mention he clearly hasn't changed much since the events of the movie, in that he's still incredibly self-centered and childish.
5692114
Sprout doesn’t bother me that much, since he seems to be a joke character now, which is fine by me.