Legend of Everfree Review · 6:24pm Oct 2nd, 2016
Well, I'm sure by now many of you have either seen the leaked English version from the Brazilian broadcast a week ago, or the official Netflix release that came out yesterday. For those of who you still haven't because you're waiting on the DVD release (there's no word on when or if it'll get a television broadcast):
So we've got our fourth Equestria Girls film, and by now I think everyone and their mothers is thinking the same thing, why haven't we gotten a spin-off television or Netflix exclusive series based on it yet? Ever since "Rainbow Rocks" the franchise's popularity has skyrocketed (though it took "Friendship Games" to get me onboard the hype train for the franchise). If there was one thing that the last installment proved, however, it was that the human five aren't as compelling as their pony counterparts and often get boiled down to their most basic personality traits. With this movie finally taking place away from Canterlot High, was the change in scenery able to correct that problem? Well, let's find out.
We begin with Sci-Twi having a dream within a dream about Midnight Sparkle, who warns Twilight she can never be rid of her and that she'll be back to take over soon enough. Then we learn that the trip to Camp Everfree is actually a class funded field trip (promotional material seemed to suggest it was going to be a summer camp type of thing), and we get our opening credits song titled after the movie. It matches the tone and theme of the movie, but unlike "Rainbow Rocks" and "Friendship Games" it doesn't have that same kind of oomph and it doesn't even boast those impressive visuals from the previous three movies. I'd put it slightly above the first movie's opening, simply because that dub-step remix wasn't very good and really didn't do much to establish Equestria Girls as a seperate entity. It's funny how even now Tara Strong still takes top billing over Rebecca Shochiet (the first two movies justified it, but by the third it's undeniable the films have become Sunset's story even if she's shunted to the Obi-Wan supporting protagonist here).
Upon arriving at camp, we quickly get the exposition dump out of the way alongside the return of the "No offense, none taken" joke. Then after a quick scene of Flash trying and failing to hit on Twilight, we meet Gloriosa Daisy and Timber Spruce who are brother and sister and serve as the camp counselors. Gloriosa encourages the campers to do whatever they want, but it seems she and Timber are in a bit of an arguement that Sunset overhears. Then human Filthy Rich shows up briefly, and he seems to be interested in the camp for some reason (I don't think I'm spoiling much here when I say Filthy's human counterpart is basically the Donald Trump/evil businessman or loan shark stereotype) and I'd say he has perhaps the most normal design out of any of the human characters in this movie. We also learn that Celestia and Luna contributed a sun-dial to the camp and that Luna thought it was impractical since you can't use it at night (makes me wonder if that was the human world equivalent of the Nightmare Moon event).
The girls all get paired off for tents, and the writers start to ship Twilight with Timber. Well right now it's rather rocky, but later on they tend to the mistake of trying to drop a love interest on us without first establishing the character (a love interest should be a seperate character first and a love interest second, otherwise they fall flat as we saw with Flash Sentry). We also get confirmation that human Vinyl isn't a mute when we see her talking to Fluttershy in the background (pony Vinyl's still up for interpretation though). Anyway, Twilight and Sunset get to share a tent, and after stating the obvious and teasing Twilight about her relationship with Timber, Sunset learns about Twilight's nightmare. Assuring her that she can be forgiven for what she did at the Friendship Games, that it was Cinch who drove her to become a raging she-demon, and that she should trust her friends. Then Twilight seems to start levitating things all on her, to which Sunset is amazed but Twilight is rather worried about, fearing Midnight Sparkle is returning (they actually call her that in the film in case you're wondering, I suppose that means Daydream Shimmer is also ascended fanon until they say otherwise). Twilight leaves and the magic fades, and Sunset tries to do levitation herself only to find it can't work. Unfortunately, this scene could've been used to put in that scrapped subplot from "Friendship Games" about Sunset Shimmer being homesick (scrapping it there was for the best as the film was too crowded as it was, but here I think everyone and their mothers wanted to have it be included and I don't think it would've hurt the flow of the film to do so) and it doesn't happen.
After bumping in Gloriosa, Sunset meets up with Twilight and the girls by the dock, and Twilight steps on a plank that gives way so she can conviently fall into Timber's arms (much to Flash's displeasure). Seeing this, Sunset talks to Flash and tells him that he and pony Twilight wouldn't have worked anyway since she's a pony princess in Equestria and he's just a random high school student (you think pony Twilight would've told him that herself by now, but I guess she just never got around to it). Meanwhile, Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna suggest the dock be closed for safety concerns, which would mean scrapping all the lakeside activities. Gloriosa offers to fix it, but Timber claims it will be a distraction. Then Applejack offers to have the entire camp build a new dock for them all to use (and Applejack herself has been looking forward to roughing it, perhaps a bit too much), and when Gloriosa and Timber argue about it, Rainbow Dash intervenes on Applejack's behalf and says she's right.
At this point the movie establishes a rather annoying running gag of human Rarity viewing the dock as a runway for her fashion show and Applejack has to keep correcting her about what's intended to be. Then after the art student draws up a sketch of what the dock is going to look like, everyone gets to work on it. The campers work through the day and then tell scary stories around the campfire, after Rarity's story about mis matched clothing fails to impress anyone, Timber tells the titular Legend of Everfree (Gaia Everfree to be precise).
According to the story, Timber's great-grandparents settled on the land around Everfree and wanted to it into a camp so that others could enjoy the scenery. However, construction was plagued by magical mishaps, and one stormy night the two were confronted by the spirit Gaia Everfree, who claimed to be the protector of the land they were on. The two humans pleaded with Gaia to let them build their camp, and Gaia eventually obliged but warned them she would return one day to re-claim the land for the forest. Timber ends the story by warning the campers to watch out for Gaia, right as Gloriosa steps out from the bushes and scares all the campers (it's a bit of a clever but still somewhat obvious case of foreshadowing). The human five discuss the possibility of Gaia being real, and that like The Sirens she was a spirit banished from Equestria, then they express their desire to be free of magical happenings while at camp given what they've been through.
Next morning, Twilight has another nightmare which prompts Sunset Shimmer to stumble out of bed and show off her karate moves. Sunset tells Twilight they have to discuss her magical abilities, but Twilight refuses and heads with Sunset to the lake. As the two are discussing Twilight's dilemma, a boat with Derpy and the eco-kid on it crashes into the dock, and they explain how for a second there was no wind and then suddenly there was too much of it. It doesn't help that a trail of gem dust appears in the lake, prompting a pointless scene of Trixie trying to call out the spirit of Gaia (and apparently even human Pinkie facepalms at this). Horrified and thinking she's done it, Twilight runs off into the woods for "The Midnight In Me" (the songs are much more spaced out here compared to the previous films) which is good but it ends before it can really become enjoyable.
Back at camp, Sunset enlists Spike to help her find Twilight, while Twilight bumps into Timber and learns about how as a kid he wished his family would sell the camp so he could live in the city, and Timber reveals he's never told anyone that secret before. Sunset and Spike overhear, but decide not to say anything. They and Twilight come back to the camp as Rarity is rock climbing while Applejack holds onto the rope for her, Rainbow Dash then runs off to get a harness since Twilight is now there to spot for her, and soon after Timber walks off an earthquake strikes the camp. Shocked by this, Rarity demands to come down from the rock wall, and at first Applejack finds the rope is stuck and won't budge. But then she suddenly gains super strength and pulls Rarity down too hard, barely managing to stop her before she hits the ground. Screaming, Rarity puts up her hands and a gem-shaped shield suddenly appears, pushing Applejack into a nearby lake. Twilight begins to fear that her magical abilities are leaking out and infecting her friends, and when Sunset goes to investigate the camp dinning hall she find that Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy have discovered their magical abilities as well (Pinkie can now throw sugary sprinkles that explode and Fluttershy can actually talk to and understand animals). Even Rainbow Dash has picked up a new ability in the form of super speed, and Sunset feels left out since she's the only one who has yet to display any new magical abilities, but this will get rectified before too long. In the meantime, Derpy speaks with her "Slice of Life" voice.
The next activity is lantern making, during which Twilight confides in Spike her worries about Midnight taking over. That night, after the lanterns are released, Twilight runs away with Spike. Sunset follows her, and pleads with Twilight not to run away, then she touches Twilight's arm and sees some of her memories, learning about her concerns over Midnight Sparkle. Sunset realizes she has telepathy as her new power, and she helps Twilight realize their friends can help her if she stays. Then the two encounter Timber, who's wielding an axe, and they're alone in the woods in the middle of the night.
Well not to worry, Timber's just chopping firewood at night so his sister won't insist on doing it herself. Sunset is skeptical about this and claims Timber made up the story of Gaia to scare the campers, but Timber claims Gaia is real and offers to lead Twilight back to town. Sunset seems to think Timber is running a typical Scooby-Doo type of scheme in which he makes up a ghost story and stages a bunch of super natural events to scare off the campers, so that his family will have to sell the camp. Her suspicions seem to be proven when she notices gem dust coming out of his pocket, but she is reluctant to tell Twilight about this when she and Timber are hitting it off so well.
At the dock the next day, the human five are weary about working at anything but a snails pace for fear of their new powers destroying the dock again. Then Pinkie tosses a box of nails towards the girls, and thankfully Rarity's shield protects them from what could've been a dangerous situation. Sunset, having oversee this, tells the girls they need to work on controlling their new powers, and also gets to look into Pinkie's mind in a scene that speaks for itself. She then leads the girls in a montage song called "Embrace The Magic" in which they learn how to control and use their new powers, and it's really good. The song ends with the dock completed, and Sunset opts to go find Twilight and encourage her to learn how to control her powers as well.
Along the way, Sunset passes by the counselor's office and overhears a conversation between Gloriosa and Timber that seems to confirm her suspicions. Then after recovering from having the door pressed up against her, Sunset bumps into Flash and there's some tension in the air since they used to date (it feels a bit odd that Sunset would be uncomfortable around Flash at this point, but I guess up until now she'd never be around him without anyone else in the immediate vicinity). Flash admits he needed to hear what Sunset told him, and Sunset does the "I have this friend" routine that Flash doesn't seem to pick up about who it involves. But he tells Sunset that friend is lucky to have a friend like her, and he hopes they can start over as friends (pretty sure he means something else), but Sunset isn't interested and runs off to look for Twilight in the woods. Derpy comes by to comfort Flash, who has now struck out three times (first with Sunset Shimmer, then with Pony Twilight, and now with Sci-Twi).
Sunset follows Timber to a cave blocked off by boulders, and texts Twilight to meet her at that location. She does and the two go into the cave, where Sunset reveals she can sense the presence of Equestrian magic. It's then that Gloriosa steps from the shadows, and as she passes by Sunset grabs her arm and reads her thoughts. Turns out Gloriosa has fallen behind on the payments and the land the camp is on has been bought by Filthy Rich who wants to turn it into a luxury spa, Gloriosa pleads with him to give her more time and Filthy gives her until the end of the month to come up with enough money to keep the camp open. Realizing she has no way of doing this, Gloriosa sobs to herself in the woods and that's when she stumbles across the cave. She grabs five of the seven gemstones displayed there (they're obviously the human world equivalent of the Elements of Harmony even if the movie never acknowledges that fact) and she finds that she now has super natural powers over plants and nature, including the ability to control vines. She tells Timber her intent to use these powers to make the last days of camp the best ever, but Timber is furious and tells Gloriosa to stop messing with magic she doesn't know about. As it turns out Gloriosa was behind the sailboat incident and the earthquake (she was diverting a river for the campers to fish in).
Now knowing what's going on, Sunset and Twilight plead with Gloriosa not to meddle with magic she doesn't know about (in other words, don't mess with stuff if you don't know what it can do or where it came from), but Gloriosa doesn't listen. She snatches the remaining two gemstones and is transformed into a demon similar to Gaia Everfree. She traps Sunset and Twilight with vines and leaves them stuck in the caves, then leaves to tend to the campers. Along the way Snips and Snails notice how Gloriosa looks different and comment on how she must look taller (think they could've cut this scene though, it's kind of funny but also rather cliche).
Gloriosa tells the campers about Filthy Rich, and then she slams her fist into the ground and vines spring up around the campground completely closing it off from the world. I should mention that I don't really understand why Gloriosa does this when we learn that she's mad with Filthy Rich for trying to shut down the camp, she never tries to go after him at any point with her powers or even try to track him down and make him sell the land the camp is on back to her. She's basically taking out her anger on innocent people have done nothing to her and even had no idea that the camp was in danger of closing, yet somehow she thinks eco-terrorism and sealing off the camp is the best course of action. She even announces this intent during her villain song "Stand For Everfree" which may rival "Unleash The Magic" and "Under Our Spell"/"Welcome To The Show" in terms of villain songs for the series. A fun fact here is that Gloriosa's singing voice is Kelly Metzger who is also the voice of Spitfire, and while she's not completely recognizable it's still fairly easy to hear her Spitfire voice at times (she was also the voice of Sugar Sprinkles in the recently wrapped up Littlest Pet Shop cartoon, which may explain why she was picked to be the singing voice for Gloriosa/Gaia).
Fluttershy quips about how these magical events always happen to the girls, but The Rainbooms rally to save the campers and fight Gaia, ponying up in the process (we also get a quip from Rainbow Dash about how they literally just finished building the dock that Gaia's vines destroyed). But Gaia proves to be too powerful for them, even with their new abilites. Meanwhile, in the caves, Spike frees Twilight and Sunset, and Sunset convinces Twilight to use her magic to move the boulders blocking the entrance. Twilight reluctantly does so, but doesn't pony up at all. Back at camp the human five try to reason with Gloriosa, but when Rarity accidentally brings up mention of a spa, Gloriosa snaps and not even her own brother is able to talk her out of her violent behavior. Sunset pony's up as she reaches the vines and encourages Twilight to use her magic (though she doesn't have any wings firey or even plain, surely they could've done that given she's still the key character of the series despite Sci-Twi's introduction). Twilight reluctantly obliges, opening up a path to the others, but Rarity is forced to shield all seven while they try to figure out how to stop Gloriosa's rampage.
Sunset finally convinces Twilight to transform by embracing her magic, and she and her friends assure Twilight they won't let her become Midnight Sparkle again. Twilight gets into a brief mind struggle as she unleashes all her power and Midnight tries to take over, but mental images of her friends appear and help dispell Midnight's influence, enabling Twilight to pony up and gain wings (not sure if she deserved them over Sunset but I guess the writers and animators wanted to make sure we knew who's supposed to be the main protagonist). With her new wings, Twilight removes the gems from Gloriosa and gives them to each of the mane seven (each gem being color coded to the human that wears it), prompting a new set of transformations for each of them.
With Gloriosa back to normal, work begins on fixing up the camp, and Gloriosa apologizes for what she did saying that it's probably for the best if the camp closes. But our heroes have a different idea in mind, and host a charity fundraiser with their band to raise enough money to save the camp, leading to the song "Be The Legend You Were Meant To Be", it's alright but anything particularly memorable. During the concert Timber acts a bit too haughty while flirting with Twilight, who giggles at his thinking he saved the day (he really didn't do much besides delay the inevitable and try to talk some sense into his sister. He gets points for trying but the victory wasn't because of him). Then Sunset and Twilight meet up, and Sunset wonders how Equestria magic wound up in that cave in the first place, and we see that apparently there's a crack in the portal (people say it's because of Midnight Sparkle during her rampage before Daydream Shimmer showed up). And then we have a post credits scene in which Pinkie's confetti she throws to celebrate, blows up the recently re-completed dock once again.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the movie? Well, I'd say it's probably the best of the bunch and tops "Friendship Games" by a good deal since it gives the human five and even Flash Sentry some much needed development, and now more than ever before it feels like there's the potential for a television or Netflix exclusive series picking up from where the movie leaves off (and I really hope it's true, by now it seems they're delibertly teasing us with the possibility and we still don't know what happened to human world Sunset Shimmer). But there are still some problems, the movie probably still could've cranked up the run time to an hour and a half to give more scenes more time and allow for that Sunset Shimmer homesick subplot to put in (I really don't know why they didn't at least try to work into this movie, it wasn't as rushed as "Rainbow Rocks" or as crowded as "Friendship Games"), and in terms of overall villains The Dazzlings still remain the undispusted champions of the franchise (Sunset Shimmer wasn't a very good villain, so it was easy to tweak her and make her a hero from "Rainbow Rocks" onward, The Shadowbolts quickly got replaced by Cinch as the antagonist of focus and half of them had very little screen time to establish any sort of personality, and Principal Cinch lost out when she stupidly encouraged Twilight to unleash the magic even when she knew what had happened before and that Twilight couldn't control it) since Gloriosa/Gaia takes out her anger on people who haven't done anything to her and aren't even remotely connected to Filthy Rich (if human Diamond Tiara had been among the campers it might have made sense, but she wasn't in this movie at all), heck human Filthy Rich's inclusion feels pointless as another reviewer mentioned you could remove him and just have the camp falling behind on its payments and nothing would be lost (heck it probably would've made Gloriosa's actions make more sense in the sense of her grasping at straws rather than targeting those who didn't do anything to her while ignoring the source of her problems for reasons not explained). It's also worth mentioning that while Sci-Twi was a good protagonist, this movie seems to be forgetting that Sunset Shimmer is intended to be the main character of the franchise and that just because they want to give Twilight the lead role doesn't mean they have to stick Sunset Shimmer into the side role of supporting protagonist (the Star Wars prequels had no trouble having Anakin and Obi-Wan fight alongside each other and share importance in the story). The post-credits scene also just feels disappointing compared to the previous two, even if it was pretty funny. Still, it may be an unpopular opinion but I'd say this is the best film of the Equestria Girls series, but there's still room for improvement and hopefully we'll get that television or Netflix exclusive series now instead of just another movie, it would certainly make the hiatus between seasons of FiM less of a burden on fans.
In my opinion, Rainbow Rocks was the best.
Sci-Twi and Timber being shipped felt a little forced. I think in the next movie Flash will be shipped with human Sunset.
The next movie could go one of two ways. One, the mane 7 become superheroes(Though that was already done in FiM) Two, the crack in the portal gets bigger, and the mane 6 meet their human counterparts.
Fantastic review. My main concern about this film was that SciTwi would steal the main slot from Sunset, but that seemed to be largely unfounded. Agreed on all accounts of Sunset's homesickness.
I think Flash was at his best here.
I also loved the tease for Equestria Girls 5. That statue has to be fixed (or perhaps even more dramatically, removed / sealed).
Unless she has a fantastic degree of control, I don't see how Pinkie can touch glitter ever again outside of combat.
If youre looking for a story on Sunset being homesick. You could check put milesprower06 latest story.
4237520 I believe he's already read it.
Of all of the movies so far, this is the only one I feel I can give a 10/10 to (EQG gets a 7, RR an 8, and FG a 9.6), partly for the humor, partly for what it did for Flash (though I've personally liked him ever since the beginning, partly for its soundtrack (easily the best yet), but mostly for its all-around feel.
I ship Timberlight and Sunflash now, though I ship the former more than I do the latter.