The MLP Movie Review · 12:35am Oct 7th, 2017
No-Spoiler Analysis:
I found the movie to be hilarious and charming. I suggest viewing it in the vein in which it was created; a standalone movie designed to convey all of the themes of MLP within the span of two hours. It's not clear where the movie fits into the show's timeline, or why certain characters/abilities are absent, so just ignore that and take the movie at face value. It has both great background visual gags (pretty much everywhere and some deep analysis of themes to make it worth your while.
Spoileriffic analysis:
One of the real reasons I wanted to write this blogpost is that I wonder how many people noticed the lengths to which the writers of this movie went to analyze the following two themes: Courage vs. Survival, Cooperation vs. Independence. Certainly I think everyone noticed during the "Open Up Your Eyes" song the theme of independence, and the idea that cooperation/dependence is for children. What you might not have noticed is how this reflects Celestia's words at the start of the film (she rejects helping Twilight and tells her to be more independent) or how it ties into the film's overall pacing and thematic structure. Without getting overblown, I'll just break this down really quickly:
Celestia introduces the theme at the party, then the conflict begins.
Right after the ponies are free from Canterlot, RD says they need to go back and AJ disagrees. The two actually verbalize the courage vs. survival debate, which becomes critical for many characters later in the film.
The first main encounter the group has after that is with Capper, who chooses to backstab them for his own survival (essentially choosing survival over courage, or rejecting cooperation in another vein). From what the group can see, this works to his advantage and they barely escape (they don't see how it backfired into his face, or that he chooses to stand up for them afterwards)
The second encounter is with the pirates, whom RD inspires towards courage. RD's bold behavior ultimately causes more trouble for the group, however, and seemingly dooms the pirates. They don't learn until much later of the pirates' survival.
Then they reach the hippogryphs/hippocampi, and the queen thereof chooses survival, rejecting Twilight's pleas for help. Is it any wonder, after seeing cooperation fail and everyone around her choosing survival and seemingly prospering, that Twilight would be inclined to get with the program? She chooses survivalist behavior, and it backfires catastrophically. She even doubles down on it and loses her friends.
After some brief shenanigans and humor to help break up the pacing, we see Capper, the pirates, and the princess are all alive and ready to help. Courage and righteous behavior have won out in the end, though Twilight can't see that. We then segue to Open Up Your Eyes, where Tempest outlines this theme bluntly and accuses Twilight's mindset of being childish and naive, saying everyone starts out that way. After another pacing break, however, we see Tempest's survivalist behavior backfiring (and then the Storm King's own selfishness backfires on him, as well).
The film manages to hammer these themes, seguing from "courage vs. survival" to "cooperation vs. independence", from practically every angle. It shows the various ways either choice can backfire, and how either choice can be appropriate (brash courage can backfire, but selfish survivalism creates enemies and leaves you isolated). That's a lot of analysis to cram into an hour and forty minutes, essentially a thesis on how friendship is not only more pleasant (see how miserable everyone is before the ponies light up their lives), but also more effective as a survival mechanism (anyone who doubts that can look into the Tit for Tat game theory analysis; this is no false moral). Pretty damn cool.
Welp, I know what blog I'm linking to in mine. Fantastic thematic analysis.
A really great analysis of the film.
Niiiiiice
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Glad you thought so. I notice a tendency in critics to fixate on concrete details or negatives, rather than try to grasp what a piece is actually going for. So I wanted to bring that perspective, and I noticed something interesting in the process, heh.
This is a really good way to view the movie that I hadn't thought of.