MLP: The Movie, One Week Later · 5:29am Nov 11th, 2017

Long time no blog!

So, I have been reserving my 100th blog post for something special. However, with my latest two Thoughts blog posts stalled for the past two years, I’m posting something else. So, time for some thoughts on My Little Pony: The Movie!

There are spoilers ahead, so those who still haven’t watched the leaked version or still waiting to watch it on the Big Screen, beware!

I watched it on the Silver Screen and posted my general thoughts here.

That was a week ago.

And I had that one week to think about the movie. The art and animation were pretty good. The songs bright and cheerful (except for the one with Tempest). The plot… not so much. There wasn’t any real tension and Twilight and her friends were shuffled from one location to another so fast that the entire seapony scene lasted a whopping seven(!) minutes. And a third of that was a musical number.

So why was the plot of the movie so lackluster? How did it fail? Why did the pacing feel so skewed? I found myself comparing MLP: The Movie to Disney movies. They are about the same length. They both have adventures. They have musical numbers. But why did Disney movies succeed in their storytelling and why did MLP: The Movie fail?

Number one: The movie was actually told from a limited perspective centered around Twilight and her friends. This meant that the actual Big Bad, the Storm King barely had more screen time than the entirety of the seaponies scene. He was goofy and obsessed with merchandizing himself. His entire motivation for invading and taking control of the weather was so that his name will be relevant. Which is rather silly. The Storm King wasn’t really that much of a threat. The viewers didn't get to see him do any menacing stuff, since Tempest did most of his job, anyway. I was half expecting that Tempest was really a Mare Behind the Man but it turned out I was wrong. Unfortunately.

Even Changeling!Thorax was more threatening than the Storm King ever was.

Number two: Odd characterization moments. The one that really stood out was Fluttershy not fawning on and then walking out on the caged ugly birds. She wasn’t even startled. She simply walked off when the birds started screeching.

Fluttershy, what? What happened to your kindness?

Meanwhile, Capper, Captain Celaeno and Queen Novo barely have enough screen time in their introductions to have any characterization, with Capper having the most out of the three. For Capper and Captain Celaeno, Tempest crashed the party before the viewers even got to know more about them.

Letting Capper explaining his slavery scheme would have helped heaps. “Nothing personal,” you know? And then have him be torn between having to pay his debts and stomping on Rarity’s generosity. At least his reluctance to help Tempest later would make even more sense.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash may have reignited the passion of Captain Celaeno and her crew, Rainbow Dash also led Tempest to destroy Captain Celaeno’s airship. By all rights, if Captain Celaeno didn’t want anything to do with the ponies anymore, I wouldn’t blame her. But she did seem happy when the ponies got away, and she got to stick it to the ~~Man~~ Storm King.

What wasn’t shown was that Capper and Captain Celaeno eventually met up in Kludgetown while Twilight and her friends were at the seaponies. At least, according to what I’ve read elsewhere. Maybe an enthusiastic Captain Celaeno rearing to go after the Storm King’s goons again and a remorseful Capper joining in the adventure, hoping to repay Rarity’s generosity.

In just a few more scenes, everything is so much better, right?

For Queen Novo, she literally exited Stage Left right after introduction. Characterization? What’s that? She couldn’t hear them over the sounds of her seaweed wraps. Her characterization in her introduction was rather interesting in an odd way though, as noted in my side note below.

Tempest and Princess Skystar at least have had enough screen time to have some characterizations. Tempest had her motivation song and was shown to be somewhat competent. Princess Skystar was lonely and desperate for friends and eager to help them when they got thrown out of the seapony kingdom.

Number three: The pacing. I couldn’t really figure out the problem until I finally watched the ‘Behind the Scenes’ documentary and a comment by Tara Strong gave me the realization I needed. Here’s what she said:

"The songs in My Little Pony always seem to carry the story forward or bring in some sort of celebration and it’s not any different in the film."

Emphasis mine. And that was crux why the pacing felt so skewed.

The majority of Disney’s songs have always been about expressing or revealing character motivation, setting up conflicts or a result of an epiphany. From Belle’s iconic song about feeling stifled by the small, provincial town she lived in to Elsa’s song about letting go of her fears and letting out all the feelings she had suppressed to Flynn and Rapunzel’s duet as they realized that they were in love, we can clearly see that was the case.

The songs in the MLP movie, however, were plot points. We Got This Together was Twilight’s friends cheering her up, so the story can continue. I’m the Friend You Need was Capper tricking Twilight and her friends to his house so he could sell them. Time to be Awesome was Rainbow Dash encouraging Captain Celaeno and her crew to rebel and go back to their old roots.

One Small Thing was Pinkie convincing the seaponies to let them stay and was really Twilight ‘asking’ her friends to distract the seaponies. Only one song was really about character motivation: Open Up Your Eyes where Tempest revealed that she was really Starlight Glimmer 1.5. It was also about Tempest telling Twilight that she lost.

This is the problem: The movie relied too much on the songs to carry out the storytelling.

There were Disney songs that moved the story forward like Aladdin’s A Whole New World which was Aladdin bringing Princess Jasmine outside the palace for the first time but it sets up the conflict later on where Aladdin was revealed to be not a Prince at all, Beauty and the Beast’s Be Our Guest which shows Lumiere trying to get Belle to stay but also reveals his desperation to get to like the Beast.

With so much story condensed into three-minute songs, no wonder the pacing was off. And then Tempest was there to chase Twilight and her friends off to the next ~~playset~~ location, shortly thereafter. Which also contributed to the lack of characterization to the major characters (Capper, Captain Celaeno and Queen Novo) introduced in each location.

In Disney movies, the viewers didn’t just listen to the songs, they also got to know the characters over the course of the entire adventure, which unfortunately wasn’t the case in MLP: The Movie.

On a side note, Queen Novo, short as her appearance was, reminded me of the Tolkien elves. Pretty, vain and totally uncaring of the outside world. Which was strange because she was supposed to be Equestria’s ally. She would’ve at least recognized the ponies, right? Unfortunately, Twilight and her friends didn’t even get to stay long enough to find out why. Other than a confirmation that the Storm King attacked Mount Aeris? Aris? Eris? And the hippogriffs turned into seaponies and hide underwater and escape him.

Overall, I did enjoy the movie, its lackluster plot notwithstanding, and the movie had so much potential to be better. I enjoyed the fact that Twilgiht and her friends still managed to touch the gloomy and downtrodden lives of others outside of Equestria. That friendship still prevails in the end. Here's to me hoping that the next movie would be even better!