MLP G5: Movie Review · 2:28am Sep 25th, 2021
So I watched the newest pony movie on Netflix, and... wow. That was actually worse than I thought it was gonna be.
Yeah, spoiler alert, this is going to be a mostly negative review. I did not like the movie at all. I went in with fairly low expectations, predicting a 6 or so out of 10, but this movie was like a 3 or 4.
I'm sorry, I don't know what you want me to say :/
The biggest point of contention in this movie, which was a problem fans had well before it came out, was the use of CGI over traditional 2D animation. CGI on its own isn't necessarily bad, but the animation on display here bordered on uncanny valley at times, with a lot of a lot of awkward expressions, stiff movements, plain bad art style (like those UGLY ass hooves) and a general feeling of slowness.
I mean that last one literally. It felt like the characters all had horrendously slow reaction times to almost everything that was happening. The scene that sticks out off the top of my head was in the third act when the third crystal piece slides to the edge of the balcony about to fall off, and Izzy is all like "oh no the crystal!" but she just stands there looking at it. Like wtf you doing? Run after it so it doesn't fall off!
Another thing is the complete disregard for consequences of action. Most scenes felt like the characters were playing in Minecraft creative mode, where no matter what trouble they got themselves into they could just walk out of it with almost no effort. Like when they're stealing the crown right in front of the queen and no one notices. Or when the guards in that Pegasi city are chasing them, and two of them become wanted criminals, so they just deadass leave without anyone trailing them. Or when Hitch is trying to arrest them but they're like "lol whatever." Or how the now-a-wanted-criminal queen and princesses just leave their city, find their way to the unicorn forest place, and are all practically fine. Yeah, there were guards, but the guards were beyond useless. They just sit around not doing a single thing. Or how in the end all the races just come together from nowhere. Literally, they all just physically traverse a huge distance to go after ponies they barely know just to be friends with them.
It felt like so much stuff in this movie happened because the script demanded that it happen. I only saw this movie once so maybe there's some things I missed, but my first impression was that I couldn't believe like 90% of the events and character decisions. It was all really contrived.
I also couldn't take the villain and his army seriously. First of all, his army never does anything, they just stand around, march for a bit, and... that's it. Second, the villain is driving around some forklift-esque thing that moves like 2 miles an hour. Just go in there and knock his ass out of it! What's the big deal?!
Some things also didn't make any sense conceptually. How are there smartphones in this world? Really strange choice there. And why did the unicorns get freaked out by certain words (e.g. magic), then 20 minutes later it apparently doesn't freak them out anymore? Why was the dungeon some luxury room without guards watching them? I thought they were all indoctrinated via propaganda to believe that the other races are all super bad or whatever, but none of them seem to take any of that seriously or show much caution to anything. They showed caution in the first act with all those traps, which was a nice touch, but the rest didn't seem to care at all.
And then there are the characters, and oh boy was this underwhelming. We have a tiktok personality, a discount Rainbow Dash, the main character who inexplicably becomes an alicorn at the end, and I guess Izzy was alright? The side characters all had the personality of cardboard. But I really liked Hitch. He was generally well developed, actually had a coherent character arc, and was an all-around charming and competent guy.
The songs were whatever. Mostly forgettable. None of them were bad per se, but none of them made be want to slap the replay button. Largely inoffensive stuff.
Humour was hit-or-miss. Some of it made me chuckle, some jokes were really clever, but other times I felt the cold fangs of cringe rip my soul out of my body. That "rap" scene... holy FUCK did I die inside.
And I can't believe they fell for the meme. The end lesson of this story was unironically "the real magic was the friends we made along the way." Like... really? "Friends" that you met for all of 10 minutes? Ok, fine.
To address the elephant in the room, this is a story about segregation, prejudice, and irrational behaviour borne out of xenophobic hate for other people. All interesting themes, sure. Unfortunately (I've said this before and I'll say it again), themes do not magically translate into good writing. You can have all the cool themes in the world, all the cool symbolism, whatever—none of it will save a bad script. So I don't care about the themes. Doesn't make a difference.
I guess to boil this down in simple terms, what I most disliked about this movie was that it didn't have a soul. The whole thing felt like some laundry list of plot points created by corporate executives, then some freelance writers were hired to spin out a script checking off all those boxes. Hardly a single line of dialogue felt earned or non-artificial, most scenes did not bleed naturally into the next one. Like, apparently the characters have quick travel from Skyrim and can just get around to every corner of the world without breaking a sweat. The characters didn't feel real. (Except Hitch, he was cool.) The reason they didn't feel real is because almost none of them had fixed motives or goals, everything was constantly changing on a whim depending on whatever was convenient to the plot. Again, it felt like there was no freaking soul!
The 2017 movie is a thousand times better. It was by no means perfect, and in hindsight I'd probably give it a 7 or 7.5, but at least it felt like there was genuine effort put into it. Twilight was super reasonable and justifiably cynical, trying to steal the orb thing then lashing out at her friends when she gets scolded. The villain was super well done and I actually took her seriously. The stakes felt real. Songs were mostly good. By comparison, this new movie feels completely and utterly weightless, as if nothing in it mattered. I just don't understand the praise it's getting. How it has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes just blows my mind.
"But SpitFlame, it's just a kid's movie. Your standards are too high. Stop being such a stick-in-the-mud." Etc, etc.
Nahhhhh, I'm not falling for that sleight-of-hand excuse. Maybe I've been spoiled by much better things, but just look at something as recent as Centaurworld. That is, Centaurworld (despite being a kid's show) had legitimately amazing writing. It wasn't just good, it was shockingly good. Fantastic humour, unparalleled 2D western animation, cleverly incorporated dark themes, and some of the strongest characterization I've seen in a cartoon. Everything they did and everything that happened had clear, underlying threads of logic to it. And the main character was a goddamn horse! And Meghan McCarthy worked on it! Why is it unreasonable to hold MLP to that standard? Why? I just don't get it.
So yeah, movie was bad. Not as bad as season 9 of G4, but much worse than the 2017 movie. I'll still watch the actual show when it comes out, in the hopes it'll be marginally better, but I'm not optimistic.
Just to be SUPER clear:
This whole blog post is my own opinion. If you loved the movie, if you thought it was a 10/10 masterpiece that rivals Toy Story, then great! I'm happy for you. I just wish I could get as much enjoyment out of it as you did.
EDIT: in hindsight my comments on the animation are a bit harsh. While I didn't like it, it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be here. I still stand by everything else I said, though.
I agree, for me the movie is an 'Ok', it is not a big deal, and I would not trust RT, but for some strange reason that page is still relevant when it comes to giving a rating to a work, I do not know why.
In general, the movie is only good and until then, I only saw it in case the mane six appeared and it was nice to see them at the beginning ... but something curious, is that they never mention their names in the film, I do not suppose that everything is saving for the series.