My Own Review On The New MLP Movie · 10:51am Sep 25th, 2021
before I get into this little Review, note that if you have not seen the movie before reading this and you don't want to be spoiled, then don't read this. you have been forewarned. if you don't care for spoilers, then here is my little review.
so around 11am-ish on 9/24/21, I was just browsing Netflix and that's when I found the new MLP Movie. I was generously curious about this new take on MLP, so I decided to give it a watch. and once I was finished with it I gave it another watch, just to let the whole thing really sink in. and my final conclusion on the movie was.....it's alright.
. now that's not to say that the movie was bad, its actually good. amazing animation!!! very good voice acting, settings and locations we see in the movie are very nice to look at. however there were just something's about the movie that left me confused, baffled, and questioning some key things about it. but before we I get into the my problems with the movie, let's get into the good stuff first.
now the majority of the cast, both main and side cast, were pretty good. honestly a few actually stumped my preconception about them.
now the main heroine Sunny is your typical wide-eyed optimistic character, good nature, means well and tries to be a good friend to everyone, while also getting into some mischievous because of her enthusiasm. then we have the main male character of the primary cast Hitch, who has some standard male tropes, is actually a concern and supportive character to Sunny. then we have my favorite character Izzy, she's such a sweetheart, although most scenes with her has her being more of a goofy object 80% of the time, at least that's how I felt. then there are the 2 pegasi sisters who were just as charming as the other characters, and at first I thought Zipp was going to be another Rainbow Dash, but THANK GAWD she wasn't! unfortunately Pipp didn't have much of a present as the other characters, but she did have some moments that I liked, like this one scene where her whole body vibrated because her phone went off. i just found that funny.
while the main cast was a charming bunch, the secondary cast of ponies were.....not or just really meh. like one of the side characters is Hitch's deputy who gets an ego trip because his 'mommy' (oh gawd I hate male characters that talk act that way, just, no) feeds his ego and doesn't reel him in properly. he's also treated like that goof ball idiot character that's not really fun to watch instead he's more like a 'please just get off screen'. Zipp and Pipp's mom is also not a prominent figure in movie, she is shown to be a caring mom but there's not much else. and the unicorns, their all treated as gloomy and depressed emo's. even dressing and having accents like an emo.
aside from the ponies personalities I really like the character designs for the ponies. they have VERY nice body portions, not like G4's more animated and cartoonish short stout bodies and heads the same size of their bodies. they actually look like normal ponies but with MLP colors and facial features and expressiveness. and as for the voice acting, top notch same with the sound design, and the of course the musical numbers were pretty catchy.
then we have the settings, Maretime Bay, Zephyr Heights and Bridlewoods. they are very nice to look at. Maretime Bay looks like a nice port, or sea side town. Zephyr Heights is actually WAY more advance city I've seen in the movie and G4, and Bridlewoods looks like a nice forest location. other than these central locals, the only other places that we see are fields, a canyon and nothing else. so overall visually the scenery is 50/50, but that's to be expected around these types of movies with the settings not being a big 'character' of their own.
unfortunately that's all the general good stuff that jumped out at me from the movie, everything is either subpar or not really engaging for me. and I'm sorry to say that the overall story is also part of the bad stuff for me. now the story of Sunny and the gang making the 3 tribes re-unite together is sweet and nice, every thing else about the OVERALL part of the movie itself is a big problem.
Problem #1: this movie seems, and is marketed, to being a successor to G4. picking the previous generation up from where it left off. however I never got the sense or told how 'far' into the future this movie takes places in the G4 universe. it is shown that the Mane 6 were a thing, as there are figurines of them that Sunny owned, and there are depictions and images of Twilight's cutie mark in some places of the settings. however, neither Twilight nor her friends, or even the other princess are mentioned or even regarded in this movie. it's like they were erased from the movie's pre-generation history. and also by doing this, everything else that happened in G4 that this movie is trying to pick-up for it to be a 'continuation' is also erased or just out-right forgotten.
Problem #2: the reason why the 3 tribes of ponies separated, and started to isolate themselves from each other is also never fully and truly explained. like there was no fighting, no bias argument, or any political mishap or anything. nothing! nothing about why ponies are being suspiciously raciest and xenophobic to each other is never explained. so that makes me wander why the central conflict of the movie is even something that takes part in the story.
then we have, problem #3: now remember, this movie is suppose to be a spiritual successor to G4, being in the same cinematic universe but in a far distant non-specific future. so we have a new cast to play with, without having the old cast of G4 interfering and hogging the spotlight by simply being in the featured product. with all that said with this movie being a bridge gap from G4 to G5 there is a MAJOR problem. apparently the reason the Pegasi and Unicorn species of ponies of this shared universe have and can use their respective magic................is because of a set of magic crystals representing each pony race!!!!!!!
!WHAT!
so you mean to tell me, that all this time that the reason the ponies in this shared G4 to G5 universe can use magic, is because there are crystals that GIVES them their magical abilities! so in reality if these crystals were, NEVER, a thing then none of the ponies would be able to use magic, and the pegasi would just be ponies with vestigial wings for aesthetics, and unicorns would just be horned ponies.
because of these 3 problems of the movie that I finally gave this movie a 4 or 5 out 10 rating. it has good aspects of it, and it shines a new spin on the MLP franchise and tries to build off the previous 4th Gen, with marginally good characters. however, the 3 problems that made me question the movie, and the potential future of the MLP franchise has me in a difficult spot to accept some stuff, and scratch my head about what this movie has set.
It was enjoyable but yes the movie felt really really really filled with plot holes that were very obvious.? It's like they had a mountain of continuity and Lore and they said Blow me let's just make something that'll be easier to digest for the smooth brain audience I mean like not even a flashback or a reference to other races like what the fuck! My god you gave us a bare minimum but whatever hopefully they fix it with more like a show or maybe something more.
Its blues brothers 2000 for mlp. Thats all i need to say.