Let us talk about good and bad science in the MLP-Movie:

Bad:
The movies is rendered in 3D with filtering to get the 2D-look/feel. It starts off with a spectacular shot with no cuts starting from far outside of Canterlot and ending up at the Palace. This starts with a spectacular sunrise panning to pegasi. The pegasi do a barrel-roll and the virtual camera rolls with them. At the end of the camera-roll, the sun is in midmorning position. ¡The animators took advantage of the camera rolling to move the sun!

Good:
During the presentation Princess Twilight Sparkle, we see real mathematics:

¿What did you all notice?

Given that several characters have the ability to move the Sun around to their whim I wouldn't strictly rule out having it change position between camera shots like that. :)

I've only seen the movie once so far so I've probably missed much, but one thing that pops to mind: At one point when Rarity is falling out of an airship along with a bunch of cargo, a mirror falls past her and she takes a moment to preen. A dense, aerodynamic shape like that mirror would definitely have a higher terminal velocity than a flailing unicorn so it makes sense that it would be falling faster than her.

6148350

> “Given that several characters have the ability to move the Sun around to their whim I wouldn't strictly rule out having it change position between camera shots like that. :)”

It was 1 continous shot. It went from view of sunrise to pegasi to the virtual camera barrel-rolling with pegasi to pegasi approaching Canterlot to pegasi entering Canterlot with a gizillion cameos to Mister Spike The Dragon carrying scrolls. I suppose that maybe Princess Celestia figured that ponies got enough of her pretty sunrise and raised the sun to mid morning so that it would not blind ponies facing east to the midmorning position just as the pegasi and virtual camera barrel-rolled.

> “I've only seen the movie once so far so I've probably missed much, but one thing that pops to mind: At one point when Rarity is falling out of an airship along with a bunch of cargo, a mirror falls past her and she takes a moment to preen. A dense, aerodynamic shape like that mirror would definitely have a higher terminal velocity than a flailing unicorn so it makes sense that it would be falling faster than her.”

I am not sure. Maybe we should take ponies and mirrors and drop them to see what will happen.

6148242
Yes, I noticed that it was a bad movie and that I'm glad I didn't pay to go see it.

6149375

> “Yes, I noticed that it was a bad movie and that I'm glad I didn't pay to go see it.”

It is a good movie. Not great like 2001, but still good. Even the bad science of moving the sun was clever:

The 1st scene, without any edits is 1 continuous take in a fully rendered 3D-Environment. It starts with a spectacular sunrise, picks up pegasi. The pegasi barrel-roll and the virtual camera barrel-rolls with them. The animators take advantage of the camera barrel-rolling to move the sun so that the next part of this continuous scene with no edits will be better lit. We follow the pegasi as they enter Canterlot where just about every pony makes a cameo as the pegasi we track fly over the streets and squares. The pegasi fly over Mister Spike The Dragon carrying scrolls toward the Palace. Then we have our 1st cut of the movie. This is 1 continuous fully-rendered 3D-Scene with no cuts.

I like how the equations on the whiteboard are based on real equations (with some pony twists), instead of random math-related symbols bunched together, or on Cheerilee's blackboard.

6149716

Indeed.

6149375

On the original post of this thread, I linked a video of the beginning of the movie up to the 1st edit. You can see for yourself the scientific wrongness of moving the sun tens of degrees a second and the cleverness of starting with a beautiful sunrise, following pegasi and using their acrobatics for hiding the repositioning of the sun so that Canterlot is better illuminated.

I would give the movie a B (4/5 stars on a scale of 0 to 5 —— ¡only drooling morons would like something 0-amount and give it 1 star, which is more than 0 stars!), good but not great. This weekend, I also saw BladeRunner 2049. I give BladeRunner 2049 an A (5/5 stars).

6153524
I don't give a shit about its scientific accuracy because in this series it isn't treated seriously. Things like sun position are animator mistakes made for effect, not realism.