The Pony Movie · 5:22pm Oct 14th, 2017
I don't suspect I'll have anything new or interesting to say about it, but I've been out of the loop for a week or two, and now my feed is full of spoilery movie blogs which I ignored because I hadn't seen the movie. But now I've seen the movie, and now you can all ignore my blog right back because it's old news now.
*ahem*
It was fun to watch. That's the big, important stuff.
There were a lot of little, nitpicky details that could have been thought through better. I won't bother listing them.
So, for many different reasons, I don't feel like this was the same world as FiM's Equestria. I don't expect there to be any crossover between the movie and future television episodes (and that holds true for any potential movie sequels). There was some worldbuilding, but without knowing what this Equestria is like, we don't have a whole lot to compare it to. It's like the audience was supposed to assume that some things from the show are the same, but completely forget things like alicorn laser dogfighting and teleport-based combat, and we have no clue which things are carried over and which to discard.
The animation was cool, and the backgrounds were beautiful but didn't seem to match the characters - and this was intentional. Once they left Equestria, there was this stark contrast between the bright characters and the dark, drab junk town. It was even lampshaded a couple times. The mismatch didn't seem like it was there at all while the characters were in Equestria. I like the style, but I don't think it'd fit the show at all. Different worlds.
The feel of the movie was this weird mix of dark and serious with a cheesy silliness that lacked levity. Like the writers had just read the wikipedia article on "comic relief." I get that you don't want to the movie to be 100% dark, and you need something to break up the serious mood from time to time, but most of these attempts served more to undercut the seriousness of the situation than to keep the audience engaged. For instance, the Storm King bobbleheads. Why?
Let's talk about the characters. Tempest was cool. So dark and edgy. She had a lot of potential, and I think she and Twilight should have had more conversation. I think she was shortchanged by purely time-driven interests. I'd have rather skipped the whole air pirates thing (which had zero interesting characters in it) and have Twilight and Tempest get some one-on-one time. Tempest was an intelligent, competent individual. Strong, beautiful, and... broken. Even while in charge, commanding an army, and invading nations, she just had a sense of resignation about her. Like she'd been defeated, and was just going through the motions. Her heart wasn't in it. I was hoping for more backstory than we got (which was just some crudely animated shortcut storytelling), and her redemption was lacking, too.
The villain, The Storm King, was lame. Like... why was he even a villain? Not scary, not powerful, just... in charge for some reason? He felt like the VP of marketing for a medium-sized toy company who developed a lust for power as part of a mid-life crisis. He didn't even take his own world domination seriously. "We should trademark that!" Uh huh. Again, the real villain was Tempest. She should have just kicked his ass and taken the staff away.
Capper? Completely forgettable. He's not the lovable rogue he was intended to be. Air Pirates? Nobody walking out of that theater remembers any of their names. The captain chick had kind of a cool look, but that's literally the only thing memorable about her. The seaponies were mostly forgettable (and their entire world - which should have been an underwater wonderland of stunning beauty - was mostly just dark and featureless).
The main characters. Let's start by going back to my first comment. Different world. Twilight is back to being her nervous, still-not-quite-a-princess self. Fluttershy is afraid of everything again. Whatever. Different world, right?
Quite a different world, as the princesses are incapable of basic teleportation, laser duels, or even basic telekinesis. In fact... horn magic is nonexistent in this world, with the brief exception of Rarity hovering some gems and a needle and thread.
Pinkie's writing was good in places. The movie would have been exactly the same if Applejack and Fluttershy hadn't even been in it. Rainbow Dash was weird. Like, in the places you expected her to be all puffing up her chest floof and getting in somebody's face, she's just invisible. And then she comes out of nowhere to sing a pirate song. Can't complain too much about her, though, she really shone early on with the whole ribbon decorations in four seconds. Rarity's writing was great.
Twilight. Hrm. Twilight had some character issues. Again, different world. Presumably, one without Discord or Tirek. She's much more unsure of herself, and a lot less grounded in experience than the Twilight we know from season 7. I'm sure everyone is thinking about Twilight stealing the pearl. Yes, that seemed out of character, but... in this situation? It was a reasonable choice, but they didn't sell us on it. If they had taken a few moments earlier in the story to show us how things are different outside of Equestria, one of the other characters making a comment about how things are different out here, and a quick shot of Twilight looking concerned and thoughtful, I think it really could have worked out in a very solid way. It would have been an amazing bit of storytelling to make them all doubt whether their beliefs were valid outside their own little bubble.
Twilight yelling at her friends? I can't figure out any reasonable way that it could have possibly been their fault... but that's the point. She was just lashing out, because she was angry at herself for not giving friendship a chance. Again, I think it could have been sold better.
In terms of storytelling, I think they tried to cram too much junk into 90 minutes, and as a result had to take a lot of storytelling shortcuts. Much of it was symbolic rather than narrative. What could have had storytelling weight ended up being kind of a shortcut for a bigger story-within-a-story that never got told. Rarity's gift to Capper, for instance. It should have caused him to question his quid pro quo way of life, but instead Rarity threw it out the window by saying it was in exchange for prior acts of service "as a thank you." What could have been a weighty, meaningful moment was discarded, and later recalled as important. Tempest's backstory and her conversion are both shortcuts, too.
Overall, it was a fun story. It was a season's worth of storyline and Applejack-ignoring crammed into three episodes worth of time. The show has some truly incredible episodes, and there is some truly incredible fanfiction out there that has taught me so much about storytelling, character, and everything else that goes into making good fiction, that it seems like my standards are set much higher than they used to be. And while my comments above seem like I'm tearing the movie apart, I did find it enjoyable.
In time, though, I think we'll see that there's going to be less art, less fanfiction, and less discussion about the movie than there is about any three above-average episodes of season 7 put together. Why? There's less interesting characters. I think there'll be a lot of Tempest art and stories, but The Storm King is an eminently forgettable nobody of a villain. Nobody remembers the names of the air pirates, but whatshername's aesthetic is enough for some fan art. Compare those characters to villains from the series. Discord was popular before he was reformed. Nightmare Moon is unforgettable. Tirek is iconic. Trixie is, well, Trixie. Sunset Shimmer is bacon waifu, and Starlight Glimmer - as divisive as she is - gets people talking and drawing. Even Sombra - who uttered literally two words, total - was instantly memorable and mysterious.
Egads that was long.
That's cuz you have to read the comics to find out the names of anyone other than the captain! :V So it's not just your imagination on this one!
I would agree on everything you said except that I liked Capper, quoting Skywriter:
that I didn't liked Pinkie at all, I saw it as a continuation of the same "comic relief" problem, something that it's not entirely uncommon in the show itself, and that I think Liev Schrieber did a very good job with Storm King character, wich was undercut by the poor development in the script.
With the rest, I pretty much agree. I also don't understand why the director intentionally specified that the movie happened between season 7 and 8, which doesn't makes a lick of sense, and it would see it much more happening maybe in the middle of season 6 or something.
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I think that Pony Lando Calrissian was what they were going for, but I think it fell short. A lot short. In fact, in Skywriter's quote that you included, almost everything about him that was mentioned... wasn't actually about him. He had a cool outfit, he had a cool house. The song was... I can't actually remember much about the song. It reminded me of Kaa's "Trussst in me" song from Disney's Jungle Book, but a little more upbeat. Still nothing compared to some of the songs from the show (AJ's parents' song? Daaaaayum).
Pinkie had her moments. Like any episode, it's a tossup whether she's written well or just dumb comic relief.
You said you enjoyed it, but you sound pretty disappointed.
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Well... I had fun watching it. About the same as I have watching a two-part episode. I'd have been disappointed if my MoviePass hadn't gotten me in for free, as it was a $13 ticket
I had a lot to say about it. They did some things well, others could have done better. It's just easier to type up the things that could have been done better. If I had been writing a review of a story on fimfic, where the author was likely to read it, I'd probably go to more effort to point out what was done well.