Movie Thoughts: My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)

• Released: October 6 2017
• Directed by: Jayson Thiessen
• Running time: 1 h 39 min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

When Equestria is attacked by the Storm King's troops, Twilight and her friends must find a way to defeat him and his minions.

My Thoughts

Guess I’m doing both MLP movies, lol. You know the drill by now. 

The plot is…eh. One problem I have with movie adaptations of certain thing is that the story often seems to be the basic “leave the place we’ve always known for a huge threat and go on a great journey to save it”-story. This movie is no exception. It’s nice to finally get a look outside of Equestria, but I’d have liked a more original plot for this one. It’s really kinda how I predicted it would go? Down to the pirates? Yeah, about the pirates, one of the guys behind this movie is also responsible among others for Ice Age: Continental Drift. I just thought he liked pirates.

The characters are all right. Don’t get me wrong, the characters in the show are very good and developed, but I’m just looking at the movie by itself here. We actually have a little bit of what I like to call Ice Age-syndrome, too. Not because of the pirates…but because of the huge amount of characters. But I get it, the show has many characters as well, especially with what are technically 7 mains (not counting Starlight. Let’s not talk about Starlight.) and a few major ones that also get their episodes at time (like Discord). It’s just a bit much, and I don’t fault the movie at all for not having all of the Mane 6 plus Spike having a huge presence. Pinkie Pie and Rarity I remember having relatively little presence in comparison to the others, but it’s fine. They still had their moments! The side characters are all right. Most of them have a basic pattern (first aren’t friends, reach a strong emotional moment with one or multiple of the Mane 6, befriend them, vanish and come back for the climax) but they’re all unique and fun in their own ways. I’m a big fan of Captain Celaeno, Capper was cool and Skystar was a fun character!


The animation is rather good, though it has some rough moments. I really do like the new aesthetics for the characters, with the new assets. They look even better than in the show, and the animation is rather good! It’s really smooth, though, if I may…maybe at some parts it’s too smooth? Don’t get me wrong, it looks great, but some moments look like they would’ve been a little better if more smear frames and less in-betweens. The movement of the characters feels a bit “slow” at times. For some characters it works, like the menacing slow movements of Tempest, but for others it doesn’t look as good. There’s also a part where the characters actually run slightly in place and too slow, so that could’ve been fixed. But the rest was neat!

The other visuals are varying. I actually don’t mind the much more pink redesign Canterlot got, and I really like the visuals in some of the places we encounter, from Mount Aris to the pirate ship to the harsh Klugetown. The only real downsides of the visuals were the CGI…which…did not blend too well with the 2D animation. Some of it also really looks rough, such as the blimp of the Storm King’s forces.

Something else I noticed is the lack of Discord in this movie. I’m not complaining about that because I love his character so much or anything (modern Discord is really not my thing), but because he literally could’ve solved the main problem of this movie with a literal snap of his claws? And it’s never explained where he is or why he can’t do anything as far as I can tell, so I just don’t know.


The pacing was all right. It doesn’t go too fast or to slow, so I’ll commend this movie for it.

The villains…varying. Okay, so I’m just going to say it, I love Tempest Shadow as a villain. She’s everything I want. Dark, totally capable of defending herself even with her disability, having an awesome design, an interesting motive, a threatening presence…she’s got it all. I’m actually not too thrilled at her redemption. I saw it coming from a mile away and actually was great as a villain, but I’m not sure if I like her redemption. It was handled very spur-of-the-moment-y and we really don’t get much of a glance at Tempest after the redemption. She did apologize, but I feel like she also needed a suitable punishment? She herself immobilized and allowed the power to be taken of three of the main rulers of the land, not even mentioning the rest of the shit she did. And then she gets away with an apology. Just not a fan of how some MLP: FiM villains get away with their terrible deeds by simply saying sorry and accepting the friendship philosophy. The Storm King as a villain was very underwhelming. He was much more comedic, and, despite being the main villain, Tempest had much more of a good presence. There’s also Grubber but…he really does nothing. He’s the fat I-like-to-eat-anything henchman who just vanishes after he gets taken into that cake (also he looks like Bunga from The Lion Guard for some reason). Grubber really could’ve just been erased and nothing would’ve changed except plot-wise.


My Little Pony: The Movie is an all right cartoon-to-movie adaptation. It’s rather basic in it’s plot, but it has some pretty animations and a cool villain. If you like the show, you’ll probably enjoy this movie fine, but I won’t recommend it to people who have no history with the show much. It’d still be enjoyable probably, but if you have more knowledge of the world and characters, I feel like this movie adds more.

Not perfect, but pretty neat for what it is. If you have some interest in it and are familiar with at least a bit of the show I’d say, check this one out.