MLP: The Movie Discussion Thread

[Sunset]

Hmmm, I was thinking about some of the comments from reviewers earlier and ...

Spoiler

I think I get where the guy was coming from who said that there wasn't high stakes.  Sure, we see all of the ponies enslaved but not till the end of the movie.  I can see how it might have made more of an impact to see just a few shots worth of the ponies being locked up and enslaved right after the mane 6 escape so that the audience can better grasp what is at stake.

I'll go even further and say that ideally they could have even let the mane 6 be split up (GASP!) and allowed half of them to be captured.  Higher, more emotional stakes plus fewer characters to concentrate on during the actual adventure.  As much as I love Fluttershy and Applejack, they just weren't given anything to do this go around.  In fact, it would have been in keeping with the theme to have the enslaved ponies make friends with some of the guards so that some of the guards changed sides at the end.

[orangepeachmango]

i saw it!!!!!!!!!!!! heres my gut reactions:

Spoiler

- i liked it. it was all around pretty cute.
-i really liked the animation, im gonna have a hard time going back to regular flash pony animation style now 
-fluttershy did not do anything! i was so surprised that rainbow dash and pinkie got their own songs and their own "companion" friends, but the other ponies did not.
-i didn't really care that much that applejack wasnt that involved, but even she had more speaking lines than poor little fluttershy.
-tempest didnt get her horn back. i quite liked that. also her name is fizzy pop?! thats so cute. was disappointed that we didn't get to see her cutie mark. maybe she doesn't have one.
-i liked the pirate ship far more than the seapony bit, which is a flip of how i thought it was gonna be.
 I was really..... hrmph. i dont know. I didn't like that they were hippogriffs, and now they're seaponies,
 but they're really back to hippogriffs now.... where does that leave the seaponies!?
-princess skystar's "hands" really creeped me out. very bad. did not like that. stick to hooves please.
-i felt like not enough was shown about like... the real suffering of the ponies back in canterlot, or um,
 the rest of equestria? also....um.. Twilight went on this big rant at queen novo that she "abandoned her people" and "fled underwater" Girl...hate to break it to you..but isn't that literally what you did? you...left your subjects in tempests hooves and didn't do anything to rescue anybody, until you came back at the end and saved everyone. Seemed too hypocritical to me.
- i actually liked spike in this movie. i felt like he actually did things and was meaningful to the plot, and not annoying. except for the *looks at rarity like he doesnt see her every single day* hhh-hi rarity....u///u (BLECH!)
-everyone.is.lesbians!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3
-i noticed that they did not miss a single chance to say "sonbird serenande" or whatever her name is.
 there is probably something in the contract about having to name drop her __ ammount of times, and it wasn't that subtle.
- im usually over the "bad turned good via friendship" model but i really Really liked tempest so um. its okay .
 this time.
-the storm king actually DIED which is cool
-where does he come from....why is he taking eveyrthing over.... who even is he...
-wait where was starlight glimmer again..?
-if twilight spent half as much time doing the things she needed to do instead of running around with her friends singing about doing them, she wouldn't be so stressed and the party would have been in order sooner.
-i was quite shocked at the level of... anger between pinkie and twilight in their big fight. that was a big fight.
 they made up in like 5 minutes, but that seemed like a real bad fight.
-i liked tempest's song the best, but i wasnt ... overly impressed with any of the songs. they were all kinda meh.

okay, i can't think of anything else at the moment. ill read over other peoples reviews and get back to you about changed opinions >: )

[Ponytails]

I saw it this afternoon with my friend and her 13 year old daughter! (My 4 month old stayed home with her daddy) LOVED IT!!!  The new animation was amazing!  Waaaay better then Flash!!  I will definitely be buying the DVD to watch over and over.

Ok, one small question for all of you who have listened to the sound track: is there any tiny little call back to "Call Upon the Seaponies"?

If there isn't, I'd like to go ahead and manage my disappointment now.

Spoiler

I felt like the song “One Small Thing” with the hippogriffs-turned-seaponies actually really felt a little like “Call Upon The Seaponies” in terms of its visuals. There were several parts where many of the hippogriffs-turned-seaponies were doing background dancing but they were almost identical in colors. Just like in the original special.

Just sayin.

[LadyMoondancer]

About your question, Sunset

Spoiler

Musically and in terms of lyrics there's no connection, but there are a couple scenes where the dance is very similar to the RaMC sea pony dance IMO.  Including a scene viewed from above, looking down on sea ponies dancing by swimming in circle, similar to that bit at the very end of the Shoo Be Doo song.

[Sunset]

Yeah, I saw the movie yesterday. 

Spoiler

I really wanted an actual musical line from the original song but whatever. I'd already accepted that it wasn't going to happen by the time I saw the movie.

But speaking of seaponies... Did anyone else notice that they are never actually called seaponies in the movie?  I was actually shocked how quickly the twist about them being the Hippogriffs was revealed.  They were just like " yeah, that's us."  But it does give me hope that we might still get a different version of seaponies in the show.

[Zapper]

Spoiler

I'm kinda glad they are not the actual seaponies.
They have always looked more like merponies to me, so that leaves the chance to get an actual shoo-bee-doo pony (maybe a mermare from the books?) to appear later somewhere.

[FlickaFriend]

Hi everyone,

I'm excited about the UK release coming up in a couple of weeks, but I have a question:

- will this movie make sense if you've only seen Season 1 of FiM?  I want to go with my 2 children but we've only seen Season 1
- also how scary it is?  My youngest (age 5) found the start of Season 2 got a little too scary.  I would take her anyway but I would need to prepare her and also be ready to take her out for 5 mins if it got too intense.

THANKS!!

[Zapper]

I have a question:

- will this movie make sense if you've only seen Season 1 of FiM?

You just need to know a few things, but they are well explained in the first ten minutes of the movie:

-Twilight is the Princess of friendship now, not just a regular gifted unicorn
-There are four princesses as a whole and Twilight is the latest one

What the princesses do is very easy to grasp as well as what Twilight's relationship to them is like.
In fact, most of the other things in the show are glossed over or largely ignored. Like there is Starlight Glimmer, Twilight's own pupil, but she is only seen in the background and does nothing. It doesn't make much sense for the movie (since Starlight has become something like a 7th main pony) but it won't bother anyone who hasn't paid much attention to the show.

The shoutouts are also kept to a minimum. We see Discord as a baloon animal and Muffin appears one time being a failure, but other than that the shoutout humor is actually for parents

Spoiler

(didn't expect Meatloaf lyrics; lol).

[LadyMoondancer]

Yeah, Twilight now is an alicorn and she's the Princess of Friendship.  Other than that, you don't really need any knowledge from any specific episodes of the show or whatnot.

The action is pretty on-par with the action in "A Canterlot Wedding" (which I think was the Season 2 finale you mentioned), except a bit more intense.

The pony villain, Tempest Shadow, gets a lot of screentime and is scary (not in a shouty way, though, more in a plotting way.)

Spoiler for FlickaFriend:

Spoiler

But she does get redeemed at the end and become friends with the other ponies, so you could tell your daughter that in advance if you think Tempest would scare her.

[Zapper]

Does anybody else think the Storm King

Spoiler

was kind of a weird parody of a business man? He was talking about expanding his brand, trademarking slogans and using the ponies to do so. Much like...dududunnn HASBRO. Irony?

I wish we could see Tempest, Skystar, Capper and the pirates again. I also enjoyed the world expansion a lot. The show really needs to move out of Ponyville.

Spoiler

Ignoring powerful Starlight and Discord was really weird. I get why they did it but... they couldn't even show them caged or turned to stone? They had time to show them in the background, so... That was kind of an issue to me having watched the previous seasons - but nothing that would ruin the movie for me. I'd take the movie world over the show world.

[Sunset]

Does anybody else think the Storm King

Spoiler

was kind of a weird parody of a business man? He was talking about expanding his brand, trademarking slogans and using the ponies to do so. Much like...dududunnn HASBRO. Irony?

I wish we could see Tempest, Skystar, Capper and the pirates again. I also enjoyed the world expansion a lot. The show really needs to move out of Ponyville.

Spoiler

Ignoring powerful Starlight and Discord was really weird. I get why they did it but... they couldn't even show them caged or turned to stone? They had time to show them in the background, so... That was kind of an issue to me having watched the previous seasons - but nothing that would ruin the movie for me. I'd take the movie world over the show world.

Well, if you really really want to get nitpicky

Spoiler

. Even without Starlight or discord, it really shouldn't have been this easy to take over Equestria.  One third of the population has magic with, at minimum, levitation powers and the other third can fly.  And surly Tempest didn't have an unlimited numbers of the turn-ponies-to-stone thingies.

I suppose we could just assume that some fighting continued on after the mane6 left.

But eh.  I enjoyed it for what it is. And I'm mostly just excited for the new seapony and Hippogriff merch.

[Leave a Whisper]

Listened to a few songs, I was expecting to be impressed but they were just so-so. Capper's song sounded like it was trying to do more then one musical style and fell a little flat, One Small Thing was just eh tand Tempest's song sounded like it was trying too hard to do something like Don Bluth during the sequelitis days with the fun sucked out of it.

[Zapper]

Imo, the songs work very well in the movie with all the visuals added.

Just some more thoughts...

Spoiler

Where the heck did the little honeybadger guy go? He was shown in the credits, so is he just Tempest's buddy now?

There was way too much Pinkie Pie in this movie. I get they want to sell the Main Three but Pinkie had some lines that could have gone to the others and Fluttershy was neglected.

I'm a little sad Queen Novo was such a blah character. I thought she was going to play a bigger role than Capper.

[JazzMatazz]

I felt it had quite a few plot holes from them trying to throw everything in at once but I had a lot of fun. They hyped up pirates for this with the toys and then barely had much screen time on the ship. I'm hoping between the tv show  and comics some of those things get answered.

[Bekuno]

It's been confirmed the film takes place between S7 & S8, which explains why

Spoiler

A seapony character was revealed for season 8