G1 Media Retrospective: My Little Pony: The Movie

[Khoufu]

I can't stand Spike and Baby Lickety-Split's singing voices, especially Spike's. However, I love "Nothing Can Stop The Smooze". I found it to be an enjoyable movie as a kid and it's a staple of my G1 rewatching binge.

[Shaz]

Hmm, not really one of my favourite pieces of pony media. But I do like the songs "Evil Like Me" and "Nothing Can Stop the Smooze". And I am strangely fond of the Grundles, I don't know why.

It seemed so silly of the ponies to give away their beautiful Dream Castle. I mean, I know they had to because of Marketing, but in-universe it made no sense.

[Taffeta]

I find it really interesting that the movie is not as exceptionally popular as maybe the multiple rereleases and attention it gets implies.

I never saw it as a kid. It's not that I didn't know about it. There were adverts in the comic and I had Shady, whose card in the UK is a big glorified advert for the movie - but I didn't even remember Shady's card growing up. I didn't like the cinema as a kid anyway, it was big and loud and dark and smelled of popcorn and that frightened me - so that may be the reason why. Also we moved house a few times in 1986-8 because of my Dad's job and that might have been part of it as well. But I never cared at all really. It was a total irrelevance to me. I remember begging and begging for Baby Lucky, and the Pony Club, and the fact file, and other things which I wasn't able to send off for or acquire - but I never ever once wanted the movie. I never even had it on VHS. I had four episodes which I loved, but never took too seriously because I thought the animation people didn't know enough about ponies to get the names right (US names of course xD).

So when I did see the movie, I was older. Probably mid teens. I dunno. I don't think there's a lot in it I actually like that much. The only thing I do like is the smooze and the song that goes with it. It's iconic. I had a student in one of my classes back when I was a learning support assistant who was mad on G4, and who would tell me all about the new episodes when he learned I was a G1 pony fan. When the smooze appeared in G4 he went and found the G1 clip on youtube and played the song so it came up in discussion. I said to him, nothing can stop the smooze! And he looked right at me and said, "except the flutter ponies." So apparently it had a deeper effect on him as a G4 fan than it did on me as a G1 fan

I think the reason I don't like the movie isn't about the witches although they are annoying. It's about the characters. I hated how Magic Star, Gusty and Shady in particular were portrayed. I knew these characters well from the comic. Magic Star was a granter of wishes, magical, wise and sought for her advice and her skills. Gusty was the kind and compassionate ponyland nurse who looked after the baby ponies, and Shady was the abstract and out-of-the-box thinker, with her psychadelic glasses through which she saw many impossible things. In the movie Magic Star is boring, Gusty is bratty and Shady is morose and scared of things.

I wonder if that is the real reason I don't remember Shady's card. It didn't have a proper story and it just had a single sentence about her being lacking in confidence or something. That wasn't Shady to me so I probably disregarded it and any interest in the movie at that point.

I still feel this way about how those ponies are represented, so I haven't watched it in years and probably won't for many to come either.

As for Megan and her siblings, I never liked them much either. But here seems a good place to raise the mysterious Hasbro Sunbow animation coincidence surrounding Danny.

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This is a character called Danny from a 2 part ep of Jem called the Music Awards. He's a runaway and he gets some of Jerrica's girls in trouble when they run away too. He looks a lot like an older version of MLP Danny:
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So my head canon is that this is what happened when Danny hit puberty. He ran away, trying to avoid his annoying sisters and the horde of pastel ponies that kept disrupting his life. He ended up at the Halfway House in Los Angeles as a result

Ok, so it's head canon. But the features and the name just make me wonder. Jem and MLP had a lot of cross-over cast and writing people during the eighties. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a subtle inside joke.

[LadyMoondancer]

As for Megan and her siblings, I never liked them much either. But here seems a good place to raise the mysterious Hasbro Sunbow animation coincidence surrounding Danny.

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This is a character called Danny from a 2 part ep of Jem called the Music Awards. He's a runaway and he gets some of Jerrica's girls in trouble when they run away too. He looks a lot like an older version of MLP Danny:
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So my head canon is that this is what happened when Danny hit puberty. He ran away, trying to avoid his annoying sisters and the horde of pastel ponies that kept disrupting his life. He ended up at the Halfway House in Los Angeles as a result

Ok, so it's head canon. But the features and the name just make me wonder. Jem and MLP had a lot of cross-over cast and writing people during the eighties. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a subtle inside joke.

Wow, that is pretty uncanny!

But we need a way to tie in Daniel Witwicky from Transformers too.

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[Shatyr]

As for Megan and her siblings, I never liked them much either. But here seems a good place to raise the mysterious Hasbro Sunbow animation coincidence surrounding Danny.

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This is a character called Danny from a 2 part ep of Jem called the Music Awards. He's a runaway and he gets some of Jerrica's girls in trouble when they run away too. He looks a lot like an older version of MLP Danny:
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So my head canon is that this is what happened when Danny hit puberty. He ran away, trying to avoid his annoying sisters and the horde of pastel ponies that kept disrupting his life. He ended up at the Halfway House in Los Angeles as a result

Ok, so it's head canon. But the features and the name just make me wonder. Jem and MLP had a lot of cross-over cast and writing people during the eighties. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a subtle inside joke.

Wow, that is pretty uncanny!

But we need a way to tie in Daniel Witwicky from Transformers too.

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Cousins, perhaps? Daniel is a family name. Danny was given the nickname as to differentiate between the two in family conversations. They get together at family reunions and Danny is always jealous of Daniel's talking car friends. Daniel, on the other hand, thinks being able to hang out with live dragons and wizards is pretty cool.

[Lilja]

In short I'd say the movie is a cynical, minimum effort, corporate, toy shilling piece of trash. It makes me sad, because this world and its characters meant so much to me and many others when we were kids. Being from the same writer as the previous two specials, I wonder if he just couldn't handle writing a full length movie, or if he was just fed up with all the mandates pushed on him by Hasbro.

On the positive side, the smooze is a pretty good concept for a threat, and feels fresh. Which is good since several parts of this plot seem rehashed from RaMC.

There is some dark stuff in this movie. It's implied the witches commited many a murders and genocide (having made the grundles go nearly extinct). However, they're so goofy you never really feel like they're a threat. I like that they are female, since these bumbling villain roles are often reserved for male characters. Still pretty bad stereotyped characterization. I like that their looks are unconventional, but it's too bad only evil girls get to be fat, have big noses etc. Hydia's design is especially great. Honestly I think they would've been more charming if they turned good, but kept liking gross stuff, similar to the Addams family. I don't buy them as the big time villains the movie/series want to portray them as.

The smooze song is indeed the highlight of the movie! I find it funny though that the witches get three songs, Baby Lickety-Split gets two, and apart from the MLP theme no other ponies get any songs.

I like the way Habbit acts in the Moochick scene. He is 100% done with everybody. He just wants to move the stupid plot along and get this trainwreck of a movie over with.

You can tell this was a movie made by two studios.  The parts animated by Toei is head and shoulders above the lion's share of the movie animated by AKOM.  You can really see it in the few segments with the ponies animated by Toei where the twinkle eyed ponies had beautiful gems in their eyes that actually twinkled.  Compared to AKOM who drew two concentric circles and colored in the space between them.  If only they were willing to give Toei the time and money needed to animated the movie completely.

Do you have an example of this? From what I've seen the twinkle eyes sometimes get more detailed in close up shots, but it's kind of inconsistent how they're drawn. None of the pony scenes look Toei animated to me. Many of the scenes with the witches on the other hand look to be animated by Toei. You can really notice the difference in style when they switch animation studios.

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Toei's characters are more well-drawn and the movement is more fluid. Akom's movement is more janky and their characters seem to have thinner/softer outlines. On the plus side, Akom did some great detailed backgrounds in this. Toei's backgrounds are often more simplified. I like Toei's style better, but I think Akom did an ok job with this movie compared to the TV animation they put out.

Why does Megan have the Rainbow of Light if she gave it to Baby Moondancer at the end of Escape from Catrina?

From a writing perspective, it's to give them an excuse to bring Megan and her siblings into the story. In "Escape from Catrina" it seemed like Megan only wore the locket on her visit as an honorary guest. She'd have no reason to bring it back home, especially since the ponies needed it to fight off all the threats they encountered. And in the end she gives it to Baby Lickety-Split and is all "The rainbow belongs here, with you ponies!". Like, duh?! Why did you take it from them to begin with??? It's just another indication that this movie was not very well thought out.

[Ponyfan]

I agree. The ponies having to retrieve the Rainbow of Light from Megan makes no sense except as a way to bring Megan in to the story. I used to wonder if different people wrote each special and the movie as nothing seems consistent between them except the ponies having the Rainbow of Light, Spike living with the ponies after Rescue at Midnight Castle and Megan continuing to visit the ponies.

The Rainbow of Light should stay with the ponies. What use does Megan have for it outside of Ponyland?  Right after Megan gives Baby Lickety Split the Rainbow of Light it disappears from around her neck . And something else I just thought of, why did Megan give it to a baby pony? Wouldn't a full grown pony be more responsible?

This shot of Baby Lickety Split and Spike makes me laugh because Baby Lickety Split is so huge and drawn so badly. 

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I know the Moochick is supposed to be a little eccentric but why did he mistake Megan for a pony when she's obviously human? He didn't even seem surprised when she showed up in Rescue at Midnight Castle. If the flutter ponies can use utter flutter to get rid of Smooze why didn't the Grundle King ask them to remove the Smooze from Grundleland? (I know it was done so Hasbro could show the ponies continuing to live in Paradise Estate, but still...)

More of this when we get to "The End of Flutter Valley" but how did so many different flutter ponies suddenly turn in to only a few after the events of the movie?


Ponyfan

[TJgamer]

What a crazy mess of a movie this was.

Schizophrenic storytelling, annoying characters (particularly the Grundles  ), spastic animation and editing, and awful songs (save one or two).

I liked the Smooze, a few of the ponies, and I got a chuckle from the witches once in a while.
But other than that, definitely one of the worst pieces of media G1 had to offer.

[Zapper]

I'm just sad this movie could have been "Transformers The Movie" (minus the character deaths) but instead they chose to make it one long television episode. The animation looked like it had roughly the same budget.
I'm more disappointed by it than disliking it. At least it gave us the Smooze. And one day Lord Smooze will rise and reign again

[Al-1701]

It first order of business, kill the radioactive booger that dared to steal its name.

[Zapper]

It first order of business, kill the radioactive booger that dared to steal its name.

Yeah can we talk about that in here? I never understood why Smooze was green in FiM. It was Smooze in name only. Weird. In before "they lost the copyright to the color" lmao

[Lilja]

I agree. The ponies having to retrieve the Rainbow of Light from Megan makes no sense except as a way to bring Megan in to the story. I used to wonder if different people wrote each special and the movie as nothing seems consistent between them except the ponies having the Rainbow of Light, Spike living with the ponies after Rescue at Midnight Castle and Megan continuing to visit the ponies.

And yet Midnight Castle, Catrina and the Movie were all written by the same person, George Arthur Bloom. He should've known it made no sense for Megan to have the rainbow, but probably went with it because he couldn't think of a better reason to bring Megan to Ponyland (could've had Megan be there beforehand as a guest for the sping festival, but that might have been too obvious a rehash of Escape from Catrina).

If the flutter ponies can use utter flutter to get rid of Smooze why didn't the Grundle King ask them to remove the Smooze from Grundleland? (I know it was done so Hasbro could show the ponies continuing to live in Paradise Estate, but still...)

Maybe too much time had passed for Grundle Kingdom to be de-smoozed. The grundles exist mainly for two reasons, to show how destructive the smooze can be, and to have a purpose for Dream Castle after the ponies have moved into Paradise Estate. Maybe a third reason is to have a character for Danny DeVito to voice.

Actually, celebrity voice acting is probably one reason the ponies are kind of pushed aside in their own movie. Celebrity voice characters get most of the songs. So why not give celebrity voices to the ponies? Well, the ponies aren't very distinctive. And the only viewers who care about the celebrity voices would be the parents, and they aren't going to be able to tell the ponies apart.

[LadyMoondancer]

This shot of Baby Lickety Split and Spike makes me laugh because Baby Lickety Split is so huge and drawn so badly. 

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Same. 

Celebrity voices seem so pointless to me.  Like, how many parents out there really thought, "Oh I wasn't going to see this, but DANNY DEVITO . . ."  LOL, no.  They go because their kids beg them.

I actually think most episodes of the TV series were better (plotwise) because they did focus more on the ponies.

[Leave a Whisper]

This shot of Baby Lickety Split and Spike makes me laugh because Baby Lickety Split is so huge and drawn so badly. 

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Same. 

Celebrity voices seem so pointless to me.  Like, how many parents out there really thought, "Oh I wasn't going to see this, but DANNY DEVITO . . ."  LOL, no.  They go because their kids beg them.

I actually think most episodes of the TV series were better (plotwise) because they did focus more on the ponies.

Having never seen the GI Joe movie, did they get celebrity actors for that too?

[LadyMoondancer]

Yeah, they got the 'real' Sergeant Slaughter who was a WWE professional wrestler (playing himself . . . except also a Joe).  Although I would say that was a celebrity guest that actually made sense, since a lot of kids were fans of WWE and would know who he was.