Here we go! It's been well over a month, but here's my rewatch blog on the G4 film. I've allowed it to go to Spotlight length for once, but I've deliberately kept it considerably shorter than my first review (linked below) so inevitably I won't have had room for everything. That's what comments sections are for! ;)
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| It was a couple of watches before I noticed the left horn was a minotaur's... |
My Little Pony: The Movie
My original rating: ★★★★
IMDb score: 6.1
Thoughts: One should never take IMDb scores too seriously – but 6.1? Come on, guys, that's not fair. This is an enjoyable movie. It's not a great work, no Inside Out or a Toy Story, but it's a cut above plenty of films made to sell plastic merch. This was the first (though not the last!) time we saw the Toon Boom style, and while feelings were mixed initially I think it's aged fairly gracefully. One or two slightly rickety CGI moments, but in general it looks very nice. The film also sounds nice – in fact, this may be the best of all MLP media for audiophiles, thanks to very solid songs (I adore "Open Up Your Eyes") and a fine score, beyond that which many kids' films provide.¹
¹ Though.. grumble grumble "Ponies Got the Beat" grumble grumble "Equestria" grumble. :P
Fluttershy isn't in the story enough. There you are, I said it! Neither is Applejack. Maybe if we'd got a sequel things might have been different, but even I (four cinema visits and a convention viewing) couldn't make this a blockbuster on my own! Twilight, Pinkie, Rainbow and Rarity have a fair amount to do, though even allowing for this being started in the S4 era (hence Starlight's absence¹) they seem a little too helpless occasionally. Witness their near-instant persuasion by the clearly less than trustworthy Capper.
¹ Bar that non-speaking cameo at the start.
Yeah, talking of Capper... while his character works reasonably well, I still don't really like anthro cats or the Klugetown creatures in Equestria. (I'm actually okay with Grubber as comic relief.) Plus if you didn't know the background of the film, from earlier plans or the prequel comic, you wouldn't have the slightest clue who Verko was meant to be. As for the seapony-hippogriff things... despite the lack of "shoo be doo" they weren't bad, though I probably like them more now I know we got Silverstream and Terramar in the show as a kind of spin-off result. The pirates? Slightly underused, but fun.
Tempest Shadow is for me easily the star of the film. Emily Blunt pitches her just right, giving her a genuine menace beyond that of the theoretically more powerful Storm King who – despite being actually (well, maybe) Killed Off For Real by the end, is more in the bumbling, self-absorbed comedic supervillain line. Tempest's redemption is arguably a little too quick, and her filly backstory a little too neat (again, there's more detail in that comic) but when you only have an hour and a half to work with there have to be some limits.
The film is a little bit lacking in the memorable dialogue stakes, with few really memorable lines. Well, okay, the "Hungry! Hungry! Hippos?" one is stupid in an amusing way, but of course the "bad spell service" pun doesn't work for a British audience.¹ "Brian! Noooo!" is up there, I suppose. There are some outright clunky lines, too: as I noted in 2017, "the three most royal princesses of Equestria" is just bad. Sia I can excuse as she only had dialogue at all because she was The Big Guest Star rather than in the story organically.
¹ The basic "ringtone" is one thing that has really dated.
You've been waiting for this, I'm sure, so: yes, that scene on the beach does still hit me hard. It doesn't last very long, true, but it's got quite a punch. (And to this day, I maintain that Twilight is not unreasonably out of character when she attempts to steal the pearl. Not in these desperate straits.) For a U-rated film this movie gets fairly dark in places, and that helps it no end. Looked at straightforwardly, this is probably only a three-star film. It has such good memories and associations for me, though, that it's keeping that four. Yes, purely because I can.
Choice quote: Twilight: "Friendship didn't fail me. I failed friendship."
New rating: ★★★★
Next time, I'll be returning to Season Seven of Friendship is Magic itself, with an episode I had a good time with back in 2017: "Once Upon a Zeppelin". I hope to see you there!
"Not great, but enjoyable" is definitely how I'd describe this, though I don't think I'd give it more than 3 stars on your rating. I'm still rather miffed they went with the "draw viewers with star power" tactic, if only because it meant A) we never got any of the new characters appearing in the show other than Tempest, and B) she never got to speak, so we had to fill in her proposed post-movie activities ourselves. Not that I'm going to complain about more fanfic fuel, but c'mon, we could have had more Tempest. D: Priorities, people!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I will ever fully be able to separate my feelings on G4's theatrical movie from the fact of it being my inaugural experience with FiM and the wider property. How many of you can do that with your first episode of the show, sure? But I can freely, authoritatively admit that it is not a good movie, either in general or for FiM.
ReplyDeleteThere's never been a point in MLP's history where it hasn't been a brand extension, first and foremost, and history is littered with animated films in general and tv-show-to-movie animated films that, respectively, suffer chiefly from this film's two biggest problems. That being having too many masters to serve, and reconciling the root show's narrative and character format to a feature film and wavering on how effortful to go in making it not feel like an extended episode.
Consider all the masters this film has to serve, both in pleasing the fans (a definitive adventure with seven characters in the hero party that all get enough of a spotlight is a tough job for a skilled screenwriter even in isolation) and the financers, what with eight new characters voiced by name actors. And, of course, three distinct locales to be the backbone for new toylines, each of which could be their own movie. That's all normal. But something about the particular way this movie was produced (the Art of Book seems to suggest the filmmakers being allowed to design willy-nilly for the first year, then assemble a story out of the ingredients and Hasbro's notes) leads to two bizarre things.
Firstly, many of these characters and aspects being alien both to the show but also the target audience (the Klugetown sequence, effectively a Mos Eisley expy, contributed virtually no toys I know of, outside of the odd Capper figure), and the film never reconciling them – both for the toys and in the film, only the seapony chunk actually matters in the details, but you wouldn't know with how de-prioritised it is, down to the hippogriffs never coming back to help in the climax, a decision the writers actually had but then dropped "to let the ponies be the heroes" (of all the bad writing decisions in the film, and there's a lot, this might be the most damning; considering they still have the other friends help but let the Mane 7 be the main heroes, it beggars belief).
But what's truly bizarre is the form having so many masters to serve and being overstuffed takes. Usually, that means a somewhat frantic pace with enough business and comedy to paper over the writing and character shortcuts (throw a dart at an animated film at random, and you'll likely get this, hay, just look at the G5 film). Here, we get the opposite: simplified plot points to the state of much of it feeling like the outline of plot/characters, a de-emphasis on jokes and often dialogue altogether (the G5 film has more dialogue despite being 7 minutes shorter), and lots of protracted cinematic long shots for dramatic effect. Those last two speak deeply to my media sensibilities, but I can't pretend, outside of isolated sequences (the beach fight being the top example), that they do all that much or produce much that's actively memorable.
Chiefly, this also leads to the show's two chief pleasures – songs and characters – being rather subdued. Daniel Ingram has said in more than one interview how he preferred some songs on an earlier draft to their functional replacements, and whatever the ones we got are pleasurable, they do feel like a checklist obligation at times, outside of Tempest's banger. Similarly, even given how few lines many of them have, most of the Mane 7 say or do very little that "feels" them (you can count the "raised in a barn"-level wit on a few mitts). Really, even Dash's "stubborn adrenaline junkie" schtick feels barely present.
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DeleteReally, the other mishaps are just collateral damage from all that, so I won't pull out a laundry list. Still, it's very apparent just from watching A New Generation the lessons the Hasbro execs learned from how this film's final script-as-animated turned out, in pacing, focus, incident and character interactions.
And yet, whatever all the above should result in an unwatchable disaster and make it feel pervasively "off" for FiM (and for plenty of fans, has)… I unironically, legitimately, enjoy the film. Magic of FiM, I'd say, but there's key reasons why this still works when some of Season Six, much of Seven and basically all of Eight and Nine don't.
Even when the execution here is whiffy, you can feel the inspiration behind most elements, such that even the Mos Eisley expy is charmingly weird. Be it the slinky Capper, the pirate sequence's energy, the effective musical score, the earnest voice acting (though only the villains get much inspired to do, only Sia phones it in), and especially the villains – yes, I actually like the Storm King, and given much of his business, evidently the writers, artists and VA all delighted in everything to do with him. Though Tempest does steal the show, of course. Even when the film's energy is sagging, the road trip format lets elements cycle in and out to amuse, and there's a classical purity to the character arcs of Twilight and Tempest, however undernourished, that works.
Lastly, the animation. Ever since I saw the trailer in the cinema in Summer 2017, the chief quirk of the visual aesthetic has always been how much it's struggling to reconcile the base Flash-style character designs in a 3D-esque world (even when the backgrounds are painted, as they usually are, they're still the same aesthetic as with the CG sets), in a way that probably would have worked better had they tried less hard. If you're ever seen Home on the Range, it's akin to using the 3D movement tool Deep Canvas in that film's flat, UPA-derived aesthetic.
It does, certainly, feel worse in my brain than it is to watch, once you make allowances for the worst aspects (or the awful processing of the ads, ditto the dark tint on the official home media/streaming released), or the different design school for many new characters (really, the anthropomorphic ones click perfectly when not next to ponies). For the $8m budget, much of the work is marvellous, in landscapes, characters and movement. The effects (by superstar FX animator Michael Gagné!) just pop, and that flashback still wows. I won't blame anyone for finding it a garish eyesore, but more than enough elements of the visuals here play to my tastes enough that I can't help but like them on balance.
So, a mixed affair for the usual reasons though in unexpected ways, and unquestionably a mistake for the show (many of the show's quality drops can be traced back to making this, chiefly but not fully from new crew and story heads stepping in while the originals went off to this). At this point, I only ever revisit it once every handful of years, but given how big a part of my life MLP is, I don't suppose I'll ever stop having some measure of affection for my gateway to it. Despite the length, slowness and blandness of much of it, between the oft-kilter weird elements, plus the highlights and stretches that work, I enjoy this more than many "better" episodes.
Oh, and what I feel was one of my best video(s) on Cartoon Karma was on this movie (also one of the least-watched, but my viewerbase wasn't Bronies, so that checks out), one I feel mostly holds up even nearly six years on when most of my catalogue emphatically doesn't. So I carry extra affection off that too. :)
"One" must confess to being an outsider here, as "one" has not seen this movie. That said, from the general critical reception, I've gleaned weird mixed feelings and a vague wariness about it, beyond the suspicion that this should by all rights not have been two or three years as late as it was.
ReplyDeleteConceptually, it's like that uncomfortable sensation you get when you definitely hear the creaking strain and think you should get out of the house before it collapses. Even the praise largely amounts to being a superficial fun time, and I dunno, maybe I expect too much, but I've generally felt pony could do better than that. And while not a deal-breaker on its own, in context I've never gotten over that art style hybridization. In my eyes, it's even more "uncanny valley" than the G5 movie.
Overall, this is why any positive reviews surprise me, because the signals I get are that I wouldn't think much of this. It also has the bad luck of occurring during a portion of the pony show when I'm losing interest anyway.
On a tangent, the impression I've gotten is that people are (slightly) more enthusiastic for the G5 movie than for this one, but I might be basing that on a biased sample.
Sorry if that's a bit negative. I'm trying to compare it to the wariness I had around the G5 movie, which I did eventually see, but which - nice as it was - never fully won me over to the G5 continuity (allowing that G5 is an extension of the G4 continuity, which admittedly was one reason why it never fully won me over).
DeleteI think a case could be made that both movies suffer from their (business-mandated) obligations to pre-existing canon, as Mike points out above me. In the case of G5, I always found the G4 canon welding a distracting detriment to what I would otherwise have treated as a pleasant, breezy, and comfortable (if oversimplistic and confusingly flawed) movie.
So the obvious question is how the two movies compare overall.
Having re-watched the movie several times this year, and even done a frame-by-frame to study details (for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who follows me), I find that I still like it quite a bit. Four stars is not out of line with my own assessment, though it might be a lower-end four.
ReplyDeleteBut that's coming from a position of simple enjoyment of a wider, grander adventure for characters I'd already come to love. I am well aware of it's flaws, because I had to recognize and compensate for them while writing The Cadenza Prophecies, but (for whatever reasons) that didn't really dull my enjoyment of the film.
I have other thoughts on the matter but... There's no point to engaging in a no-win scenario. I like it and will probably watch it again in a few years.
I did like the movie, but it was pretty much everywhere undercooked. Jamming in too many characters without a chance to flesh them out, rushing through plot elements, quick redemption arc, and a head baddie who never felt like a threat. I'm in the camp that did feel like Twilight was OOC. Not that she stole the pearl at all. I can buy her being desperate enough. But I don't believe she'd preemptively steal it before she'd gotten a final refusal from Novo. I was equally moved by the beach scene. As much as I think Dash is a bonehead a lot of the time anyway, I felt it was even beneath her stupidity to do a rainboom when it should have been abundantly obvious it'd give away their position. Yes, the plot needed the enemy to be hot on their heels, but giving her a huge idiot ball to make that happen was a poor decision. Agreed that the music was quite good, and I really liked Sia's song for the closing credits. The official video for it is great.
ReplyDeleteMy Little Repeats has returned! And all is right with the world.
ReplyDeleteIt's been seven years since the film came out, and although my feelings toward the franchise have soured since then, (especially with the direction G5 has taken, but more on that in later installments) My Little Pony: The Movie still holds up really well, and if it had been the finale to G4, I would've been okay with it. Best to go out while you've still got quality.
The music was a huge step up from season seven, although given that they had an actual orchestra on hand, that's probably not a high bar to clear. It's some of the best that G4's ever had to offer; what can be said about "Open Up Your Eyes" that hasn't been said already? It's a freaking amazing villain song!
Despite that, however, as much as I like Tempest Shadow, Princess Skystar is my favorite of the new characters. I could gush about her for days, but all I can say here is that as far as favorites go, I put her above every character in G4 (except Fluttershy).
I'm also in the camp that defends Twilight's attempts to steal the pearl; at this point, she's desperate to do anything to save Equestria from the Storm King, but she's not thinking straight, and that's what leads to her falling out with the rest of the Mane Six, making Twilight feel like she's not only failed friendship, but she's failed Princess Celestia, her mentor, as well. This is my favorite portrayal of Twilight Sparkle in the entirety of G4, as it gets the fundamentals about her character spot on. (Pinkie was also great in that scene too; when the most light-hearted member of your group calls you out for doing something stupid, you know the situation's bad.)
Seasons eight and nine, however, have no excuse in how Twilight is portrayed, but again, I'll come to that when we come to that.
So yeah, My Little Pony: The Movie is the last truly great thing to come out of the franchise, save for maybe an episode or two. Best Gift Ever? Too saccharine, even for a Christmas special. Sparkle's Seven? It feels less like the 200th episode and more like just another episode. The Last Problem? For a finale that's supposed to be emotional, it failed to get anything out of me. My Little Pony: A New Generation? Yeah, right. Unless something better comes along, at least as far as MLP goes, nothing will beat the 2017 film for me.
No real surprises here, but one point I wanted to touch on:
ReplyDelete"For a U-rated film this movie gets fairly dark in places, and that helps it no end."
Not if you're the parent of a young child you've taken to a see a U-rated *My Little Pony* movie and the child ends up crying from the movie being too scary. Which I witnessed in person in at-least one of the cinema screenings, along with reading similar complaints online.
This is particularly fresh in my mind , as I also witnessed a young child being taken on a scary hounted-house style ride at a theme park yesterday and being a tad traumatised by the whole thing, to the point where they were let out a side-door early. Admittedly it was more the parents' fault in that case, given the fair warnings on the information sign for the attraction.
It's a fair point, though I think it's fair to say I'm not writing for an audience of young children on this blog! As such, on here I'm comfortable with how I wrote the sentence you quote. I might well be more circumspect if I were writing for an audience that did include young children and/or their parents.
DeleteAs quite often, there's a tension between the fact that we're not the actual target audience for MLP and the fact that without us G4 probably wouldn't have continued long enough for a big-screen movie to exist at all. That said, the very first screen version of My Little Pony, "Rescue at Midnight Castle", contains an explicit threat by a villain to decapitate Spike...
Of course things change over the years, and indeed perhaps the BBFC's views on what makes a U aren't always entirely consistent. Their guidance page states that "[t]hreat and scary scenes that may unsettle young children should be very mild and the outcome should be reassuring" -- yet The Lion King is U-rated and clearly goes beyond that. Would it have been granted a U certificate today, I wonder?
I'm going off-topic a bit, and there's probably a whole PhD to be written on this general subject, so I'll stop waffling here. :P
I was that child, several decades ago, at Disney's Haunted Mansion c_c;;
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