Ok, I’ve watched the film yesterday. Let’s discuss.
MLP A new generation is an interesting film for a lot of reasons, and most of them are related to its own way to be connected to MLP:FiM and to use it as a reference to create more content in the future once the G5 show comes out. I’ve read very few things about the film because I didn’t want to read any spoilers, but my only petitions were only two: It has to be new and it needed to adress some problems MLP:FiM had. And the premise of this film kinda does that, which is not only a good thing, but also a good oportunity to see in the future interesting stories for the characters.
The premise of the film is great. Sunny lives in a bay where there’s only earth ponies, since the three types of ponies are divided and they live in different places. The earth ponies live in the bay, the pegasus live in the mountains and the unicorns live in the forest. Sunny doesn’t like the idea that unicorns and pegasus are terrible, so she tries to convince everyone that they’re not dangerous. One day, a unicorn with the name of Izzy appears, she becomes Sunny’s friend and the earth pony, by going out in Equestria, that this friendship is possible. In the meantime, Hitch is chasing her so he can arrest her. At the same time, Sprout, a clueless cop, gets some advices from her mother to become more worried about the security, so he plans to uses everypony for his own sake to the point where he’s powerful.
Kinda… rings a bell.
The art direction is very nice and the characters are surprisingly appealing. The designers definitively went for a more Disney style for the film and I think it fits. After all, one of the reasons why I love MLP:FiM is because it reminded me of an animated Disney film. The only bad thing about that was that sometimes the expressions were maybe too exaggerated for Twilight and her friends, especially Pinkie Pie. This new design allows more appealing without having the opportunity to give them weird faces that don’t fit in the artstyle. Also, the characters are very likeable. I always wanted either an earth pony or a pegasus as the main character for G5 because we already got an unicorn for that in the last 11 years, so a change was necessary. I stopped liking unicorn power back in 2014 because I was saturated of that, but we’ll get to that later.
One of the reasons why I like the premise of the film was that I find it pretty believable. One time the ponies lived in harmony, but that happened many many many moons ago. Now there’s only three cities where no one likes other types of ponies. In fact, they have security measures to stop someone or to run away. And most of these fears and prejudices are there because of the gossip in between them, with false information. We don’t know too much about it, but we don’t have to. Besides, I’m gonna save this information for a final point, because this is gonna be crucial for My Little Pony overall.
The film was algo very funny. Not every joke lands, but when a joke is funny, it’s really funny. I think my favourite jokes are from Sprout. With the exception of his final joke, I think he was hilarious. There are also some puns that made me chuckle, but nothing else. FOr some reason it reminded me of The Simpsons, not only the jokes, but also the context and the sense that nobody’s perfect, that someone can be a little bit selfish or defensive.
As much as I like this film, I have two problems: The first one are the songs. I really like the first song, but I didn’t like the rest of it. Izzy’s song is basically “here’s some toys for your little girl” and Sprout’s song has a very weird choice for a music genre. When I imagine a villain with a song, I don’t think of this 90s music. It’s too light, too bland. I think I like more the songs from the show and the 2017 film because sometimes they sound authentic.
The second problem is this: I like the ending of the film, but I didn’t like the last 3 minutes. As much as I liked the idea of ponies being dependable on magical stones, I don’t think Sunny should be an alicorn. I can imagine her being an alicorn as a transformation that would last for 3 minutes, but nothing more. I really hope Sunny will keep being an earth pony, because I think what makes this film is her determination, not her magical horns and wings.
MLP A new generation is a pretty good introduction to a new type of world of ponies. I’d be lying if I said this is the best MLP film ever. To me, that is still the 2017 MLP film. Not only the film mend my love of My Little Pony after my disappointment with Season 6, but it also has a lot of things that I wanted the show to do.
By the way, I have to mention the lack of magic in everypony. Many people didn’t like the idea, but I’m one of those who love the concept for one specific reason. The pegasus are afraid of the unicorns because of what they can do, so one of their security measures was to put a tennis ball on Izzy’s horn. Same thing with Canterlogic: Most of the devices they have are designed to protect themselves from unicorns and pegasus, especially unicorns. And one of the devices is a helmet that protects them from mind control magic, which is pretty reasonable considering what happened in MLP:FiM. I can imagine a pony dividing the 3 magical stones just because he had a bad friendship with one or more unicorns or even a group of conflicting unicorns.
In other words, the lack of magic prevents this:
I think this idea is reasonable. We like it or not, magic was too much in MLP:FiM, so giving this twist makes sense to avoid overpowered characters who create problems and can get away with it.
If they’re gonna keep going with G5 in the show, there’s a couple of things I’d like to see:
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Keep Sunny being an earth pony. If they’re gonna make her an alicorn again, I’d prefer it only for extreme situations.
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Keep this art direction. I think it’s great.
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Give more episode focused on adventures. Watching three cities is great, and I have the feeling we’re gonna get a similar premise in the show and we would see more towns and more different creatures.
And yeah, I like the film! I wouldn’t mind watching it again.
