Psycho's Movie Reviews #272: Mlp: Equestria Girls (2013)

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, or simply known as Equestria Girls, is a 2013 Flash animated fantasy musical film which is the first instalment of Hasbro's toy line and media franchise of the same name, which is itself an anthropomorphized spin-off of the 2010 relaunch of the My Little Pony franchise. The film was directed by Jayson Thiessen and written by Meghan McCarthy, and was produced by DHX Media's 2D animation studio in Vancouver, Canada for Hasbro Studios in the United States. It premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 15, 2013, followed by limited release in the United States and Canada on June 16, 2013, with a home media release on August 6, 2013. It also commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of the original My Little Pony toy line.

The film re-envisions the main characters of the parent franchise, normally ponies, as teenage human characters in a high school setting. Set between the third and fourth seasons of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the film's plot involves Twilight Sparkle pursuing her stolen crown into an alternate world where she transforms into a human teenage girl. While learning how to behave as a human, Twilight encounters human counterparts of her pony friends, who help her in her search for her crown.

The film's critical reception was mixed, with most criticism directed towards the character design, writing, plot and characterization. The film was followed by three sequels – Rainbow Rocks (2014), Friendship Games (2015), and Legend of Everfree (2016) – all of which were more positively received.

Plot

Twilight Sparkle visits the Crystal Empire for her first royal summit following her coronation as a princess of Equestria. Sunset Shimmer, a rogue student of Princess Celestia, emerges from a mirror portal and steals Twilight's crown, which contains the Element of Magic. After a chase through the castle, Sunset goes through the portal with Twilight's crown. The other princesses explain that the portal leads to an alternate world; as the other Elements of Harmony are unusable without the crown, Twilight is tasked with retrieving it from the other world before the portal closes for thirty moons. Despite Celestia's insistence that Twilight must travel alone, Spike follows her into the portal.

Twilight and Spike emerge in the other world in the form of a human teenager and dog, respectively. Twilight investigates the nearby Canterlot High School and encounters its human students and staff, several of whom resemble ponies in Equestria. Masquerading as a transfer student, Twilight defends the counterpart of her friend Fluttershy from being bullied by Sunset. Twilight learns that Fluttershy has delivered the crown to Principal Celestia, mistaking it for a prop meant for the elected "princess" of the Fall Formal. Determining that no one would believe her claims of being a pony from another world, Twilight receives Celestia's permission to run for Fall Formal Princess against Sunset to recover the crown.

While continuing to explore school life, Twilight discovers that the counterparts of Fluttershy and her other friends from Ponyville – Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash – have separated out of hostility. Sunset sends her cohorts Snips and Snails to record a humiliating video of Twilight behaving like a pony, which is posted online and viewed by the entire school. The counterparts of Twilight's friends come to her aid, only to argue among themselves, revealing the cause of their falling out to be a series of treacherous text messages and emails they supposedly sent each other. Through a theory of Twilight's, however, the five girls realize that Sunset sent these messages to deceive them. The five reconcile and help Twilight perform a public dance routine for her campaign, which improves Twilight's image.

In another attempt to undermine Twilight, Sunset has the formal decorations in the school gym wrecked and uses edited photographs to frame Twilight. Although Sunset's ex-boyfriend Flash Sentry proves Twilight's innocence, the formal is postponed to the night after the portal to Equestria closes. Twilight and Spike reveal their true identities to the other girls, convincing them of the situation's urgency. Under Twilight's direction, they rally the other students and successfully repair the damage in time for its original schedule, earning Twilight the school's support.

On the night of the formal, Twilight wins the election and the crown, but Sunset steals it back in a scuffle after kidnapping Spike and threatening to destroy the portal to Equestria. Upon donning the crown, Sunset transforms into a demon and hypnotizes the other students, revealing her intent to conquer Equestria with the students as her army. When Sunset attacks Twilight and her friends, their friendship activates the crown's magic, giving them pony-like ears, wings, and tails. The six girls use the magic to revert Sunset and their schoolmates to normal. Sunset, humbled by the power of the girls' friendship, tearfully apologizes for her actions. After celebrating at the formal and placing Sunset under her friends' care, Twilight and Spike return to Equestria with the crown as the portal closes, reuniting with their pony friends.

Production

To maintain continuity, Hasbro used the same writing staff as Friendship Is Magic television series, including the then-current story editor Meghan McCarthy, who considered the story to be "an extension of our mythology". McCarthy stated that with the Equestria Girls setting, "we might explore different aspects of relationships that in the pony world don't quite work the same as they do when you set it in a high school setting", thus making the work more appealing to older girls that are in high or junior high school.

In writing the film's script, McCarthy went back to the self-titled two-part pilot episode of Friendship Is Magic, where Twilight is sent to Ponyville for the first time and forced to meet new friends. She wanted to do the same with the film, in this case putting Twilight into a new world where she would again be forced to make new friends to succeed in her quest.

Music

Daniel Ingram stated in a Facebook post that he wrote six songs for the film in a more modern pop/girl group style that would fit the high school/urban setting. He also mentioned some of the crew members with whom he worked, including Trevor Hoffman for vocal arrangements and David Corman and Sam Ryan for production, and that he collaborated with McCarthy on the lyrics.

• "This Strange World" – Twilight Sparkle (voiceover)

• "Equestria Girls (Cafeteria Song)" – Mane Six and students

• "Time to Come Together" – Mane Six (voiceover)

• "This Is Our Big Night" – Mane Six (voiceover)

• "This Is Our Big Night (Reprise)" – Mane Six (voiceover)

• "End Credits Song: A Friend for Life" – Jerrica Santos

• "My Little Pony Friends" (Deleted Song) – Kaylee Johnston, AJ Woodworth, and Laura Hastings. The song was written to serve as the end credits to the film, but was passed over in favour of "A Friend for Life". On August 14, 2014, the song was uploaded to Hasbro's YouTube channel.

Composer William Anderson, who provided the score for the film, said that most of the background music remains consistent with the television show, though "with elements of thrash rock once in a while".

{I won't bother posting any of the songs from this film on here, compared to the other films in the series they aren't as good}

Release/Reception/Box Office

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 15, 2013 as part of its Family Day. The event included appearances by several of the show's creative staff and voice actors. It was then presented under limited screen distribution, with total of around 200 screens, through Screenvision and Cineplex theatres across the United States and Canada respectively, starting on June 16, 2013. Due to a larger-than-expected number of theatre-goers in the initial weeks, Screenvision added additional showings to take advantage of the interest. The screenings in the United States bore no classification from the MPAA (which is not a mandatory, although many theatres carried a G-rating), while the Canadian screenings had classifications from provincial film boards (usually G).

The film was re-released in select theatres across the United States on June 18 and 19, 2016 by distributor company Kidtoon Films.

In the United Kingdom, it was released in Showcase Cinemas on August 10, 2013. It was released at Village Cinemas in Australia on August 24, 2013. It was released in New Zealand through Event Cinemas for two weeks starting August 31, 2013.

There have been criticism over the anthropomorphism approach of the franchise overall (including the film). The New York Daily News reported that, while some feared allowing their children to be influenced by the looks of humanized characters, others considered it reasonable with other current media with considerable body exposure. Slate's Amanda Marcotte considered that the characters' change to human form was to popularize the film with the adult fanbase of Friendship Is Magic. However, many of these adult fans expressed disappointment over the humanized characters, worrying that the approach "goes against everything that Pony was trying to prove". Craig McCracken, speaking for his wife Lauren Faust, Friendship Is Magic's creative showrunner for the first two seasons before stepping down, expressed concern that such approach would have gone against the way Faust wanted to take the television series.

The film itself received mixed reviews from critics. Daniel Alvarez of the website Unleash the Fanboy gave the film 4 stars out of 5, stating that Equestria Girls was a "highly entertaining movie", though some elements, such as the brief romantic plot and Sunset's ultimate fate, were weaker than other parts of the film. Luke Thompson of Topless Robot was more critical of the film, as while not a viewer of Friendship Is Magic, he believed "whatever clever concepts the show may have the movie does not do very much with", and considered the animation sub-standard for a TV-to-movie adaptation. Iowa State Daily described the movie as one that was "probably just made to sell dolls and figurines", though still delivered a "great message for kids". Gwen Ihnat of The A.V. Club rated the film a "B-" and considered that the film "is only a few songs and one amazing demon battle scene better than most of Friendship Is Magic's two-part episodes", while otherwise treading on clichéd ideas from both the Friendship Is Magic and from other teen high school works. Sherilyn Connelly of SF Weekly, though having enjoyed the movie, felt it was too similar to the television series's pilot episodes in how the characters needed to be re-introduced for the film audience, and that the "real disconnect" was the apparent reduction of age, from young adult in Friendship Is Magic to teenagers within the film. Connelly did, however, vote for the film as Best Animated Feature in the 2013 Village Voice Film Critics' Poll. Ed Liu of Toon Zone (now known as Anime Superhero) considered that the movie "relies a bit too much on the familiar and the conventional", lacking Friendship Is Magic's injection of "idiosyncratic character" into otherwise predictable plots, but otherwise praised the voice actors, music, and some of the movie's animation.

Box office $488, 232

My Review

Now I'll come clean, I'm a fan of My Little Pony. I have been since the first season of G4, which is the era in which these films came from. I'll be honest though compared to the others in the series I will say this is the not worst, but not the best; I prefer the 2nd and 3rd films compared to this one. I'll only be doing the 1,2 and 3 of this film series though the others aren't as good.

Since two thousand and ten, MLP:FIM is many people considered a masterpiece of flash animation. Definitely not your average flash animation from Newgrounds. This show proves that friendship is a powerful weapon. Even if Lauren Faust said that she wanted this show to be for little girls. But getting its self a fan base is even better. This is the reason why I wanna try flash animation in a new way. But, as popular as it gets, some people wouldn't be surprised if these ponies went off the high school.

I'm not saying it's a bad film, but I just wished it could've been a bit more clever. But it does give Twilight Sparkle a specific goal. She doesn't just recover crown from a former student of Celestia's, but to take friendship to a whole new level.

Twilight has always been my favourite character. I can relate to her at times. You would want to stand with her, she has a reason to inspire those who believe in magic.

But back on to the film, I had a bit mixed feelings about it.

The Story: It's smooth enough, even if got a bit random in the climax.

The Animation: It's well crafted, but the designs to seem a bit hit missed at times. But it's still harmless to look at. Plus, they did keep the ponies designs in the beginning

The Characters: Twilight and the Mane Five are still the same, and we love em. The principals of CHS seem okay but make feel like they've never been in charge of high school before. The villain is okay too, but most people would never get the rest of her origins other then she was a former pupil back in Equestria. The boyfriend does seem a bit of a pointless cliché, he's only seen for short times. But to his credit he does seem like good gentleman for a princess. Just be lucky that he didn't show up in the real show.

The Songs: I find most of them quite catchy and reasonable, my favourite happens to be Strange New World. It's nice to see someone singing a characters thoughts again, since Phil Collins' song 'Strangers Like Me' in Disney's Tarzan. Even if the lyrics are a bit simple.

The Rules of Magic: When people first saw the magic moments in the climax, they kinda had no idea why that happen. But from what I can gather I guess is that Sunset had no control of the magic in the crown, so she pretty much didn't know how to use it. And yet, she was happy with her demon form. I was like a side affect. As for the transformation of the mane six, they were like magnet for the element of magic. Twilight would say that the magic contained in her element was able to unite with those that helped create it. So maybe the humane five represent them? Maybe. But the ending does still seem a bit random. Either way, I still kinda enjoyed it.

The MLP series could've been better off without a spin off, but for what is, it's actually kinda good. I wouldn't call a masterpiece like the actual show, but it does seem decent enough to be magical as always.

Some fans may love or hate this, they all have opinions. But that's pretty much the end of this review. 7.2/10