Rating: 4 4 6
Why the fuck are there previews in year of our Mox 2017? How have we not moved past this bullshit?
The first thing I noticed watching this movie was the sound design is a lot richer than in the show. After the first song which is some generic pop song and a pony describing Twilight as a Mary Sue, we get to Twilight herself panicking and talking to herself over some Friendship Parade. She wants to propose an idea for the parade to the other three alicorns that being to have Celestia and Luna raise the sun and moon and have Cadance use "crystal magic" to create perfect stage lighting for some popstar. She also mentions the sun being raised in the south, unlike our sun which usually rises in the east. The princesses tell her the idea is fucking stupid and they aren't messing with the sun and moon just to provide lighting for a single event, disrupting the day and night cycle for everyone else on the planet.
After Twilight is told to figure it out, we get a sequence with the other five that feels like a generic children's movie opening. During it, Rarity is a cunt to Applejack by assuming she was raised in a barn for simply being a farmer. Next is a Mane 6 song which still feels like a generic children's movie opening. We do get a Derpy during it though. She's a goofy little filly and fails at the choreography and falls.
At the end of the song, Pinkie commits an act of confection terrorism which Twilight is a casualty of. Sia pony arrives after this. Then a storm comes in along with airships with PS2 graphics. Descending from the ship comes Grubber, a henchman who states some almighty powerful dude named the Storm King wants to take the place over or something. He then has a disabled unicorn named Tempest tell them to surrender to the Storm King. Luna tells Tempest it's unwise to threaten them since there are hundreds of ponies present as if they'd be willing to fight. We've seen how the general pony populace responds to threats; they are not a force to rely on. The princesses refuse to surrender so Tempest initiates an attack on Canterlot with an army.
During the invasion, Tempest jump kicks an orb at the princesses which can pierce magic shields and hits Cadance, petrifying her. Celestia tells Luna to haul ass outta there and get help from some nation of hippos down south but gets hit by one of the petrifying orbs before she can finish the command. Luna sets off but gets hit too. Seeing as Tempest is able to jump kick the orbs with perfect accuracy, she must be running an Agility build. Tempest jump kicks an orb at Twilight but Rainbow Dash swoops her out of the way and the orb hits a panicking Derpy instead.
DERPY DOWN! I REPEAT, DERPY DOWN!
The Mane 6 manage to escape Canterlot when a storm soldier or whatever you call those things blows up the bridge they were on and they fall into a river and then off a waterfall. After a successful escape, they set off on a journey to stop the Storm King by building forts and taking out husks. Or am I thinking of a different Storm King?
A thing I thought while watching this movie was wouldn't it have been easier to invade before Cadance and Twilight were princesses? Or were four alicorns needed to do whatever the Storm King had planned which is why he waited?
In Canterlot, all the ponies have been taken captive and are either jailed or shackled. At the Canterlot castle, Tempest gets a call from the Storm King who's a complete boomer and doesn't know where the camera is. He implies a staff he has is capable of controlling storms and needs the princesses' magic to power the thing. Tempest states it's called the Staff of Sacanas. It's the plural of the Portuguese word sacana which pretty much means bastard among other negative connotations. We also learn Tempest is working for the Storm King to get her horn back.
We then see the Mane 6 and Spike traveling through a desert looking like they just had to watch the first Equestria Girls movie.
They come across a road to a city and when they arrive there, they find it's a bandit town populated entirely of bipedal creatures of various species. After attracting attention to themselves, the ponies are cornered by the residents who offer to buy either them or parts of their bodies. A resident offers "storm bucks" at a point so this suggests bits aren't used outside of Equestria. As they enclose the ponies like a bunch of ravenous Black Friday shoppers, a bipedal cat named Capper jumps in and conducts a multi-stage speech check which he passes. He convinces the residents the ponies are infected with a disease, scaring them and at a point Capper says "And don't touch anyone. Because parts will fall off." and then the guy he's talking to panics and grabs what is presumably his crotch. They added a penis joke to the My Little Pony movie.
Then Capper's song that's great. At the end of the song, he tells a creature to send someone to his house since he can now erase his debt. He then says the thing.
Rarity uses "Bohemian" as one of the adjectives describing Capper's house. I think the correct term is Bohemianist as Bohemianism is the cultural movement and aesthetic as opposed to Bohemian being the adjective form of Bohemia the place. The Storm King's goons then arrive to the town and Tempest beats the shit out of a giant dude, showing she's running an unarmed sub-build. Meanwhile, Capper states he doesn't believe sonic rainbooms are real so it's likely he's never been to Equestria. Rarity then fixes his fit and Twilight learns they're actually looking for the hippogriffs, not hippos. Capper fails the speech check to get the ponies to stay and they set off only to be greeted by the slaver Capper's trying to sell them to. Tempest then finds them, fucking shit up even more. The slaver, oblivious to Tempest's power, wants to traffic her and he says the thing.
She reks him and the ponies jump out a window onto a windmill blade. A goon then breaks off the rotor, sending it rolling through the town, destroying a bunch of buildings. Somehow, the ponies survive this and rush to an airship to board it as it's leaving and Pinkie fucking falls. They hide in the ship and meanwhile, Capper is captured and interrogated by Tempest. He's about to tell her where they're going but remembers how Rarity dripped him out and realizes he's gonna need her alive if he wants to out-drip everyone else in town so he misleads Tempest.
The ponies are found and the crew has to throw them overboard as per the Storm King's rule book. As they're about to be captured, the lunch whistle sounds and everyone, including the ponies, goes on lunch break. They learn the crew, who are bipedal birds, used to be pirates until the Storm King enacted a state and started making people pay taxes. Rainbow Dash passes a speech check with a song to get them to undermine the Storm King and return to the liberation of piracy. Song's fine.
At the end of the song, Rainbow Dash does a sonic rainboom which alerts Tempest to their location. As Tempest approaches, the pirate birds hide the ponies away and Tempest boards the ship. The ponies find a way to drop themselves out of the bottom of the ship which alerts Tempest to their presence. The ponies are now falling and Twilight makes a hot air ballon mid-air to rescue everyone before they fall to their death in Steelport. Tempest downs the ship with Capper and the pirate birds aboard.
The ponies arrive at the place the hippogriffs are only to find it's completely abandoned. They find a creature in the middle of a pool who flees upon noticing them. They all walk into the water when the pool is then drained, creating a whirlpool and sucking them under while the exit is sealed off and they just straight up drown. If you hate where MLP went, you can stop watching and pretend they died here.
Assuming you didn't go for the Game Over ending, they get air from bubbles that just appear over their heads. A sea creature reveals herself and takes them to her mother who's the queen of the hippogriffs. She explains the hippogriffs used an orb thing to transform everyone into sea creatures to escape the Storm King. Twilight wants it to transform the ponies to be capable of fighting the Storm King's forces. But if it was capable of that, the hippogriffs could've done the same to fight back. And let's not forget how we already established ponies are fearful idiots when it comes to conflict and likely still wouldn't've been able to fight back considering lack of combat experience and psychological hardening. I'm more inclined to believe the orb can only transform you into something of equivalent power considering the hippogriffs chose to flee.
Anyways, the Mane 6 are transformed into sea ponies and I remember when I saw this part in the movie theater, I thought it was the lamest overly marketed shit ever. The queen then just leaves and the princess hippogriff named Skystar wants them to stay and have fun with her forever. Twilight gets an idea. She has Pinkie and the others have fun with her in a song that's decent.
An alarm then sounds which turns out to be Twilight trying to steal the orb and the ponies are knocked out and sent back to the surface. When they get to the beach, the ponies berate Twilight for using them as a distraction to commit theft. Twilight snaps back, calling them out for their fuckups during the journey and goes on about how this shit isn't gonna be solved by prancing around like idiots. Pinkie, in a serious argument, trying to actually reason with Twilight, annoys her to the point she tells them she'd be better off without them and they all leave, pissed at her. Twilight is right though. Canterlot has been seized and the ponies captured. Twilight is right in using any means necessary to save her people. As much of a cunt she may be here, they still need to press on and don't have time to leave Twilight to think about her decisions. I also have to say, I really like serious, reasoning Pinkie in this scene as wrong as she may be. Twilight walks off to cry in a cliche emotional scene.
Sad pony hours.
Goons then arrive and Twilight is captured in a cage. Does the cage prevent teleportation 'cause she could easily escape the conundrum if she can teleport. Spike burns a goon's arm and runs away to get help from the others. Meanwhile, Twilight is taken up to an airship where she sees Tempest and tries to attack her with magic which the cage blocks so maybe teleportation doesn't work but we haven't seen her even try so I don't know. But anyways, Tempest mocks Twilight and Twilight pulls the whole "but you're a pony just like me" crap like she's supposed to be beholden to her "race". Go rewatch Dragon Quest, Twilight. We then get Tempest's song which is really fucking great. We also see her backstory where she gets attacked by an ursa minor, leaving her scarred and hornless, leading to the other foals no longer wanting to associate with her so she adapts a hyper-individualistic philosophy. Reminds me of my childhood.
Meanwhile, the other ponies are still moping around while Canterlot is still under siege and Spike arrives with the call for help. Then Capper just appears out of fucking nowhere. Then the pirate birds just appear out of fucking nowhere. Then Skystar just appears out of fucking nowhere as a terrestrial hippogriff.
Meanwhile in Canterlot, the ponies are caged, muzzled, and some even enslaved. As per usual in a children's movie.
Twilight is brought to the castle where in the throne room, Tempest has a femcel moment saying "I'd love for everybody out there to know what I can really do." before the Storm King walks in. He then saps the princesses' power into his staff.
Herobrine sighting #44
The Storm King then throws Twilight outside on a balcony and Tempest tells him to follow through on his promise of restoring her horn to which he shuts her down so he can play with the sun and moon by manically cycling through day and night while dancing.
Meanwhile, Capper brings a Trojan cake into Canterlot but the plan goes to shit and they launch a full frontal assault on the castle. Capper then uses Spike as a flamethrower and burns a bunch of goons, including one to death. So does this count as Capper being the first creature to kill someone in MLP or are both he and Spike killers?
The Storm King then manifests a storm that blows everything away. Tempest again asks him to give her her horn to which he refuses and admits he used her. He then attacks her but she dodges his attacks due to her Agility build and she decides "Fuck this shit, this cunt's going down.". She's knocked back however and is about to be swept away by the storm but Twilight rescues her.
Okay, this is fucking adorable.
The Storm King is then about to execute them and meanwhile Pinkie tells the other allies to not let their dreams be dreams and they launch the five ponies and Spike at the castle, hitting the Storm King and knocking the staff from his grasp. Both the ponies and the Storm King try to grab the staff and Twilight grabs it but she and the Storm King get swept away in the storm but Twilight descends back down after the others think she's fucking dead.
I need healing.
Then as they're all celebrating Twilight not being dead, Tempest witnesses this and notices the Storm King climbing up the castle where he then throws a petrifying orb at them but Tempest launches herself at him, causing the orb to hit her but the petrifying effect to affect both her and the Storm King. The Storm King falls and shatters upon hitting the ground, killing him while Tempest is saved by the ponies using the staff.
Then the princesses are saved, the ponies are unshackled, and the festival thing is back on. I think there should've been a moment while they are rescuing the princesses where they notice Tempest and get concerned and Twilight has to explain Tempest is good now. Most importantly, Derpy is saved.
In the ending sequence, Sia pony does her song which is fine. I remember in like 2016, I was watching an Apple event thing live and they brought Sia on-stage to perform and the live chat was filled with people booing her which was pretty funny. Then she made a shitty autism movie that should be considered a hate crime.
At the end, Tempest is still a femcel and wants to show everyone what she is capable of. She shoots a bunch of extremely powerful plasma blasts into the sky. Even without a horn, she is still a very powerful unicorn. In the ending credits sequence there's a Derpy and a very fruity Applejack.
Good movie. Not this all-great work of cinema but it gets 4 EV. My criticisms of it are some parts, especially the beginning feel like generic children's movie crap and the 3D environments look like PS2 graphics. I also noticed some characters, including Tempest are actually animated in 3D. And as with most 3D animation in 2D things, it looks kinda shit when you notice it. 4 VB because the movie has a few cool parts especially with the violence and you know how I am about that. Twilight and Pinkie's argument also contributes to this. Capper is also cool. 6 DV for all the new locations and creatures we see.
In the deleted scene, it's stated Cadance represents family when she represents love, not family.
MLP Commentaries IndexWritten 2025-3-14 Published 2025-4-1