Random Thoughts: Equestria Girls

Rainbow Rocks just came out, so this is the perfect time to look at the first installment of clothed bipedal apes in a higher educational learning facility! Let's check out My Little Pony: Equestria Girls!

Plot:

My God, It's full of stars!

The recently crowned Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends are on their way to the Cyrstal Empire for a Royal summit when Sunset Shimmer, Princess Celestia's former student,  steal's Twilight's crown and the Element of Magic and travels through a magic mirror to another dimension. Twilight must go into the portal to retrieve her crown but her friends may not accompany her. Spike slips past this and the two end up in a world full of human counterparts to all the ponies back home, just now in high school. It is soon found out that the crown is held by Principal Celestia and that Sunset Shimmer rules the school body with an iron fist. Twilight decided that she must win the Fall Formal in order to get back her crown and meets up with the human versions of her close friends, all of whom have been driven apart by Sunset.  Bring them back together, the Humane 6 (see what I did there) rally the school to vote Twilight in as the Fall Formal Princess.  Sunset tries to sabotage the Formal but with little success. She eventually resorts to kidnapping Spike and holding him and the portal hostage in exchange for the crown, but Twilight refuses. A shuffle breaks out, ending with Sunset gaining control of the Element of Magic and transforming into a demonic bat creature (and a whole season before Fluttershy) She soon uses her new founded powers to mind control the student body, but the Humane 6 oppose her. Realizing they have the Elements within them, they fire the magic Rainbow death laser and stop Sunset Shimmer, reforming her in the process.  After partying some, Twilight heads back home threw the portal, ready to face the challenges of being a princess.

What I liked:

Just think about that pension Cheerilee. 

• The Characters
• Everyone here (save for two I'll talk about later) are great! Twilight is just coming off her Alicorn ascension so it's very nice to see her still have problems and her personality remain intact as some in the fandom were fearful of her losing what made her her. She remains her adorkable self through out the whole film and her getting used to her body is great! The rest of the Humane 5 are good, but are less developed than their pony counterparts but still come across good even if the plot gives them little to do. But the real bread winner here is Spike. Here he is supportive yet snarky, always knowing when to be comforting and went to be the voice of common sense! Not too bad for a Princess's best friend! 
• The Humor
• Inter-dimensional hi-jinks will ensue! The humor here is good! Maybe not the show's best but it helps keep the movie nice and light and a joy to watch! Seeing Twilight freak out and react to her new body was great and something which makes sense.  And the YouTube video! I hope the EQG world version of Twilight doesn't see that!
• The Animation
• This is great animation! Given the designs the animators breath life into the forms and make them feel like the ponies we are so use to watching even if they aren't ponies anymore. And Sunset's transformation is beautiful to see happen, with the contrasting white, blue, black and red!  If anything the backgrounds are a little plain, given that for the majority of the movie all we see are class corridors, the gymnasium and the courtyard, but they aren't distracting either. The lighting was also superb! Sunset, never lose that Batman thing you got going on! 
• The Cafeteria Song
• Who didn't love this song? I couldn't get it out of my head for a week!  Just goes to show Mr. Ingram knows his stuff!

What I didn't like:

What was in that apple cider?

• The Plot and Pacing
• Probably the biggest issue with the film, in my opinion. The plot is serviceable but riddled with some major plot holes, such as "Why does an Element do transform Sunset and give her mind control powers?" (Please don't say magic) or "Why doesn't Twilight steal the crown?" (I overlook this one since it's a kids movie and telling them to steal is probably a bad idea.) and let's not forget "How did Pinkie figure everything out about Twilight?" But the plot is decent, however it's nothing to write home about.
• However it's the pacing that is the bigger of the two issues.   It feels like a standard episode stretched over three.  We have the whole accusing Twilight Sparkle Photoshop scene with comes and goes in about a minute or so, no consequences. And the time scale is all to whack. This all takes place over the course of two days. TWO DAYS! In two days, Twilight has gone from someone who has no idea about human customs to the most popular girl in the school! What? And the whole Humane 5 fighting plot is resolved equally as fast.  And then there are the filler humor scene which are nice but they serve no point.
• When I was watching Rainbow Rocks, I had a hard time thinking about what scenes could be cut. Here I could tell where stuff could be trimmed up and removed.  Probably should have gone through another draft.
• The Designs
• I'll admit when the designs first came out I was not a fan.  Seeing them animated does give them a bit of life and aren't that bad.  There is one thing that bugs me though. It's not that everyone is wearing skirts or has multicolored skin. No, it's that every single one of them is wearing knee high boots! Were pants and sneakers that hard to draw!
• Continuity
• So another nitpick, but is this movie canon or not? At the moment it appears to be seperate, yet Flash appeared a few times in Season 4 and Rainbow Rocks seems to be trying to connect the two so right now the movie is in sort of a gray area in terms of whether or not it happened in the main show.
• FLASHLIGHT!
• I FUCKING HATE FLASH SENTRY!!  There I said it.  Now introducing romance is a tricky thing, I won't deny that, but at these try to give us a character.  Flash isn't bland. Bland would be like Naga Viper pepper compared to Flash Sentry. 
• The biggest thing is that he has no other role outside of being Twilight's sort-of boyfriend.  And it's not even a good romance, they like each other solely based on looks! They have no real interaction outside the photoshop thing and bumping into each other.  Just screw and get it over with! Or better yet he should "accidentally" fall into a wood chipper.
• Another issue with him is that he's written with characteristic to justify him going out with Twilight. He's kind but will be tough when needed, is good at what he does, is a royal guard so we can justify him going out with a princess since he's in the royal system.  He has no flaws!  How do they talk about stuff if he's just the "Most Perfectly Perfect Guy" in exsitance?!

???

I'm Wolverine AND Mr. Fantastic!

• Sunset Shimmer
• Probably the biggest problem with viewing the sequel is that it changes the perceptions of the original and the biggest change is with Sunset.  At first I viewed her as a bland villain, just there to be our Big Bad for the flick, but RR made me fall in love with her, nearly dethroning Rainbow Dash in my top 5 list! (RD's 4 on my list BTW) I will admit her role as a villain in this movie is extremely weak and her last minute conversion to the light side seems waaaaaay to rushed.  But I do enjoy her as Twilight's foil, a fall apprentice to Celestia, showing us how Twilight could have turned out.  One thing to praise though is Rebecca Shoichet voice work. I love the way she adds the condescension onto Twilight with just a hint of jealousy and pride in her belief that she is better than Twilight when the two are interacting, especially in the initial pony chase scene.  

Interesting Points:

Something something objection, yadda yadda, you get the idea

• No Humans allowed
• At no point in this movie (or the sequel) is the word "Human" ever spoken.
• Our world?
• The technological and social aspects of Canterlot High make is clear that this world is at least a close parallel (at the moment, anyways) to ours but it is never stated if the Canterlot High world is our own Earth, especially when combined with the fact that they never refer to themselves as human. 

Overall: Skip

I shall call thee Mjölnir!

While the movie has good characters and some decent jokes, the pacing and its odd continuity placement means that for the most part you can skip this and not miss a beat with the rest of MLP. If anything, watch it for the backstory to Rainbow Rock. Overall I'd say this movie is Mostly Harmless more than anything else.