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DeviantArt (October 1, 2021 at 6:58:43 AM UTC)
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I watched My Little Pony G5 recently and wow this is one based kid's movie. It feels like its doing a Zootopia but did it better. Its really good despite probably suffering a little from poor marketing choices.
When I first heard about this, it said it will involve activism. It did but it did not portray activism in a positive light. So the setting is the ponies have lost their history, culture and magical powers. No one knows why and misinformation and prejudice takes its place. This caused the three pony tribes (unicorn, pegasus and earth ponies) to “succeed” from each other.
Sunny wants to reunite the three tribes but she was using “activism” to do it and she was immediately shut down. Hitch tells her “What did you think was gonna happen? You give a little speech and everyone welcomes unicorns and pegasi? You keep saying there’s nothing to be afraid of so prove it.” When I saw that, I thought, that’s based. This movie was badly advertised.
That was the first of many things in this movie that other movies wouldn’t even dare do in current time. For example; one of the main characters, Hitch, is a cop and ponies look up to him. If you’re confused by that, look up “Paw Patrol Canceled” and you’ll laugh at it. Another thing is gender swapping characters. For a franchise that’s supposed to be for girls, it did the most based thing by gender swapping a female character into a male character. Alphabittle used to be a girl pony in G3. Now Alphabittle is this gruff unicorn who looks like Gouki from Street Fighter voiced by Phil Lamar. The male characters were all competent. Yes, even Sprout. There was no man bashing. The male characters weren’t brought down to prop up the female characters. Most modern movies will not do this anymore. They made fun of a lot more other things like censorship and mob mentality which is really relevant when it comes to social media thse days. This is just a few of what I observed and that alone makes this movie earn my respect.
I wasn’t expecting much from the plot because its ponies but I was caught off guard that they’re living a dystopian reality based on the lore from G4. People keep saying the message is “racism is bad” but I think the message is “we need each other to survive.” The topics in the movie can also apply to sexism, classism, political, medical, cultural discrimination, etc. Racism is just one of it. Besides, its not what’s causing individual states in the US to file for succession. Its the fracturing of culture, ideological beliefs and tribalism that’s causing division. I’m surprised the woke isn’t “bing-bonging” this movie because its calling for unity. The woke hates unity.
But what really makes this movie great is its characters. EVERYONE was likable. There’s no overly entitled angry pony that’s always complaining about everything or some pony that fetishizes their oppression for whatever dumb reason. The only criticism here is they based the new G5 characters on remixed versions of G4.
Since they're not related, it'll be okay.
I’ll start with Sunny Starscout and Hitch Trailblazer because they’re the starter characters and their personalities are dependent on each other. Sunny is a pony that runs a smoothie stand. She is impulsive. She’s more guts than brains and does stuff without thinking things through. Her opposite is Hitch, Maretime Bay’s sheriff. He’s honest, has a strong sense of duty but is a stickler for the rules. There’s probably more to them but that was the extent of what the movie showed. Their personalities balance each other out like Twilight and Spike did but not exactly. Their childhood friends like Starlight and Sunburst but they also have this Twilight and Shining Armor thing going on. At least they’re not related so when you ship them its not creepy.
Hitch has Fluttershy's powers?
One thing of interest is Hitch has Fluttershy powers. He can charm smaller animals though this was not very important in the movie nor was it important to him being a sheriff. I think its one of those things they'll explore in the series.
The next set of main characters is Zipp Storm and Pipp Petals, the twin princesses of Zephyr Heights. They’re twins. The movie never even mentions this but these characters were hardly touched upon in the movie. And for good reason. There’s a LOT of things going on behind them unfortunately none of it is related to the main plot of the movie. People will compare Zipp to Rainbow Dash but that’s a mistake. Zipp is calm and stoic.
Pipp will be compared to Rarity but instead of dresses, its social media. Most people might already hate on her for that and I don’t blame them. I don’t know what her personality is like because the movie barely gave her any time to shine but take this with a grain of salt. The scene where Pipp joins Sunny’s team wasn’t because she wanted to help Sunny in any way. It was because she did not want to get arrested after the “lie” was exposed. I’m sensing a lot of darkness from this character’s future.
Zipp and Pipp being twin princesses reminds me of Celestia and Luna but its more complicated. Their mother, Queen Haven, wants Zipp to take the crown and be the new queen of Zephyr heights. But Zipp does not want to be queen because their royalty is based off of a terrible lie. Pipp is the opposite. She is obedient to Haven and loves the royalty life even if she knows about the lie. Pipp is eager to please Haven while Zipp is rebellious to Haven yet Haven still picks Zipp to be queen. What’s going on there? I guess we’ll see in the series.
The next characters are the ones with the strongest screen presence that will hit people by surprise in the future. Starting with Izzy Moonbow. She’s optimistic, energetic and friendly. Those are the “surface words” I can use to describe her. People will compare her to Pinkie Pie just not as hyper active. People will also compare her to Rarity just not with dresses but with these pretty functional art pieces that I see Hasbro monetizing in the future.
At first I couldn’t understand this character. When she described the other unicorns, none of the description applied to her. Unlike the other characters shown to have their own friends or parents, this character had no one. She lives alone in this tree workshop in Bridlewood that will remind you of Twilight’s tree library. When she was young, she found this letter from a floating lantern that Sunny and her father, Argyle set loose. It said “You have friends in Maretime Bay” in it. Now why was that enough to make a unicorn travel all the way alone to visit another tribe when they were all afraid of each other?
On her mirror, there's a letter that says “Happy Birthday to me.” Izzy isn’t just another Pinkie Pie. She is very lonely. She hides it by being happy all the time. She’s so different from the other unicorns that she can’t relate to them. When she found a letter that told her she has friends in Maretime Bay, she didn’t care if it was another tribe. She was gonna go there if it meant she won’t be lonely anymore. Watch out for this character when the series airs. There will be many reason why she will be a favorite.
The next character that also has very strong screen presence is this guy. Sprout. According to some sources his full name is Sprout Cloverleaf but I can’t confirm that. He’s colored like Big Macintosh but he’s nothing like him. He’s as obnoxious as Ben Chang from Community because he’s voiced by the comedian Ken Jeong. When people watch the movie, they’ll probably remember it more for Sprout’s Angry Mob song because its just a very catchy song.
People say he’s the villain and that’s fair because of what he did in the movie. I see him as a remix of the obnoxious Trixie combined with the demented determination of season 5 Starlight. He is clearly poised as the sixth ranger. He is also Sunny’s childhood friend. Sprout just happens to be closer to Hitch than to Sunny.
On the surface, its easy to see him as this bumbling idiot but I think that’s misleading. Sprout wants to be the town’s sheriff. He wanted this since he was a child but he can’t be sheriff because he’s bad at it. That’s very interesting. Ponies discover they are really good at one thing when they get their Cutie Marks. But in Sprout’s case, he wants to be something that he’s not good at so you see him as this incompetent bumbling idiot. Reminds me of what happened to Sunburst. So what is he really good at?
Sprout’s mother, Phyllis, owns a company called Canterlogic. They make gadgets used to defend against unicorns and pegasus ponies. Basically monetizing earth pony fear. Another social commentary from the movie. The gadgets they make are harmless stuff but they work. Auto firing catapults that shoot gak or floor traps that capture whoever steps in them in a steel box. Phyllis doesn’t strike me as an engineer, only a business woman. The ponies that work in her factory do not strike me as “smart” either. They seem like hired labor to mass produce the gadgets. So who designs the gadgets? I think its Sprout.
At a point in the movie, Sprout builds a Gundam Pony to fight the unicorns and pegasus ponies. Complete with a V-fin on the head and painted in Char’s Zaku colors, its built to Sprout’s specification. He was clearly the architect of its design. It looks like him and wasn’t something that fell apart for comedy. Its threatening. Could a bumbling idiot make something like that? At the end of the movie, even after all the stuff he did, he still asked if he was a good sheriff. Poor guy. Once Sprout realizes he doesn’t need to be sheriff for other ponies to look up to him, this character is gonna change a lot. He will probably be set up as the most sympathetic character in the series. A redemption arc is expected of this character.
Some fans are complaining that the movie didn’t answer a lot of questions. I get that but I think answering any questions would not fit in the movie. They already sacrificed character exposition. Besides, back in the day, we didn’t ask for answers. We speculated. The ponies lost their history and culture and nobody knows why or how. In pony lore, there was a dangerous device called a Memory Stone. Clover the Clever once hid it in another dimension because of its ability to erase memories. Argyle’s research wall shows a picture of the memory stone. What does it mean? Probably nothing but who knows?
The G5 series is already green lit for 2 seasons. Its gonna be done by a different studio that did the movie so I’ll curb my expectations for now. But for the movie as a stand alone, I liked it and it earned my respect. Kids will love it.
#g5 #mlp #izzy_moonbow #sunny_starscout #hitch_trailblazer #pipp_petals #zipp_storm #sprout_cloverleaf #my_little_pony_a_new_generation
