Truffles

This movie from a purely visual and aural perspective is an absolute joy to watch - so much so it's ridiculously addictive. Ask me how many times all five of the featured songs have popped into my head and stuck there since September? (The answer? Too many! lol) At first I didn't care for "Angry Mob" or "Looking Out for You," but then "AM" grew on me followed soon after by "LOfY." So there isn't a single song featured in the movie that I don't like. They're all really good. I don't have much of an opinion on "Together" since I've only heard it once on the full soundtrack release since it's not one of the songs the characters sing during the movie. Izzy's my favorite, mainly because she received the most development of the Mane 5 and was the biggest standout personality-wise. All of them are great, however. I even like Pipp a lot even though she had the least amount of time on-screen. Her funniest moment is her getting hoisted into frame like a ragdoll when Haven exclaims the show needs to start. XD There's isn't any direct correlations between the Mane 5 and Mane 6. Instead, bits of each of the Mane 6 seem to be reassembled into each of the Mane 5. For example, I seem to recall Izzy originally being compared to Rarity because of her sewing cutie mark. It wasn't until after the animations started appearing did she get compared to Pinkie. But in some ways she still has some Rarity in her - her mastery of "Talkin' in fancy" as AJ would put it reminds me of Rarity - and she has shown herself to be really good at design . As another example, Zipp seems to have parts of both Rainbow Dash and Twilight. It will be interesting to learn how these traits play out once the first season of the series is finished. The inclusion of the G1 movie and series being part of the pop culture in G5 creates a strange twist in the meta: Some G4 characters were based on (or taken outright) from G1. But now in this universe G1 is just another MLP series on TV. (BTW, kudos to the animators for including the "-20%" on those TVs showing G1 - yet another Easter Egg referencing Rainbow Dash's famous line, lol.) So now suddenly G4 paying homage to G1 is turned on its head - in-universe G1 is based on the historical characters from G4. Talk about going full circle! As others have said, all we got were the rough outlines of the character personalities. I still learned more from Hasbro marketing's bios on the Mane 5 than I did from watching the actual movie. And the ending is rushed. And it raises more questions than it answers. I guess I'm willing to sit tight for now - if this was all there is to G5 it would be much more of a negative. Hopefully the series and specials will fully explore the personalities of them. I think it's Zipp who gave the shoutout to "butts" in "Fit Right In," but I'm not 100% sure. Hasbro censored that response to Izzy's verse of "Watch us shake our unicorn butts!" in the in-movie version of the song, but it's still present in the extended soundtrack version. Also when taken out-of-context without the visuals, the verse about "hoops" and then the "oops" almost sounds like the ReMane 4 were worried Izzy was about to sing a verse about how a unicorn poops. XD I feel the story should have hinted that working together would allow magic to return. During the jewel heist, something (besides Cloudpuff) should have gone wrong and at that moment Izzy inadvertently levitates the crown jewel to safety. But both Sunny and Izzy would be dismissive of what happened since they both believe magic can't return until the tribal jewels are reunited. Then during the dance-off, Pipp's supportiveness should have activated Sunny's Earth pony magic and there would have been glowing hoofprints during the final round (that would have been more satisfying than Sunny doing well due to being simply told to do as such). As for the Earth pony jewel, the climax already did this since it activated when the ponies all came together to help Sunny. Also, the jewels weren't really the MacGuffins the pre-release storybook made them out to be. It wasn't the ponies coming together that released all their magic - it was the jewels coming together that did that. The detail is the jewels wouldn't work until ponies first were again united. And again Argyle didn't need to die. Admittedly, some of those sour grapes are just selfishness on my part that I didn't like seeing the only G4 Brony in the movie bite it at 6 minutes in. But also I feel the narrative would still have been better served if he were there to be supportive after her returning from her adventure on the lamb with Izzy. Plus, I've come to appreciate movies like "Zootopia" that allow the main characters like Judy a full set of parents to talk to as the story progresses. (I'm assuming Nick's parents are still around somewhere, too.) It would have been much better to just have Argyle turn the lighthouse over to his daughter while he moved into the city proper for age, health reasons and convenience. Sunny wouldn't want to involve her father if she knew that harboring a unicorn was criminal, so there would be no mystery as to why he wouldn't come along. The tribes putting Sunny and Argyle's photo frame back together was reminiscent of the delegates rebuilding the statue in "Princess Spike." That's the proper note that episode should have ended on. :| I guess it could work like a ballast system in a sub, except the displacer is helium and the environment is air instead of water. So pack the balloons in the box very tightly and when they are released they expand to displace the necessary volume of air to create lift. Granted, the amount of friction and pressure present would likely tear latex (or even pop the box outright) so this is still unrealistic but in theory that would be one way to create such a device.

If G4 had a steam engine railroad for travel between cities, G5 should have a mag-lev bullet train. Huh. Just realized before hitting send mag-lev in this universe could stand for Magic Levitation, too. XD

I like the idea of Sunny and her dad getting that kind of closure in a near-death scene, but I'm not crazy about fake death scenes in general since they are such an overused trope in children's films. I'd rather have Sunny lose consciousness under the rubble, square things away with her dad, and then get pulled back after she's released from the pile. No sorrow among the ReMane 4 and no cheap pulls on heartstrings by pretending she could be gone forever since they wouldn't think she was dead yet anyway. The meeting her dad is a bit complicated, however, by the fact that her mom is missing, too. If she's dead she would have to appear as well - which might be jarring to suddenly introduce a new character that way. Also I doubt Hasbro would ever let the franchise confirm the deaths of any of the G4 characters since they would like to keep them in their back pocket as a potential plot twist for the series. If the series ever does have an episode where the Mane 5 visit the Mane 6's graves, I'll consider myself flabbergasted.

Well, from the leaked animatic we know for sure there was a musical number between Argyle and Sunny that was cut. The only part that survived was the cameo by the Mane 6.

I absolutely love the idea of a woozy Sunny seeing her friends work together to free her from under the rubble as being the catalyst for her epiphany. Yes, I also had a problem with Sunny's realization coming out of nowhere. It's like I said in my review: There a lot of telling and not showing in this movie, and the audience is just supposed to accept what the characters are telling us at face value.

I like Zipp a lot. She's in a 3-way tie with Sunny and Hitch for my second fave. (Izzy is at the top and Pipp is in third but I like her, too.) Zipp's blackboard diagram of the flying system was amazing. Both Zipp and Hitch could be Spike's replacement for the group's resident cynic and voice of reason. One of my favorite parts of the film was when Hitch and Zipp paired up on the way to Bridlewood and were able to have a heart-to-heart talk with each other. EDIT: Just rewatched the movie. I have no idea why I thought it was Hitch and Zipp talking it out. It was Hitch and Pipp. Zipp was talking with Sunny. Either way, I like Hitch and Zipp's down-to-earth attitude.

It does seem like at this rate the entire movie will be clipped by Friday? XD

I suspect it's those guards who are out there looking for her. Knowing from the informational releases that she's only interested in athletics and science, she was probably scheduled for some royal ceremony and is trying to skip out on it.

Mountainsides have strong updrafts, so she can "fly" when staying close to the more vertical sections; and it seems pretty clear that's what's happening here. Note that once she's on the ledge with Sunny and Izzy, she has to rely on parkour moves to "fly." It also wouldn't surprise me if it was these updrafts that gave Zipp the idea of inventing those giant fans to allow her to enjoy floating without needing wires.

Her trailing off reminds me of Trixie giving herself accolades to Starlight in "All Bottled Up."

Sunny and Izzy are so cute here. No spoilers.

I feel the movie will be intentionally vague as to the technical reasons why magic stopped working. While the lack of a ToH could be a factor, it will likely be left to the audience to decide for themselves.

It's the pegasi who took over. If the magic had failed by the time of the takeover, the wings on flightless pegasi might be just enough to give them an advantage, to say nothing of how helpless unicorns would be since they relied on magic to manipulate just about everything.

I've been seeing some of clips edited from the camrip that have been popping up on YouTube and so far there hasn't been anything I didn't already expect or not already know about. Even the song I suspected would be the weakest song in the movie did indeed turn out for me to be the weakest song in the movie. (At least when sung in Russian.) I suppose with 5 days left until the Netflix premiere there's still time for some mind-blowing secret that actually matters to me to get posted, however. <_<

I got Izzy, despite answering 2 questions that seemed aimed toward Hitch and one toward Sunny. The quiz seemed to lock onto the Creativity question to put the pick on Izzy, lol. Maybe there were more questions than I remember and they were Izzy-related. though. It's fine - Izzy is currently picked as my favorite character, though the Hitch's equivalent of imitating Spike singing the Cloudsdale anthem is catching him up with her, quickly. XD

My concern is the duration of time between generations is going to be left intentionally vague and it will be left as an exercise for the audience to imagine how much time has passed. And that is how Hasbro/Boulder will sidestep the status of the long-lived G4 characters without stating anyone is dead. The problem with that approach is 1) it's unsatisfying and 2) a LOT of time would have to pass for the dragons to all die off and it wouldn't make sense if 100,000 years or more have passed since G4 with Equestria still having only 21st-century level technology. Speaking of the dragons, wouldn't the ponies notice the Great Dragon Migration happening every 100 years or so if the dragons were still around? Their flight route was straight across the middle of Equestria. Or did the dragons also need magic in order to fly and thus could no longer do their migration? Did the alicorns need magic for their immortality and Earth ponies for (some of them anyway) being capable of living for 150+ years? I guess if the loss of magic made everyone mortal and switched ponies to only living the lifespan of real-life equines then that might explain how everyone could be dead but only have a thousand years pass or so.

Don't look too closely at some of the scenes in the 3rd trailer if you don't want things like the movie's villain and the ending spoiled. Also, there's a fourth trailer out as well featuring some Sprout dialogue (no spoilers AFAICT):

There are more scenes of Hitch, Sunny, and Sprout back when they were foals than the trailers show. From the early synopsis it can be hypothesized Hitch as a colt plays an important role as mediator since Sunny causes friction in the town due to her and Argyle's "crazy" beliefs.

It's kind of growing on me, especially with the new clips we haven't seen before. I don't get all the complaints, though - this is the song played at the very end of the movie and likely over a good part of the end credits. I don't recall any complaints about the pop music used during the end credits in either the EG movie or 2017 movie.

There is apparently another non-English book out there with additional images as seen in this YT video: The non-spoilery note I'll post is apparently the movie spends more time with various characters as foals than we were previously led to believe. The spoilery part is as follows (gleaned from the text of this new book):

I don't feel like Hasbro wants to repeat a lot of what went on in G4 - and the history of that ship in particular is one they probably want to avoid. I do agree however, Pipp is most likely to be crushed on so I could see her having to deal with fawning pony fans from time to time. It's still too soon to say whether or not other species will be present in G5 since the promotional material hasn't shown any hints they plan to revisit them at all, so I have no clue whether a dragon, changeling, yak, griffon, or hippogriff will accompany the Mane 5 in the series.

I feel her name is meant to telegraph to the target audience that she has a sunny disposition.

I get the distinct impression from the scenes of device addiction by all the pegasi that one of the messages/lessons of the series (if not the movie even) will be learning to moderate time spent on social media.

If she did come back, her time spent in petrification would make Luna and Discord's punishments seem like a time-out in the corner by comparison.