Truffles

Well the book has been on sale since Tuesday so you can get the overall gist of the story without feeling any guilt over looking at leaks. I feel bad for Hitch, though:

So much amazing detail! While I still long for the days of traditional 2D animation, the shaders and other rendering methods they're using with G5 look top-notch.

I didn't hear that. That's great news! I was expecting to just sit and re-analyze the movie for 12 months, if possible. XD

Thankfully(?) the state of the unicorns is one of the things the story book completely skipped - including the whole need for disguises for the non-unicorn ReMane 4 . So except for that scene in the trailer (and a bunch of unicorns standing around looking unexcited during the contest) there's no hint of how much we should read into what Izzy says is the state of unicorn society. I'm taking her at her word, however, and that the unicorns really are down on themselves like the griffons were.

I'd love this movie to have a post-credits scene of anything at this point - even if it's Spike, one of the princesses, or even a G4 villain. Because right now after the movie airs on 9/24 we pretty much have to wait an entire year for the series to premiere in Fall of 2022. o_o So any kind of tease would be welcome, lol.

Lately, consensus has been Sunny's map is rotated so north is on the right side and not the top. That would align Maretime Bay, Zephyr Heights, and Bridlewood nicely with Baltimare, Canterlot, and the Everfree Forest, respectively. It would be interesting if the unicorns had to flee into the Everfree to escape the other pony races as a last resort - it being the only place their enemies were too frightened to enter. The apple and windmill might indicate the location of Appleloosa. I think you're right about Queen Haven being without her crown, and that's why she's reluctant to have any photos taken of her - she doesn't have her symbol of royalty with her anymore. I thought that scene of her with Zipp and Izzy might be during the planning of the heist and the mobile she was admiring was Scientist Zipp creating a new flying apparatus to help acquire their mom's crown. But looking closer I realized they're in Bridlewood (and likely Izzy's treehouse) so the taking of that jewel must have happened already since it's seen during the Just Prance contest as Sunny's wager to put up against Alphabittle's unicorn jewel. It also occurs to me if the unicorns are now in the same sad state as the griffons were during G4, then Izzy is the G5 version of Gabby.

These songs are likely the songs Pipp sings during her various concert appearances and radio broadcasts and are likely just there as background ambience while the other characters are talking and/or doing things. These are unlikely to be part of any musical numbers. One of these might be used for the end credits, though. Izzy's song (if it made the final cut) is definitely a musical number, however. It is likely used during the part of the trailer where she's getting everypony to disguise themselves as unicorns so they can all get into Bridlewood without causing a panic.

Could be, but I'm beginning to believe the movie will intentionally skip over the trigger that caused the pony races to split up and let the audience come up with that on their own. Boulder/Hasbro seems to be trying to have their cake and eat it too by using G4 lore as a backdrop for G5 but saying little if anything on the fate of the Mane 6, Spike, and the other princesses and whether they failed or if they all died before everything went wrong.

I've looked at the images from the storybook and without giving away anything, I've come to really like Zipp - she's a class act and a great character. I'm looking forward to seeing her in full in the movie. Actually, of the Mane 5 I'm a fan of Sunny, Izzy, Hitch, and Zipp at this point. The only one I don't have an opinion of yet is Pipp. She seems nice enough but there just hasn't been anything particularly deep I've learned about her character - other than her being into social media and being a pop star.

Yeah, this is all just pure speculation on my part since the details of how their world came to be have been pretty hard to come by thus far. (After reading someone's slightly spoilery summary of the just-leaked storybook it seems even that book doesn't give any details, either.) But I do think the pegasi could do a bloodless takeover of Canterlot if magic had already ceased and they had a technological advantage - even if their wings had also become useless for flight.

There is a possibility of historical collusion between the leaders of two of the pony races. Perhaps Earth ponies became far-advanced in technology because they couldn't do magic and a deal was struck with the pegasi to create advanced weapons capable of forcing all the unicorns out of Canterlot, leading to the creation of a new pegasi city, Zephyr Heights. Then the pegasi betrayed the Earth ponies but because the Earth ponies still had the greater technological advantage they were able to stand their ground. Eventually all three races segregated themselves to separated parts of Equestria, with the unicorns getting the short end of the stick and having to hide in the forest from the other two races. I still don't know at what time the disappearance of magic would fit into this theory. Perhaps before the invasion of Canterlot and the unicorns were helpless to fight back? One thing is for certain: Argyle's comments at the beginning of the trailer pretty much put the final nail into the coffin of the idea that G4 was nothing more than a TV show modern ponies watched. Twilight might be a myth to these ponies, but she and the rest of the Mane 6 aren't part of their current culture except for Sunny and her dad.

It just occurred to me perhaps the reason why Sunny thinks the pegasi are able to restore magic is because word got out across the land that Haven and her daughters can fly. Thus she believes the royalty in Zephyr Heights must have knowledge of restoring magic. (EDIT: Ok but then there's an issue with Sunny knowing most pegasi can't fly but doesn't know unicorns lost their magic? I guess it's possible but it seems convoluted, lol.) Also, there's no hint of the famous jewel heist this movie is supposed to feature. My guess is all five of them at the end of the movie have to break into CanterLogic to get whatever jewels are needed to restore magic to the land. But that would make Phyllis the main villain and that still doesn't sit right with me. Izzy's comment about magic just one day going "poof" is strange. From the original premise, it seemed like magic went away because the ponies stopped working together and it happened a long time ago. But her statement implies it happened without warning and only recently. The problem with that is the ponies must have separated long before that if Sunny didn't know about magic disappearing (I'll skip over the problem of the movie not taking Earth pony magic into account for the moment). So if somepony was recently responsible for taking away magic shouldn't the Windigoes have appeared long before that as soon as the racial infighting started? Or perhaps Izzy was just speaking in historical terms and all of this did happen long ago? The trailer has created more questions than answers, lol.

Both Earth and Unicorn ponies seem to have a fear of the Pegasi. And from that one CanterLogic poster with the scary shadow pegasus and the movie "Horns" Phyllis seems to be pushing fear of the other two races, perhaps for reasons of maintaining power. If Zephyr Heights really was formerly Canterlot and it was taken by force, I could see how the pegasi could earn a reputation as being ruthless. Most trailers use scratch tracks, and this particular track has been used throughout the recent promotional videos. So I'm hopeful there will be a proper soundtrack for the actual film. How good it is remains to be heard.

A pretty good trailer, but it is heavily edited - which is normal, but it makes analyzing things difficult, lol. For example, there's a brief scene of the Mane 5 running from the DDR (Just Prance) contest BEFORE the scene with Sunny and Alphabittle. But in that scene they are running in a panic yet the audio has them whooping it up with joy. I suspect they did win the contest but their unicorn disguises fell off and they had to make a run for it? It's a bit of a mystery as to why Sunny thinks the pegasi can restore the magic to the unicorns. Even Izzy is scared of the pegasi. Hitch looks rather joyless to be on this adventure. It seems convincing the sheriff that unicorns and pegasi are OK is going to be more difficult than it was to convince Pipp and Zipp. He definitely seems to only be along at first to keep Sunny safe and only gets to Zephyr Heights after tracking her and Izzy down. I'm still not sure who the villain is, or if there is even a villain. It seems like the de-facto leaders of the three races - Phyllis, Haven, and Alphabittle - are all roadblocks to Sunny completing her mission. Whether or not one or more of them are really evil is still unknown. The book I've been referring to as a Friendship Journal may actually just be a scrapbook Sunny keeps of various historical bits of information. She even has the current map of Equestria pasted in there, along with a circular ancient map she's marked with question marks that doesn't seem to fit with either current or ancient Equestria. And I'm still wondering where all the PG-rated material is. Clearly Hasbro made a choice to make this trailer as kid-friendly as possible. Hopefully the PG material in the full movie is interesting and not just a bunch of fart jokes. <_<

In addition to the trailer drop (hopefully imminently) Netflix is having a "Nightmare Night" sneak preview of the film as seen in the top comment which was posted overnight: https://www.facebook.com/mylittlepony/posts/5030480520302678/ I don't know what they mean by a sneak preview. It could be a behind-the-scenes preview or just additional clips from the movie before it's Sept 24 release.

I like the idea of a bitter Spike, but I don't want him to be angry with Twilight. If anything, he would be angry at himself for not being able to stop whatever triggered the fall of the civilization he and his sister had built. That's the kind of self-hatred that would drive a dragon like him into self-imposed exile.

Is it less than 24 hours now? I can't tell. XD Hasbro or Netflix needs to put up a countdown timer somehwere

Good eye. That attachment might even be part of the phone's protective case and not on the phone itself. That way each pony can have the horseshoe slot custom fitted to their shoe size when they purchase a cover. Or.... either the phones or the horseshoes are magnetic, and whichever one is magnetic, the other has some iron in it so it sticks to their hooves. Perhaps Pipp's gold horseshoes are just gold plated and either iron or magnetic under the gold? The bigger question is where do they put items like these phones when they needs to walk around? Sunny has a saddlebag but I don't see anything like that on Pipp. Maybe she doesn't believe in walking and only flies all the time, lol? (Speaking of which, I guess flying isn't considered pegasus magic anymore since these ponies seem to have evolved to fly without it.)

Pipp's fetlocks - they're so fluffy!! Also the golden horseshoes really make her stand out fashion-wise. Rarity would be jealous. Zipp appears to be the tomboy of the group and is definitely sporting some Rainbow Dash attributes with her mane, wings, and tail. Hopefully her level of tomboy-ishness is handled well like it was with Dash and Scootaloo. Though I've seem some comments pointing to Limestone Pie and I can see those personality traits, too.

I'll be surprised if magic isn't restored by the end of the movie, so the lack of magic shouldn't pose a problem for G5's follow-up series. Kind of like how Nightmare Moon wasn't an ongoing problem in G4, and how Luna's return to pony society only had a few episodes dedicated to it. That isn't to say Cort Lane's political ideas won't manifest themselves in the series. But figuring out how to incarcerate bad creatures without magic probably won't be one of them. It's funny - G4 mostly sidestepped the issue of incarceration, giving us only Tartarus for the supervillains. So much so that some corners of the fandom complained when characters like Rainbow Dash didn't get any punishment for intentionally causing problems, like causing the Weather Factory to nearly destroy itself, lol.

Here, here. I'm not as positive as I once was that Sunny and Hitch are siblings, but I still really hope they are. It's a great dynamic for two of the main characters to have with one another in a animated series. Even if Izzy does remain a favorite of mine, if Sunny and Hitch are related they could become my favorite duo, much like how I love it when Twilight and Spike got to play off one another in their best episodes.

Lol, yeah. I have yet to hear a really good reason why Spike isn't considered MLP's first main male character. I believe his being a dragon is what overshadows his role as being a main male character. The audience sees his POV as a dragon before they see it as a guy. And aside from the very first few scripts of FiM, he wasn't really portrayed as a stereotypical male. Even "Guys' Night" wasn't a "guy" thing when it was just him and Big Mac. The Mane 6 could have joined in their O&O games (and eventually did) and the girls would have fit right in. I think the Mane 6 were just giving Spike and Big Mac their own space to bond. Discord did try to introduce them to what would be considering a more stereotypical guys' night, but even he came around to love Spike's idea of what guys' night should be in the end. I'm still having mixed feelings about Hitch. I just rewatched "Flutter Brutter" and the square jaw on Hitch reminds me so much of Zephyr. Even Hitch's coloring is like that of an inverse-coated Zephyr, lol. But I really, really, really hope Hitch isn't a retread of him, spending his whole arc learning that being stuck up is off-putting and even worse trying to woo the mares with cheap lines isn't appropriate behavior. =P So it's still Izzy for me, but I'm crossing my fingers Hitch is a positive role model right out of the gate.

Nothing confirmed, but the first post in the "What We Know pt 1" thread shows an image of 5 main character toys. Besides Pipp, there's also Zipp, and they are both pegasi. (And might be twins considering their similar names, which in retrospect now makes it less likely Sunny and Hitch are siblings.) If the final tally is 5, then the unicorns are the one race under-represented, though perhaps another unicorn would be added to the cast by the end of the movie or by the start of the series? Thinking about this further, most of G4's run only featured a single unicorn, too - Rarity. Twilight got promoted so the unicorns were under-represented there as well, something I didn't even realize until now, lol. I guess if Hasbro was truly intent on trying to repeat the formula for success of G4, it actually wouldn't surprise me if a late-added 6th character also ended up being an alicorn.

It's not hard to believe someone who has spent a lot of time studying her idol would take on some of that idol's habits and favorite pastimes. The more she learned about Twilight, the more she got into reading books. In short, Twilight is to Sunny what Starswirl the Bearded was to Twilight. Sunny probably even dresses up like Twilight on Nightmare Night, presuming that holiday is still a thing. I think Sunny is more pro-active than Twilight, however - at least that's the impression I got from the press release. While Twilight could be pro-active when a situation presented itself that lent itself to her talents, she didn't really want to put herself out there in the spotlight if it could be avoided. Conversely, I feel like Sunny is a bit more like Scootaloo (yes beyond her color scheme, lol) and it more likely to throw caution to the wind and that's a good part of why her hometown has labeled her a misfit.

In fairness, the analogy isn't quite right even if the perceived effect is somewhat similar for the audience. If we were to map what happened to Equestria onto what happened in Alien 3, then the 4 main survivors from Aliens would have lived long, happy lives together before anything bad happened. If there had been that kind of reward, then the hell they had to go through for it was at least worth it. Instead, most of them didn't even get a minute awake after the end of the previous movie, and they all were unceremoniously dumped on in one way or another. (A3 is one of the very few movies that I really, really, wanted to get up and walk out of the theater after the first 5 minutes. And I should have - the rest of the movie featured characters with "Prometheus" levels of stupidity. ) I do admit the apparent unraveling of Twilight's reign has affected me, however, and that's why a perceived effect on the audience is understandable. Specifically, I used to not get all that emotional over the end of "The Last Problem," but I was almost brought to tears upon watching it again over the weekend, now knowing everything she, Spike, the ReMane 5, and everyone else worked for didn't last. It seems even the best laid plans aren't immune from the effects of entropy, whether or not that being is still around to try and prevent it.