FattPat

Absolutely fantastic episode. It makes me glad I stuck with this show all the way through, because this is an episode I will be revisiting. It also makes me sad that the show is ending, because it can still produce episodes like this that I love. I appreciate that we got a sibling related plot that didn't involve the Apple family. Remember back in season 1 when she was the only one with siblings? That was a long time ago. It feels like there is still a lot of unexplored potential with characters like Shining Armor, Luna, and Zephyr, so it's great to see them get a last hurrah before the show ends. The only thing I'm not sure about with this episode is the retcon that Twilight and Shining were constantly competing when they were younger. Considering we saw the apple and kite scene from the BBBFF song, it feels like there was some trolling going on from the writers.

The ending makes me think they're setting up a big villain team up for next season.

I absolutely loved the episode. It is just so much fun. Watching Discord terrorize the school, the "teachers" he hired, coming back as a ghost, and just his general craziness was fantastic. I was surprised to see that so many people are dismissing the episode because of Discord acting out of character. Honestly I wasn't thinking about it until I saw lots of people complaining. In my opinion I don't really see anything too out of character for Discord. The whole point of his character is that he's a trickster and a troll. If he wasn't going around causing mischief then I would think he was out of character. But it looks like the main problem people are having with this episode is whether or not he went too far. Did he go too far? Well if there's one thing I've learned about Discord over the course of this show, it's that he is a moody guy. The reoccurring cause of his trolling is that he gets upset when the main six ignore him. If I was going to complain about something, it would be that Twilight and the others should really have learned about this by now. Like Discord said at the start of the episode, no one ever invited him to visit or see the school (even Fluttershy!) You'd think after the whole Tirek incident they would try to reach out to him a little from time to time. Even though Starlight was his Equestria saving buddy, she's been ignoring him too. Is it really any wonder why Discord would start lashing out? I will admit it is annoying that this is the writers common solution for creating conflict between Discord and the others. This is a show about friendship and how to handle dealing with other people, so the simple solution would be for either the girls to be more considerate in including Discord, or for Discord to stop throwing tantrums as a way to get attention. But as Fluttershy pointed out last season, it can take time for people to get over certain flaws. For now I'll just sit back and enjoy watching Discord cause mayhem.

Maybe we did because that's what I saw.

I think it's really weird that people are saying the movie is geared more towards fans than general audiences. I got the exact opposite impression. The movie doesn't use much material from the show other than the main six. It feels like the plot was specifically written with that goal in mind since it involves them journeying to new places, meeting new characters, and dealing with new villains. The most fans get are a few cameos from secondary characters. I found it disappointing for that reason. Since it's based on a TV show I would have vastly preferred that it use more of its unique material and prioritize the fans who are the main audience. We ended up with a very isolated adventure that, with a few character changes, could have just been an original movie. And not a particularly compelling or interesting one. But there are plenty of people who don't have a problem with this and enjoyed the movie just fine. I'd have preferred something more unique and creative. The season 7 finale got leaked and I found that to be far more interesting.

I love reviewing movies, so I’m going on a big rant here. This movie disappointed me. I don’t consider it to be bad exactly, but I was expecting a lot more. There are two main reasons I feel this way. For the movie itself I was disappointed at the lack of anything new. I know that sounds weird since most of what we saw was new, but it was really only on a surface level. We’ve seen this plot before. Some evil force shows up, curb stomps Celestia and Luna, Twilight and the gang have to figure out some way to stop it, villain does something stupid that presents an opening, they take it and win. It happened with the Canterlot Wedding, it happened when Tirek attacked, and is pretty much the standard for this show. I don't want the standard villain rises plot at its simplest, I want something new and different that only a big movie can pull off. We’ve seen these characters before. You got the girl unicorn who turned her back on friendship but gets redeemed. They did that with Starlight last season. They did that with Sunset in the Equestria Girls movie. They even did it with Trixie back in Season 3. Do we really need this a fourth time? Storm King was a bit more unique, being kind of a combination of Tirek and Discord. Too bad we barely got to see him at all. We’ve seen Twilight have a falling out with her friends and then make up with them. Happened when Discord messed them up, and when the forest went all wacko that one time. Plus they’ve had their spats on occasion in regular episodes. The movie should give us something new and big, not just retread things that have already been done multiple times on the show. Now this is the big one. This is what really got me down about how the movie turned out. So they are making a movie based off of a popular TV show. You know who’s going to go see it? People who watch the show. You who’s not going to go see it? People who DON’T watch the **** show! So why, why in the world did they decide that this needed to be a standalone story that doesn’t have much of anything to do with the show? Now I don’t know if they were worried about alienating people who don’t watch the show, but I really, really hope that wasn’t a factor. That would just be stupid, because the only people who are going to see this movie are fans of the TV show. Now I don’t like complaining about things without offering some kind of solution. So I think to myself, what would I have wanted the movie to be like? In my perfect little world the movie would have been constructed around what makes the show great. What makes the show great is that it tells slice of life style stories and has a big cast of characters that make up a large community. I think back to the episode “Slice of Life” and how that right there would have been the perfect basis for a movie. Now that episode dealt with a bunch of background ponies going about their day with a wedding tying everything together. I think that something similar could be done, where perhaps this is the Friendship Festival day in Ponyville and it’s a collection of subplots concerning that. So Twilight and Spike are trying to get things ready, Starlight and Trixie are doing their own thing to try and help, Fluttershy and Discord have something going on, the CMC are dealing with something, the Apple Family has a problem to deal with, and so on. A 90 minute runtime would be enough to have a bunch of characters doing things while we jump around following each one, seeing them directly and indirectly affect each other, and it all comes together at the end. I think that encompasses everything we love about the show. But let’s go back to reality. This is a movie, it’s a big deal. We can’t just have a nice day in Ponyville, we have to have a big crazy epic adventure with evil villains and action scenes and all that madness. This is fine too, but I think it would have worked so much better if they had tied it into the show. Here’s a hypothetical situation I want to throw at you. The way this show works is for the season finales and premieres there’s a big crazy adventure. What if the movie served this role instead of having the usual 2-parters? Let’s say the last episode of Season 7 set something up with a villain and ended on a cliffhanger. Then the movie would pick up from there and have the ponies go on their big crazy adventure. Season 8 comes along later and picks up where the movie left off. The movie could come out in theaters between the two seasons when new episodes aren’t airing. Something for us to look forward to during the down time, and we’d all want to see it since it would be important for the overall plot of the show. I know that doing something like that would require more work. But I don’t think it would be too hard for the writing staff to outline the adventure ahead of time and get the movie into production so that it’s finished and ready to hit theaters between Seasons 7 and 8. So that’s really the main thing that makes this movie so disappointing for me. I think they picked the worst way to go about doing it. Not relating itself to the show and using plots and characters that have been done before, it just makes the whole thing so underwhelming and kind of pointless. I expected this to be a huge, mega event for the franchise. But it feels so quiet and unimportant. I don’t know if I’ll ever bother watching this movie again, I would much rather watch some episodes instead. I think that in the future when people are looking back at the MLP franchise this movie is going to be considered a misstep. Something that should of and could have been handled much better.