spoiler Who knew Equestria was so helpless and easy to take over?

[Singe 2,109]

This is a kingdom that can be overwhelmed by a dragon snoring smoke. They're suppose to be meek because Celestia decided to run the kingdom that way.

It was established in Season 1 where Twilight Sparkle is at first proactive in bringing attention to a future threat of Nightmare Moon and Celestia had other plans putting the fate of the kingdom on Twilight making friends. Then after that Twilight moved to becoming more reactive and less anticipating potential threats. 

Celestia tends to keep a lot of things like threats need to know only which has been mentioned mentioned and shown a few times in the series.

Their main prerogative is to be an open, welcoming, and appealing kingdom to their neighbors which is why they won't have any show of defense and deterrents.

 

Edited December 25, 2017 by Singe

[Landi 597]

This is an issue I have with Equestria's portrayal in this movie. Obviously it had to be taken over for the story to advance, but the ponies should have really been able to put up a bigger fight. Not only do they have a military, but ponies all have innate forms of magic like spell casting and weather control (obviously not every unicorn can cast major spells, and not every pegasus can create lightning and mini tornados, but the few who can should've been able to do something). Not only did none of the princesses or the guard make an effort to protect Equestria, but the the storm king's army very easily made their way to Canterlot with no opposition. Is there no defense or guards posted on the perimeters of Equestria to keep it protected? It's just one of the few aspects of Equestria I find a bit annoying.

[BornAgainBrony 2,395]

So... heh. I wonder if everyone finds this incident as ridiculous as they did a year ago?

My first thoughts on this:

I see some defending the carelessness, "because it was a sneak attack," but it was a poorly-executed sneak-attack at best. Ignoring the Princesses suddenly forgetting that they're Alicorns, the absence of any military forces (as inept as they have a history of being) is pretty deus ex machina in favor of the villains. Now more than any point in the show I can think of. All four rulers are in one place, at the first celebration of its kind, but there's no regard for security? Sorry, I can't buy that.

Also, the ships had to cross a long distance to get from the ocean to Canterlot, and at least part of that journey was done in broad daylight. A LOT of Ponies would have seen this foreign convoy of warships, flying an unknown non-allied flag, making a beeline for the capital city. That has trouble written all over it and surely some concerned citizens would have made a few calls, and those calls would have reached those who could do something about it. Bare minimum, Pegusi would have gone up to investigate and determine the nature of the intruder. Even IF they had been sloppy with preparing for the celebration, by neglecting defense, Canterlot would have been under complete lock-down well before Tempest arrived.

Yes, the lack of protection, and lack of an effective response is ridiculous. But as we now know, also not entirely unrealistic. I seem to remember a relatively-small group of terrorists taking over the Capitol of the U.S. not long ago. The warning signs of an attack were everywhere for weeks or months leading up to the event, and the necessary authorities were well aware of the warnings. And yet, nobody bothered to deploy more than a skeleton-crew's worth of security; which is about how much protection the city has on any normal day. So I guess in retrospect, yeah, a complete idiot like the Storm King could successfully execute an assault on the capital city.