Why did the movie get mixed reviews?

[Patty Thundersnow 4,129]

Honeslty, I don't give a dang what any "reviewers" think of the movie. Yes, there were problems with the movie (pacing and songs to name a couple), but I feel like the mixed reviews were more because of the fandom than anything.

[heavens-champion 1,893]

Leftovers from the 'ponies are for girls' mindset.

[JCKane 345]

Truth be told I can see why the movie got mixed reviews.  Me personally, I thought the movie was ok.  I liked a lot of the premises the movie had to offer, but I found it disappointing in a few aspects.  Biggest one that bothered me was the 'climax' of the movie.   Which I feel could of been done better.  I can go into a bit more detail on it but it'd require spoilers so :/

 

[Senko 459]

Honestly I can see the mixed reviews as I just watched it and it just doesn't hit the right balance I think. For someone who's not a fan of the show you've got the dark, brooding, tempest laying waste to all that opposes her serving a storm king who comes off as a complete idiot. He's just out of tone for everything else in the movie that works for or lives in his kingdom. Then you've got the whole invasion/slavery/sale of main characters going on in what lets be honest for a non-fan would be a kids movie. There's a huge amount of themes here you aren't going to want to expose young kids too. On the other hoof for a fan of the show there's just as many things that don't make sense missing characters (and not just ones like starlight we've repeatedly seen castle guards but here they don't even put up a token resistance same with the wonderbolts), rearranging geography with the introduction of Kludgetown and presumably a storm king kingdom somewhere along with a cat and parrot one, other kingdoms missing (dragons, yaks, griffons, changelings), magical mcguffins in those green glowing stones to neutralize the Alicorns with minimal conflict and again the whole dark tone of the movie compared to most of the series. Then we have Twilight's massive out of characterness which just kept hitting me all through it even her freak out at the start was not the Twilight freak out I'm used too and all the other main six had similar moments of "this is not the pony your looking for". So on the one hand you have a movie that's not really kid appropriate yet is going to be considred a kids movie by non-fans and on the other you have a movie that ignores or changes multiples seasons of established characters and situations so it'd rub both groups badly. Its just a question of whether you personally find the rubbing annoying enough to put you off the movie.

Edited July 1, 2018 by Senko

[Nsxile 25,672]

Probably because they didn't pay them off; but tbh, who really cares about what a bunch of pretentious critics think? Both myself and a large majority of the audience ended up thoroughly enjoying the film, and that's what really matters.

[Guest]

On 19 April 2018 at 5:08 AM, Karnak said:

Which country was that?

It was China

[sprinkle nostrils 62]

Because different pees had different expectations, so some hopes were justified, some weren't.

It's actually is a good film with ponies in it ^-^ That's good

But It's far from the TV-show, its spirit and characters, like it happens in other universe. Many fans were disappointed -_-

[FirePuppy 626]

On 7/1/2018 at 5:47 PM, Rarity's crush said:

It was China

 No, China released it without problems.

It was SK, where my childhood media mostly wasn't allowed there back then.

[Megas 27,064]

It was an average family film that went about it's business and appealed to those who wanted to see it

As for critics, lets be real here people were gonna give it shit just because of the name behind it. Go read most of the negative and positive and you can easily tell which ones gave it a fair shot and which ones didn't

[Dreambiscuit 8,024]

The movie would have done a lot better if Hasbro had struck when the iron was hot, at the height of the show, rather than allowing it to cool for years while they shoved Equestria Girls down everyone's throats. I know they wanted to sell a new toy line with EqG, but money is money and they could have made a lot of it at the box office giving the fans what they wanted when they wanted it.

[Denim&Venöm 16,509]

Maybe because it was good? Just not that good? 

[Thorgir the Mighty 736]

Maybe it’s the animation.

Ive noticed that the films animation was different from the tv shows

[Rhythm Red 6,484]

I thought it was alright, actually. There were some parts that I thought were outstanding (open up your eyes, time to be awesome) and parts that I thought weren’t all that great. I would give it a positive review, but it just felt... different from the show. It’s the same complaint I have with the newer seasons, it’s very different from the show that I first discovered. In some ways, there have been improvements, sure, but the first few seasons of the show are certainly my favorites.  

[Justpassingthrough 3]

It's hard to enjoy it completely if you've never been a brony. There were lots of references slipped in for fans, which caused an alienation to outside viewers that relied on the rest of the movie to compensate. Unfortunately, the compensation didn't hold up, IMO. The movie shunted from scene to scene with simple solutions to each problem--it felt like a RUSHED episode of Season 1. There were also many cliches and shallow character lines/interactions that cheapened the cast we've grown with over the past several years. The only main characters who had anything to do with anything were Twilight, Pinkie, and Rainbow Dash. Pinkie is too zany and random to be relegated to the background, Rainbow Dash is too full of brass to sit idly by, and Twilight is the central protagonist so of course she's going to get screen time. However, I felt she was a total Mary Sue throughout the movie, and not adorkable at all. That was another thing that could have grated critics' nerves. The other three and Spike were more or less tacked on because you couldn't have a movie without all of them. Also, as others have mentioned, so many celebrity voices may have made the movie feel sold out. That's my two bits, anyway.

The movie is enjoyable, but for the cinematic debut of such an influential show, it disappointed in multiple aspects. I'm sure people can appreciate the music and the great animation, but even a couple of the songs could have probably been cut or shortened in favor of focusing on the storyline.

Edited July 17, 2018 by Justpassingthrough
needed to remove a "that" :p

[Misty Shadow 7,084]

I honestly don't see how it could've not gotten mixed reviews. Rarely ever are animated movies based off of children's cartoons given a fair shot by critics. With so much of the movie's marketing making it appear as just a toy commercial, the movie was blessed to only get mixed reviews and a good audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a site notorious for their biases. That's not to white knight the movie, I'm just telling it like it is. I agree that it was good, but not a masterpiece. There was much potential for it to be a lot better, but they played it too safe and hurried the movie to completion. I really don't understand why the movie being subject to mixed reception would come to people as a surprise.

[MangoFoalix 24,898]

The movie itself was pretty good and I didn't dislike it too much. I take a critics review of a movie with a grain of salt in general though. I rather form my own opinion about a piece of media than have someone else give me ideas on how to feel.

[Steve Piranha 28,778]

On 7/20/2018 at 5:46 PM, CloudMistDragon said:

I honestly don't see how it could've not gotten mixed reviews. Rarely ever are animated movies based off of children's cartoons given a fair shot by critics. With so much of the movie's marketing making it appear as just a toy commercial, the movie was blessed to only get mixed reviews and a good audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a site notorious for their biases. That's not to white knight the movie, I'm just telling it like it is. I agree that it was good, but not a masterpiece. There was much potential for it to be a lot better, but they played it too safe and hurried the movie to completion. I really don't understand why the movie being subject to mixed reception would come to people as a surprise.

Well, the problem many of us is not that the movie didn't receive universal praise (which I do agree with you, it's not an animated masterpiece). But if you read some of the negative reviews, it's clear they'd hardly watched the movie, and already prepared their prejudiced minds ahead of time

[ccb20yes 81]

On 4/10/2018 at 8:40 PM, The Recherche said:

Most of the professional film critics seem to dislike how the film has a bunch of celebrity cameos, a lot of cliches, and Oscar-baity music. That's from what I've seen, anyways. 

Whether or not you agree with this is entirely up to you. 

Fuck the critics!