Rewriting the 2017 MLP Movie

[YoungJustice12334 51]

I'll bring up of what I would fix about the movie with A Few major points rather than focus on individual little details:

1.) The entire initial attack & finale takes place in town on the southern Equestrian border rather than Canterlot.

I think this fix would resolve A lot of the Movie's Plot holes and lazy writing because The Storm King's fleet is only just arriving, not having traversed half of Equestria unnoticed. The other Princesses aren't present just yet so do not get worried. Similarly, the far south regions like Klugetown are closer than any of Equestria's other allies. Instead, the Alicorns and Royal Guard turn up for an appearance at the final battle.

2.) Mount Aris/the Seaponies would not exist as a plot point.

Instead, Captain Celaeno and her crew become the Hippogriffs who are unwanted by pony or griffon society. Due to them being Exiled & judged, they have turned to piracy for survival. Bonus, the deletion of a plot point now allows time for more meaningful character development for the existing cast.

3.) Make Tempest Shadow A Much Better Villain without her forced Redemption

I would introduce Tempest Shadow as A sort of bounty hunter for The Storm King, who promises her the restoration of her horn as her prize for taking down The Princesses. The Storm King hires her to hunt down the one princess that escaped during his attack, delegating this task because he doesn't trust his minion Grubber to handle it on his own and because he's still busy consolidating his control over Equestria (as we get some cool scenes of the ponies of Cloudsdale putting up more of a fight after Canterlots falls)

I would have had the Storm Kong’s minions storm the palace courtyard, terrorizing the civilians. The Princesses would attempt to dispatch/route them while Princess Cadence evacuates the ponies. In the midst of the fighting Tempest finds an opening and traps Cadence. She orders her troops to double their efforts, and they move with more ferocity. Once again while Princess Celestia is distracted, Tempest gets in a cheap shot and traps her as well. Luna, enraged at her family being subdued, blasts aside the soldiers and goes against Tempest. Tempest manages to show she’s competent enough in fighting styles to keep up with Luna’s magic. But she’s slowly being driven to her limit, so she activates a spell that leaves Luna stunned for a moment, long enough for Tempest to trap her as well.

4.) The Movie's ultimate moral conflict is Friendship can't redeem everyone.

Rather than have Twilight panicking unreasonably throughout the movie, the middle act becomes her struggle to accept the roughness of the outside world. Why don't they care? How can they be so callous and cruel? In return, the pirates lambast Twilight for trying to make friends with everyone and not accepting some harsh realities. In the movie's finale, Twilight accepts that friendship alone cannot save everyone - her duty as a princess is to Equestria first. She allows Tempest Shadow to suffer a final fate from magical overuse after the latter betrays the Storm King, recapturing the Staff of Sarcanas and saving the day but at the cost of her innocence.

So Those are the Main 4 things I would fix about the Movie, Here are some additional aspects I would fix about the movie:

We get a nice montage of the Mane Six traveling through southern Equestria, which is where we get the second song in the movie (we got this) which is based more around the girls confidence they can save Equestria instead of throwing a party. The scenery get steadily more and more ominous before the song ends, with the girls falling silent once they reach the Bone Dry Desert.

The girls actually pass out in the Bone Dry Desert, unprepared for the trip through the desert and are 'saved' by Capper who leads them to Klugetown. It's obvious from the start that he plans on selling them in the slave town, but they start to win him over despite their naivete through simple acts of kindness and watching his back when some of the Klugetown thugs try to shake him down. When he asks why they would help him the simple response is 'that's what friends are for' which rocks Cappers entire worldview. 

More of the movie takes place in Klugetown as it turns out many of the Hippogriff citizens, including Princess Skystar, did not escape Mount Aris before the Storm King invaded their territory. Princess Skystar promises to lead the ponies to the Queen of the Hippogriffs if they can rescue her and her people, but this is where it's revealed Capper was planning to sell the ponies.

Capper pretends to sell the girls, but makes it clear it's part of a plan to rescue Princess Skystar. The plan almost goes off without a hitch, Capper arranging to have the girls and Hippogriffs loaded onto a sky-barge owned by a Captain he happens to be acquainted with (he owes her money too). Unfortunately this is when Tempest shows up and starts tearing through Klugetown thugs and Hippogriff warriors alike trying to get to Twilight Sparkle.

The escape still happens roughly the way it does in the movie, but with Tempest capturing Capper he's not there to smooth things over with Captain Celaeno, who immediately threatens to turn them all over to the Storm King for the bounty on Twilight's head. Rainbow Dash notices that for sky pirates they aren't very 'piratey' which is where Celaeno reveals their sorry fates as servants of the Storm King and then things eventually resolve as they did in the movie with her helping them to 'be awesome' again and agree to deliver them to Mount Aris.

An entire Storm King Armada catches up with them, however, with Tempest Shadow leaping from the rigging of one of the airships to land on the deck and personally take out most of the crew and lock herself in battle with Captain Celaeno. The girls and Princess Skystar abandon ship like in the movie.

Things more or less pan out the same way with the Sea Ponies with Skystar taking the girls to Seaquestria and Queen Novo refusing to help them. Instead of Twilight trying to steal the magic pearl, however, the Storm Kings troops follow them to Seaquestria and begin to capture it's citizens, with Queen Novo blaming the girls for leading the storm Kings forces to their refuge.

EVERYONE is captured and loaded on various ships in the armada to be taken back to Equestria to face the Storm King's wrath. This is still where the big confrontation between Tempest Shadow and Twilight occurs, but Tempest's backstory is a little different. She was once an ambassador of Equestria who was sent to Mount Aris on a mission of goodwill. Before she could reach the distant kingdom, however, she fell pray to the desert just as the girls had and was taken in by someone she thought was a friend. Unlike the girls, she was sold into slavery in Klugtown, and to prevent her from escaping her horn was broken off. Losing her horn was a terrible and traumatic experience, made all the worse by the person who she thought was her friend counting the bits he had gotten for her while it was happening. She vowed never to trust anyone or anything but money from then on, and so after finding a way to pick the locks on her cage with a fragment of her broken horn she escaped and started a life as a mercenary. Her philosophy is that friends will always let you down, even when they don't directly betray you, and that Twilight's friends failing her is a good example of that. 'The only pony you can rely on is yourself'.

The big climax with the fight against the Storm King has Twilight taking Tempest's advise, and using her horn to pick the lock on her magic-proof cage. Twilight tries to face the storm King alone but is quickly overwhelmed. Realizing even as a Princess of Equestria , alone she cannot defeat him, that is when Twilight's friends arrive to fight for her and all of Equestria.

Edited June 17, 2020 by YoungJustice12334