MLP: A New Generation: Brony (MLP Forums) Reviews/Reactions/Discussion

[Equus 91]

Went through watch number six last night and I'm weirded out because I like it more each time, especially the songs. I expect the newness and I-love-these-new-characters-so-much glow to wear off eventually and make constant rewatches a little less endearing but until then god I just want to gush over it. Big props to Imalou for the Sunny/Izzy designs they are so good, just keep repeating the Gonna Be My Day sequence over and over and over and smiling like a lunatic. So happy, hopeful, upbeat, and cute it makes my heart melt

If this part doesn't plaster a big grin on your face I worry about you

Edited September 27, 2021 by Equus
sunny is cute

[Codelyy 1,286]

I really liked the movie! I think its a great start to Gen 5. Though I am (like I think the majority are) very confused on what has happened since Gen 4 for everything to become so chaotic. 

[Scarlet stellpen 38]

I liked the movie. I was sceptic about how they would introduce the show/story/characters far in the futur with the CGI and no magic, but at last i was surprised as well.
After this, some questions stay without answer yet but it's the Pilot for the show in coming.
So I'm curious to see what will hapen next...
(And also have the explanations about all what happened since the G4, i hope it won't disturb too much the coherence)

Edited September 27, 2021 by Scarlet stellpen

[Ragland Tiger 3,386]

I thought the movie was cute and funny!  Izzy is best adorable pony

[Tony_Pony 4]

Overall, i liked it! It's just a nice movie. 

Its a movie for kids so naturally things were going be simple and maybe a little cliche at times, but it was overall good. I liked getting to see all the pony cities and landscapes, and i think that the designs for the ponies were nice. I honestly thought I wasn't going to like Zipp and Pipp, the trailers made them seem like a self absorbed ponytube personality and her stuck up "i don't need anyone" sister.  I was pleasantly surprised and Zipp is honestly my favorite 

I think my only negative opinion isn't exactly with the movie itself so much as with a recurring theme in the series where earth ponies are kinda done dirty by the writing team. Pegasi are fast fliers that will swoop in and take you away, unicorns will fry your brain with magic, and earth ponies.....are harmless stinky simpletons.... like they don't even have their strength, AJ in the previous series was supposedly stronger than even the average earth ponies, but weren't they all supposed to be strong and connected to the earth? Idk just a thought

 

I also thought the unicorn superstition thing was kinda weird and out of pocket since it was an idea introduced late in the movie, but its not offensively bad or anything i just thought it was random. Still got a laugh out of me though!

 

[Dark Qiviut 22,379]

I was wondering why Sunny made a big deal of it while searching for Bridlewood! 

That’s the Tree of Harmony!!

[Sazama Ichida 2,367]

This movie raises a lot of questions. Like, how did the ponies get to fear each other in the first place? How is the sun and moon moving on their own now if there's no magic? What happened to Discord and all the alicorns? Twilight, Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Flurry Heart? And are all the other races still a thing? Dragons, Minotaurs, Yaks, Changelings, and Hipogriffs etc.?

[Evil Pink One 13,506]

46 minutes ago, Asbel Lhant said:

This movie raises a lot of questions. Like, how did the ponies get to fear each other in the first place? How is the sun and moon moving on their own now if there's no magic? What happened to Discord and all the alicorns? Twilight, Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Flurry Heart? And are all the other races still a thing? Dragons, Minotaurs, Yaks, Changelings, and Hipogriffs etc.?

and why mayonaise?

[Metemponychosis 1,259]

47 minutes ago, Asbel Lhant said:

This movie raises a lot of questions. Like, how did the ponies get to fear each other in the first place? How is the sun and moon moving on their own now if there's no magic? What happened to Discord and all the alicorns? Twilight, Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Flurry Heart? And are all the other races still a thing? Dragons, Minotaurs, Yaks, Changelings, and Hipogriffs etc.?

I imagine we'll get answers to those in the coming series. Just with that they have material for seasons if they want to explore it.

[Light Blade 8,673]

Just saw it myself!

Overall, I enjoyed it. The resolution maybe felt a little bit out of nowhere/rushed/forced. Plus, the villain ain't the strongest I have seen so far. And I wonder about Sunny's current status: is she now an alicorn or she just gained an ability to summon astral horn and wings?

P.S: Izzy Moonbow. Izzy bubbling Moonbow! Luv her 

Good movie still. I liked it 

[Evil Pink One 13,506]

1 hour ago, Light Blade said:

Just saw it myself!

Overall, I enjoyed it. The resolution maybe felt a little bit out of nowhere/rushed/forced. Plus, the villain ain't the strongest I have seen so far. And I wonder about Sunny's current status: is she now an alicorn or she just gained an ability to summon astral horn and wings?

P.S: Izzy Moonbow. Izzy bubbling Moonbow! Luv her 

Good movie still. I liked it 

I have a 4k 55inch curved tv..... I assure you.... God damn fur physics is LIT!!!

Moments ago, Kujamih said:

I have a 4k 55inch curved tv..... I assure you.... God damn fur physics is LIT!!!

your eyes can literally feel and touch their fur...it's scary

[FlitterFlutter 1,583]

I just finished watching the movie for a second time and I have to say I'm rather impressed. To start I was VERY apprehensive about the move to 3D animation. I was very impressed with how smooth and detailed it was. Some of those backgrounds were amazing. 

I was also very happy with the overall story of the movie. I think it's awesome that it's building off the G4 lour and this has me even more excited for the series coming later. 

In conclusion I liked the move alot more then I ever thought I would. Obviously at this point I still have to say G4 is better. However, maybe it is not fair to compare 9 seasons of a TV show to one 1:30 long movie 

 

Edited September 28, 2021 by FlitterFlutter

[Metemponychosis 1,259]

4 hours ago, Dark Qiviut said:

I was wondering why Sunny made a big deal of it while searching for Bridlewood! 

That’s the Tree of Harmony!!

Thank you for sharing this. When I saw the tree in the movie I thought of the Tree of Harmony. But it is not crystal so I thought it was just a random landmark for Sunny to recognize from the map.

[Sparklefan1234 169,829]

Tabitha St. Germain does a flawless Ken Jeong impression, she is truly the GOAT. /

 Being just as serious as my first sentence, I think my favorite "part" of the movie was seeing all of the puns in Zephyr Heights,

 this was truly a G.M. Berrow movie. 

Edited September 28, 2021 by Sparklefan1234

[TheNewBrony 69]

Wow, it's been a long time since I have posted here, I've been very busy! I watched the movie with my family (well, my dad got bored and almost fell asleep) the day after it came out. Here are my thoughts: 

I loved it! The characters were great, the music was amazing, and the scenery was beautiful! My only criticism is that the plot seemed a little bit rushed in some parts. Other than that I have nothing but praise! 

Also, I noticed this that I haven't seen anyone else mention, but the rap part of the song "Fit Right In" semi-mimics Pinkie's Wonderbolt Rap from G4. 

And near the beginning of the movie, there's a Terminator reference (I love Terminator)

Edited September 28, 2021 by TheNewBrony
Accidentally clicked "post" early

[AlbaTross 1,586]

I finally saw this movie, and I can say that I enjoyed it.  I'm not in love with it or anything, but I don't think it's bad.  I kind of like that it borrows just enough from FiM by being set in the same world, but many moons later when the Mane Six are long gone, and where the status quo is much, much different from where we left off.  I like that the setting is a lot more modern, and that the connection between the pony races needs to be re-established, and we're actually around for this part of the lore this time.  The songs are catchy enough, and the characters work just fine for what they are.  The CG is solid.  It's a new world with new characters, and I think the team behind it did the best they could with it.  

This is not a FiM-killer for me.  Far from it.  Part of it may be that the first cut is the deepest, and FiM was certainly that.  FiM also just has more to its world, and the juxtaposition of real-world elements with the fantastical and supernatural is probably a big part of what hooked me from the start, and the latter elements especially are what probably helped sustain a series for so long and helped provide a world I could get lost in for as long as I have.  The world in this film just isn't that for me. 

Sure, this film's world works just fine...for a film.  FiM's MLP Movie had to hold back on diving too deep into the lore of its series in order for newcomers to not be lost, whereas this movie, callback aside, was able to establish itself more or less from the ground up and I don't get the sense that the team behind it was held back in the same way.  The plot and setting make for an engaging enough movie experience, and other production values are just fine.  The references are also solid.  I think doing away with a lot of the fantasy elements also helped ground the story and allow it to focus on the elements that are there, which works for the story it tells.  

I'm just skeptical that this film works as well as a pilot for what will presumably be an ongoing series.  It told its story, and did so adequately, but that story has reached its conclusion.  I was able to watch the Mane Six for hours, but I don't think I quite feel the same way about this cast, both major and supporting.  I'll check out this series when it releases, but I suspect it will get old before too long if there's not enough of a hook to keep me invested.  Sure, my reaction when I first saw FiM Part 1 and 2 was that I could go either way on whether I wanted to keep watching it, as I think that works as a self-contained story too (and I still feel that way), but I clearly made the decision that I wanted to see more of it.  I don't think I would be invested in checking out a series based on A New Generation if I wasn't already invested in MLP as a whole.  I'll give it a shot, but FiM still reigns supreme for me.  

[Rainbow Dash 1,472]

Didnt like the artstyle all too much. Hoping it sticks to the movie and the actual series is animated. I came into Gen 4 expecting nothing and was pleasently surprised. Coming into Gen 5 with a low bar and i was borderline impressed and wanting more. I just hope they dont go overboard with throwbacks.

[OptimisticNeighsayer 471]

I too had some good fun with this film, more than I expected.

I especially liked the dance competition scene, where Sunny’s friends cheering her on being a great way to establish the friendship so far, and the other races coming together to mend the picture to trigger the crystals coming together and helping pull an MA Larson on Sunny and bringing back magic. Also, the scene where Hitch is invited to join the girls in their circle makes me optimistic that he won’t be treated as a butt monkey or a mere male token. In fact the friendships between the five mains do develop quite naturally even in spite of the “big adventure” feel. 

But the underdevelopment of Argyle’s “research” still kind of bugs me. He seems to have been the only one who had a correct understanding (if perhaps a bit sugarcoated) of history, you’d think he might have told Sunny about that, particularly since he had the Earth pony crystal, and so a lot of the suspense in the MacGuffins seems somewhat artificial.

So jusr as I feared, I really wish that the movie at least had some hint of an explanation for the mutual animosity. I mean this not in just the mere sense that the movie didn’t explain how Twilight’s utopia fell from grace; it’s wrong anyway to expect it to have all the answers. Even if the ponies’ history books were wrong, there must be some grain of truth. (Maybe Rarity’s partisans or something really did cause the beginning of the end for friendship, but since it comes from Sprout’s broad unicorn stereotypes it seems unlikely. Still an interesting speculation though.) I wish I could say that we could wait for the series, but it makes Sunny’s idealism seem a bit hollow and does bring down the movie a bit.

The first act really sold the Earth ponies’ hatred of the other races a bit heavy-handedly with rather obvious dialogue, so cartoonishly, even for a cartoon, that you really do itch for understanding exactly how they split in the face of what the viewer knows. In fact that’s kind of the problem: it’s too dependent on the audience’s familiarity with G4 to get Sunny’s idealism, and that even becomes a problem when they’re just looking for the pegasi and unicorn crystals—of course there’s an earth pony crystal needed, go and find it already too!

That said, I think Sunny’s more selfish motivation of wanting a friend that could fly or do tricks is a nice wrinkle in her idealism. Assuming Argyle did not have time to explain to her everything he knew about his research, it likely explains why she didn’t conceive of an earth pony crystal at first. Though she of course isn’t racist like other earth ponies thanks to her father, she still likely unconsciously harbored some assumptions about earth ponies that feeds into that racism in the first place. Note that the earth ponies’ hatred of the other races is based almost exclusively on the others’ perceived powers, while for pegasi and unicorns broad stereotypes about earth ponies characters play a much larger role. (Add to that the pegasi and unicorns still have a reminder of the powers they once had as part of their culture. I actually speculate that the unicorns’ superstitions were born out of a desire to downplay their powers when Equestria was at the breaking point.) This “no power” Other component of the earth ponies’ collective identity would make it unthinkable that earth ponies do have a magic of their own. I’m conflicted on whether explicitly realizing that earth ponies do have magic of their own would help or hurt the plot. The search for magic in itself does distract her a bit from her loftier goal of getting the races together, giving Sunny a subtle character arc beneath a generally unflagging idealism, and the message is obviously more powerful if you can make your case solely on your desire for friendship alone. (After all, others may not care as much about whether their friends can fly.) But a lot of the film’s development on how the races come to a mutual understanding hinges on the realization that they really aren’t all that different, and not showing a specific earth pony magic does make it seem like something is severely missing. 

Now on to the closest thing(s?) we had to a true villain: I know that Cloverleaf’s probably been feeding Sprout even worse stories about the other races than the average earth pony. (That saves Sprout from being a more cliche twist villain as the movie fortunately never tries to absolve Cloverleaf of raising Sprout the way she did.) But I still think his rise from just another racist Earth pony in Maretime Bay to Mussolini-Idi Amin caught me as too quickly developed. His jealousy of Hitch wasn’t exactly convincing to me either. He really just wanted Hitch’s position, he never gave a real hint that he thought he could do better.

A few miscellaneous praises though: I liked the idea of the unicorns being superstitious to both create irony in the other races’ distaste of them and to give the kids something random to laugh at but still having a logic to them. Best New Pony Zipp’s desire to go beyond the royal pomp is genuine and has good contrast with her social-media hungry sister. And props to Zephyr Heights for actually holding the royal family accountable for their lies, however played for laughs they made it. The show is definitely political, but except for the first act, they don’t oversell the commentary. (Even the big speech Sunny makes before magic is restored is quite genuine if understated a tad.) The fact that no one was spreading fake news trying to deny the royals’ inability to fly makes them admirable and helps their ultimate acceptance of Sunny’s idealism feel more convincing in the end.

The musical numbers weren’t half bad, if not exactly my taste. Izzy’s “Fit Right In” number was a lot of fun in particular, and Sunny’s opening song is peppy and catchy… though none are truly inspiring the way G4 could be.

And not exactly a criticism, or at least not one that sours me on the film much, but assuming that there was a good reason to just think that all they needed was the unicorn and pegasus crystals at the time, it felt like the wager for the unicorn crystal with the pegasus crystal was actually a no-lose situation for Sunny. On her terms, Sunny just needs the crystals together; there’s no need for her or her friends to actually be in possession of it, and Alphabittle just seems to collect without doing anything with them. If she lost, there probably would still be a way to convince him that the two should go together (maybe he didn’t have a case for it and Sunny could suggest putting them together for both space and aesthetic reasons) It is kind of sad that Sunny didn’t convince her friends she knows what she’s doing with a contingency plan, but I guess we could trust at that time she could solve the cube (which unfortunately, unless I have missed something, was not exactly something we had any hint she could do). Obviously going along with the wager in full faith and winning it would be more exciting, but I still couldn’t help but feel a little played there. And maybe Sunny was thinking as I am, but the film plays it as a somewhat crazy idea and she just needed to be trusted. 

Oh, and I’m glad the tennis ball wasn’t Sunny’s idea. It helps complement the silliness of Canterlogic’s products. (By the way, does anyone else find it more than a little ironic that the earth pony “evil megacorp” of the film, CanterLogic (or at least the convention), plays off a place that was a unicorn haven? I have so many questions…)

And though I got much feels from the leaders of the other races coming to help mend the Sunny and Argyle pic, and I can chalk it up to being weary of the almost-war and after seeing their assumptions about their respective societies and other races collapse before their very eyes, I still found it to have symbolic meta problems: First, is it trying to say that the leaders’ new friendships, or at least their tolerance of each other, is the only thing that matters? If not, why wasn’t it enough that the Mane 5’s own friendships would have been enough to restore magic once all three crystals were together? Is it more just a poetic justice to the one adult who was in the right after being shamed all his years? Or is eight the new magic number in this world? (For that matter, only Cloverleaf had any connection to Argyle before this, so it’s hard to say that this restoration is poetic justice for him.) Maybe it is indeed all of this as a cumulation of Sunny, her friends, and the other characters’ arcs, but I would have liked the symbology to be a little more clear here. 

So, except for the big lack of Argyle’s own research and worldbuilding making for some holes in Sunny’s own idealism, any other flaws didn’t hurt my overall enjoyment of the material. So hoof to heart, it played its part in setting a promising beginning for G5, imperfect as it is. 
 

 

[simba86 1,541]

I was worried that it would be disappointing but I was wrong. Animation was great, the songs were enjoyable , love the new characters and the story while somewhat predictable was good also. I'll definitely be checking out the series. Also Izzy is best G5 pony hands down. If you like Kimiko's voice acting be sure to check out Centaurworld also on Netflix because she voices Horse.

Overall enjoyable because I've already watched it twice

[Equus 91]

^ Centaurworld is absolutely mandatory yes everyone should go do that

A thing I wondered, noting the crystals only came together after the leaders came together; Pipp essentially got knocked out of the lighthouse and was not present when Izzy and Sunny put'em together at the last second... I wonder if had she been present that would have changed things? Not sure what the crystal logic is but if we're explicitly dependent on all three races being present and friends when they are united, maybe that delayed it a bit?

[KirbyFluttershy 2,523]

I'm starting to think that this MLP a new generation may have some potential and gain popularity by fans out there. I just like to see more of this movie and the series though.

[Misty Shadow 7,846]

I wrote up an extensive review for both my blog and my DeviantArt. 

https://www.deviantart.com/cloudmistdragon/art/My-Little-Pony-A-New-Generation-Movie-Review-893213800

Reason I'm posting links instead of the whole thing is because I mean it, it's extensive.  I do my best to avoid as many spoilers as I can though. 

 

[Steve Piranha 29,419]

I’ve noticed a brand of pegasi watches is called as the top Greek god: Zeus. As far as I know, he isn’t strongly associated with horses tho

[Stardust Balance 7,738]

11 minutes ago, Steve Piranha said:

I’ve noticed a brand of pegasi watches is called as the top Greek god: Zeus. As far as I know, he isn’t strongly associated with horses tho

No but doesn't he live on top of a mountain, just as the pegasi do? I think that's the reference.

[Steve Piranha 29,419]

1 hour ago, Stardust Balance said:

No but doesn't he live on top of a mountain, just as the pegasi do? I think that's the reference.

Yeah, makes sense in that regard. Still, if they are going to use god references, might as well use ones associated with horses