Equestria Girls Movies x FiM TV Series Comparison

[Rafa Stary 2,102]

Hello everyone, this is another project I'm working on, In this one I’ll be comparing the Equestria Girls movies with the Friendship is Magic TV series, it seems that several scenes and dialogue in these movies are very inspired by moments from FiM, some are even repeated but under the context of the movie, the purpose is not to show that these Movies copied the TV series, but that they have similarities. I already did Movie 1, the other 3 I'll be adding later on, I might also add new comparisons in the future. I use screencaps for the comparisons, Equestria Girls on the left, FiM on the right (this was inspired by these Dragon Ball Z Movies x Anime comparison videos)

hope you enjoy ^^

Equestria Girls 2013 / Season 1

Spoiler

Friendship is Magic

 

Bridle Gossip

 

Friendship is Magic

 

 

 

 

 

 

Griffon The Brush Off

 

Friendship is Magic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ticket Master

 

  

Friendship is Magic 

 

 

Boast Busters

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friendship is Magic 

 

  

 

 

 

The Ticket Master

 

 

Opening Animation

 

Friendship Is Magic 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

The Best Night Ever

 

 

Boast Busters 

 

The Best Night Ever 

  

 

 

The Ticket Master 

 

The Best Night Ever 

 

Friendship is Magic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Applebuck Season

 

Friendship is Magic 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rainbow Rocks / Seasons 2 & 3

Spoiler

Magic Duel

 

  

  

The Return of Harmony

  

A Canterlot Wedding

   

Luna Eclipsed

 

A Canterlot Wedding

  

   

Luna Eclipsed

 

  

The Mysterious Mare Do Well

   

 

Luna Eclipsed

  

A Canterlot Wedding

    

The Crystal Empire

  

A Canterlot Wedding

 

   

 

    

 

Magic Duel

    

The Return of Harmony

  

The Crystal Empire

 

A Canterlot Wedding / The Return of Harmony

    

The Crystal Empire 

   

 

   

Luna Eclipsed 

 

Hurricane Fluttershy

  

  

   

  

The Crystal Empire 

  

  

   

Luna Eclipsed 

      

The Crystal Empire  

 

   

Magical Mystery Cure

 

  

  

The Return of Harmony

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

     

Luna Eclipsed 

 

Magical Mystery Cure 

    

A Canterlot Wedding 

 

The Crystal Empire 

  

Lesson Zero

  

  

  

  

Keep Calm and Flutter On

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

    

Hurricane Fluttershy 

 

  

  

  

  

Keep Calm and Flutter On 

  

The Crystal Empire 

   

A Canterlot Wedding 

  

    

   

 

  

  

     

The Return of Harmony

   

A Canterlot Wedding 

 

Luna Eclipsed 

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

  

Lesson Zero

  

  

  

The Mysterious Mare Do Well 

  

  

  

  

Luna Eclipsed 

   

 

  

  

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

  

  

  

  

  

Magic Duel

   

 

   

  

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

  

  

  

  

  

The Mysterious Mare Do Well 

  

  

     

  

The Crystal Empire 

  

  

The Return of Harmony

  

  

  

  

   

  

  

A Canterlot Wedding

  

  

  

  

The Return of Harmony 

  

      

Magical Mystery Cure 

  

  

The Return of Harmony 

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

    

The Return of Harmony 

  

The Crystal Empire 

  

Hurricane Fluttershy 

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

   

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Hurricane Fluttershy 

  

  

  

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

  

The Crystal Empire 

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

  

The Crystal Empire 

  

Magical Mystery Cure 

  

  

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

  

 

The Crystal Empire 

  

A Canterlot Wedding 

  

The Crystal Empire 

    

   

 

Magic Duel 

  

  

  

  

The Return of Harmony 

   

Luna Eclipsed

     

 

 

Edited April 10 by Rafa Stary

[Mothra 547]

Holy wow, this is a great collection of scenes and dialogue similar between the EQG1 and the show, never got that feeling with the following EQG movies so I'll be watching out for your future comparisons. EQG1 kinda felt like a re-telling of season 1 imo, I remember the scene with the CMC in the library feeling like the entire plot of "The Show Stoppers" but I never noticed just how many similarities there were across the entire movie

Edited April 5 by Mothra

[Starlight Serenade 1,027]

Amazing job Rafa! I always felt that there were similarities between the two and never had the time to put it together, but this makes it very clear. I thought they did a great job with the FiM inspiration across EG.

[Rafa Stary 2,102]

7 hours ago, Mothra said:

Holy wow, this is a great collection of scenes and dialogue similar between the EQG1 and the show, never got that feeling with the following EQG movies so I'll be watching out for your future comparisons. EQG1 kinda felt like a re-telling of season 1 imo, I remember the scene with the CMC in the library feeling like the entire plot of "The Show Stoppers" but I never noticed just how many similarities there were across the entire movie

Thanks ^^ All the movies have inspirations from the TV series, in case you'd like a spoiler

Spoiler

Rainbow Rocks has strong parallels with Seasons 2 and 3 (The Return of Harmony, Luna Eclipsed, A Canterlot Wedding, The Crystal Empire, etc...), Friendship Games with Seasons 4 and 5 (The Princess Twilight, Twilight's Kingdom, The Cutie Map, Ths Cutie Re-mark...), you'll catch the inspirations in these specially comparing how the villains behave in both, The Dazzlings with Discord, Sonbra and Chrysalis, Sci-Twi with Tirek and Starlight Glimmer, some of their powers are nearly identical, Legend of Everfree also has its inspirations on Season 6 but this last one is mostly original compared to the first 3 due to Season 6 not presenting much new content compared to the previous Seasons (Season pretty much opens with a repeat of King Sombra's attack and ends with no new villain but the returning Chrysalis), so there wasn't much for them to get inspiration from, but it still has its similarities with some moments from that Season.

Also I didn't rewatch all of Season 1 to make this comparison, so I still need to rewatch The Show Stoppers to see if the scenes with CMC got any inspiration from it, thanks again ^^

[Rafa Stary 2,102]

 Rainbow Rocks added! 

[Mothra 547]

On 2024-04-11 at 12:55 AM, Rafa Stary said:

 Rainbow Rocks added! 

Just got the chance to look through them now and wow, Unlike season 1 and the first eqg movie I didn't catch any of the similarities between EQG2 and seasons 2/3 back when I saw them for the first time. Some of the gags/script/scenes overall look like they pretty much mirror each other (not saying that's a bad thing) but it makes me wonder how much the writers shared ideas with each other and who did which episodes?

One thing I do know is that looking through all of these as well as cataloging must have taken hours, props again for the dedication!

Edited April 12 by Mothra

[Rafa Stary 2,102]

10 hours ago, Mothra said:

Just got the chance to look through them now and wow, Unlike season 1 and the first eqg movie I didn't catch any of the similarities between EQG2 and seasons 2/3 back when I saw them for the first time. Some of the gags/script/scenes overall look like they pretty much mirror each other (not saying that's a bad thing) but it makes me wonder how much the writers shared ideas with each other and who did which episodes?

At first I thought that they just watched the episodes from previous seasons and took ideas from them, but after doing a research I believe you might be onto something, Movie 1 was written 7 months prior to the Season 3 premiere, Movie 2 was in production around Summer 2013 while Season 4 premiered in November 2013, Movie 3 was in production in early 2014 while Season 5 premiered in April 2015, and Movie 4 was already completed 2 months before Season 6 ended.

This means that the movies must have actually been made concurrently with the last season that would air before their release, so to maintain a continuity they had to take notes of what would happen in the Show during the production of both, but as they were produced at the same time, they could only use material from previous seasons (which had already been finished) as inspiration. For Movie 2 Meghan McCarthy basically rehashed ideas of her own from A Canterlot Wedding and The Crystal Empire (she wrote both these episodes and Movie 2), and Josh Haber was also inspired by his ideas from The Cutie Re-mark for Movie 3. Movie 4 had already been completed before Season 6's finale even premiered, which could be another explanation for why Movie 4 feels more original compared to the first 3, not only did Season 6 have little new content to be recycled in that film as I said before, but also the film was made at the same time as Season 6 and the previous 2 films had already borrowed a lot of material from the previous seasons, so they simply had nowhere to run, Legend of Everfree is basically the writers having to come up with ideas from their own brains, plus, Meghan and Josh weren't even in the movie, the writers for Movie 4 never worked in a two-parter from the TV series prior to this movie, and these movies are mostly inspired by two-parter episodes, so they were really thrown into the darkness of the forest here (hahaha )

maybe if the film had been released after Season 7 it would have been different (or if they saved material from Season 5 for this movie, but they had to use Starlight Glimmer's arc for Sci-Twi's in Movie 3), but they already started producing the film before they even finished Movie 3, but apparently they at least had enough production time to be able to use ideas from entire Season 6 for the film so it still has inspiration from "To Where and Back Again".

(Gotta love how this movie pretty much went through the same problems as DBZ Movies 10 and 11, these movies also had to be very original because the current arc of the anime at that time hadn't presented much new content for them to recycle yet )

10 hours ago, Mothra said:

One thing I do know is that looking through all of these as well as cataloging must have taken hours, props again for the dedication!

Thanks a lot , it surely takes a lot of time and patience for this, rewatch the movies, episodes and scenes multiple times, take the screenshots, organize them, add the text, add all of them to the post with correct size, and had to deal with the page reloading multiple times, holy cow  and almost no one supports this project, so I'm taking a break from it, gonna leave Friendship Games and Legend of Everfree for another time.