"My Little Pony: A New Generation"....................(SPOILERS)

Now we just need a headcanon to explain their hooves and everything will be fine.

Click to expand...

Well, now here's a interesting bit of real-world mythological lore. According to some legends, there are some mythological water-horses that happen to have "backwards hooves". Both the Kelpie and the Icelandic Nykur are described in various places as having these backwards hooves.


So...what if all of these ponies are at least partially Seaponies? Maretime Bay is right next to the sea. It would be pretty easy to meet Seaponies or Hippogriffs right there.

And if the Hippogriffs' magic stones lost their magic too, then some of those creatures were stuck in either "surf" or "turf" mode, with no way to change back or forth, possibly splitting some families apart. It's possible the Hippogriffs might have intermingled with the other tribes, if they were separated from each other permanently. And might have spread this "backwards hooves" genetics, since a few different water-horses from mythology have the trait. Maybe when Hippogriffs or Seaponies mingle with the other tribes, they produce kids with these backwards hooves.

Now, this could all be easily contradicted in the future, but for right now...it's not impossible. *shrugs*

That's better than I expected.

They're descended from G3 ponies, who had magnetic hooves.

G3 would fit perfectly between G4 and G5 . . . Utopian and friendship-based, but the different kinds of ponies have already split. The earth ponies lived in Ponyville, the pegasi lived on Butterfly Island, and the unicorns lived in Unicornia.

G5 really seems like a G3 remake in a lot of ways, just incorporating some lessons (and history) learned from G4. G3 had an interesting world, but the characters were children living in towns made entirely of playsets. G5 borrowed that world setup, took it way more seriously, and added G4's approach to certain things. These characters are adults with day jobs, and the locations are more functional.

*click*

I'm gonna watch it again!

I just feel like it. I'm not watching for any particular thing this time.

...

1:28 Nope. I am still never prepared for how precious filly Sunny is.

3:15 We never talk about it but Hitch didn't get one of those cupcakes either.

7:08 Nope. I am still never prepared for how precious adult Sunny is.

8:09 Sprout is not able to resist any snack in front of him, no matter whose it is. It's all because of that time he didn't get to eat one of those cupcakes. He vowed it would never happen again.

8:39 The trajectory of Sprout's flight here is completely wrong. This doesn't have to be an error. My headcanon is that he is getting launched by every manhole he runs over.

12:37 Sprout is snacking again.

13:21 *hnnng*

13:41 Sunny does seem like a loon, happily ranting in the background.

And remember, this is Sunny's latest greatest plan. This is much better than the plan that got her banned from the event. She is the friendly neighborhood chaos maker.

18:56 It is notable that Canterlogic managed to get these things installed all over town. They must practically own this town. It had to be devastating when they went out of business. On the bright side, the town's accident rate has probably gone down 100% without Canterlogic's stupid products.

22:18 Magic being gone was a good plot twist. It was possible to tell this story of the tribes coming back together without that. G3 did it. This was interesting. Sunny believed the world was broken but she still got to be surprised by how broken the world was.

22:21 Sprout gets early access to Canterlogic's products. He already has one of the new anti unicorn hats.

25:41 Sprout is snacking again. This pizza box is tiny. I think this is a personal pizza.

30:49 Strings or not, this flying act is impressive. They must put a lot of work into it. Deceiving the peasants is an actual job.

32:46 Four pizza boxes. And only one drink, so this all may have been one order. My goodness Sprout.

45:36 Hitch had a whole offscreen adventure putting together this disguise so he could infiltrate the castle. IDW, this is what you should be doing.

47:43 Minor detail: these phones are actually capturing different angles of this event.

49:44 However their magical sticky hooves work, they aren't perfect. Background pony on top of the boxes accidentally sends a hammer flying... and it hits somepony. This is why they make you wear hard hats.

I'm sure we're supposed to assume this dangerous workplace is all Sprout's doing, but there is actually no particular evidence for that. Canterlogic may just be terrible.

49:57 The film never explores this, but there is a substantial amount of concept art indicating that the top of this elevator leads to the offices. The audience doesn't know why it makes sense for Sprout to be coming from there right now but it does make sense. And Sprout is snacking again.

57:51 "This is a new low." Sorry Hitch but your suffering is funny. And you're the only member of the team who isn't a wanted fugitive right now so the writers had to come up with some way to bully you.

1:07:23 The power of a common enemy. One moment the guards are ready to arrest their queen, a moment later they're back on her side.

1:07:33 This whole confrontation builds nicely. Everyone thinks they're ready to go to war at a moment's notice. Sprout is just the only one on enough of a sugar rush to do it.

And then the climax happens and is all very abrupt and unfinished feeling.

*click*

I'M GONNA WATCH IT AGAIN.


2:05 These foals have the same mannerisms as their adult selves. Good consistency, animators.

6:25 DAWN OF THE FIRST DAY

8:33 You know, hats are surprisingly common in this gen. It's not just a couple ponies. They're everywhere.

9:41 This shot highlights something that bugs me about the G5 models. Their necks seem to attach to the base of the skull. It should be the back of the skull.

10:24 Hitch's left ear reacts to Sunny's voice before the rest of him does. This is one thing G5 does very right.

11:36 Uh... how did Hitch get in the building before Sprout did? Hitch was last seen running in the opposite direction while Sprout headed straight there. The only way for this not to be a goof is if Sprout walked extremely slowly... which is possible. He did have to haul the smoothie cart uphill, so maybe it dragged him back down the hill a couple times. Some ponies just weren't built for pulling carts, you know?

11:47 All the ponies who work in Canterlogic have ID badges and some have safety vests. I can use this.

Also we really need to figure out how long a moon is. Phyllis has been doing this for the last twenty moons, and this is an annual event that Sunny has disrupted multiple times.

12:22 Dahlia does not work for Canterlogic.

13:21 I know I already said it last time, but *hnnng* It is amazing how cute Sunny is without it seeming like they're trying to force it. She just is.

Also everyone's gasping horror is amusing. What did Sunny do the time she got banned from the event?

13:41 There is a huge dent in the wall of the testing room.

18:46 Hitch wants to be a hero so bad but his job is just not that important most of the time.

19:22 Even Canterlogic employees don't have their own anti-unicorn hats yet, but Sprout has one. Phyllis is playing favorites.

25:26 Night of the First Day

26:03 Hitch isn't even mad. He knows he should have known better. This is also the same face he made when disappointed at Sprout's athleticism earlier. He's gone "Really, Sprout?" so much in his career that he has a particular face for it.

26:15 Sprout seems to be cheering up a bit... until the moment is lost. He is so broken. He wants ponies to have high expectations for him, but he doesn't want to do anything to earn it.

26:26 The calendar is ridiculous. Whoever decided to include this in the movie needs a raise.

27:14 DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY

39:02 Hitch's suggestion of a nap and a snack if he doesn't find them in the next few hours may have been intended to be silly, but dang dude. He made it this far without stopping and he's thinking about going a few more hours?

43:10 Night of the Second Day

45:54 Hitch's inability to resist moving along with music is another one of his traits that is never important to anything. It's just a thing he has.

46:45 From this point forward Hitch's dignity exits the movie. A minor success of the writing is that even though he is technically an antagonist at this point, trying to stop the heroes from succeeding in their quest, we sympathize with him as this all goes completely wrong for him too.

49:08 Blink and you'll miss it, but once again the vibration of Pipp's phone is enough to move her whole body. I know pegasuses don't weigh much but she is adorable.

51:11 DAWN OF THE THIRD DAY

53:25 Night of the Third Day?

55:50 DAWN OF THE FINAL DAY

This is why I like to keep track. That third day was conspicuously short. Was it always written that way, or did something there get lost along the way?

1:12:43 Oh man, Hitch visited the police station before heading over to the final boss level. He saw what Sprout did to redecorate the place.

1:14:15 I do like that Sprout never considers that this "They don't even have any magic" idea could be a ruse. Villains love to insist that whatever the heroes try to tell them must be a ruse. Sprout's confident that his old friend isn't lying to him now.

Hitch is probably always going to wonder how it all went so wrong.

So I've been studying all the concept art that's been released so far and with that in mind I'M GONNA WATCH IT AGAIN!



0:34 This G4 opening went through a few variations. They considered something longer, but cut it down to this. I think they made the right choice. Brevity works here.

1:27 Nope. I am still not prepared for how precious filly Sunny is.

6:20 Sunny's room. They spent a disproportionate amount of time designing this place for how little time we spend here. I don't know how many drafts the plot through but there is at least one earlier harsher version, in which filly Sunny seems to have been more of a loner. Her friends seem to have been a later addition.

7:02 Good God. They bothered to figure out where Sunny keeps her skates. We can see them in the background. If they spent as much time storyboarding mouth holds as they did working out minor details like this the movie would be perfect.

7:08 Nope. I am still not prepared for how precious adult Sunny is.

7:25 Sunny's song. This appears to have evolved from a scene where she's running late for work. Hey Sunny, if you didn't take extra laps around the whole town maybe you wouldn't be late for work.

11:17 Canterlogic. In the early plot this factory extracted energy from crystals, and Sunny worked here. I don't know what her job was. They spent a lot of effort figuring out the layout for this place and ended up dropping most of it. Considering Sprouticus Maximus, it was probably a good idea to turn Canterlogic into a factory for dumb defense gadgets. I do like the idea of Sunny working here. I would love for that to be canonized in her backstory as a nod to the film's development. It is not irreconcilable with the existing backstory in which she did something to get banned from this show.

12:32 It just occurred to me. A lot of this Canterlogic stuff is junk, but imagine if by sheer chance this anti-magic helmet actually works.

13:22 Hnnng.

22:20 It always feels weird seeing Sprout on the job, knowing how he's going to end up.

23:08 It seems weird that Sunny stops running right here, but Hitch doesn't catch up. Either he immediately gave up and followed Sprout back to the station, or it's a rewrite oops. In the harsher plot Maretime Bay had a wall, and Sunny escaped by climbing over it, so she couldn't have been followed. I guess someone said "Wait, they have a wall that keeps ponies in? Ma'am, this is a toy commercial." And the idea was dropped.

Or maybe it's just that Hitch gave up. In the early plot Sunny doesn't appear to have met Izzy until she escaped Maretime Bay.

23:47 Izzy is such a puppy.

27:15 The canyon and climb to Zephyr Heights. In the early plot Hitch was with them here, and it appears that they used disguises to infiltrate the city instead of being captured by the guards. As much as I'd love to reverse engineer the early plot, it may be impossible. The whole order of events appears to have been scrambled.

33:15 Symbolism! Sprout might have been planning to be a good sheriff here, but life immediately slammed the door in his face.

34:05 I'm trying with this song. The name is misleading. It's really not a mob song. It's just a Disney villain song, which is an incredibly overrated genre.

35:51 It is hilarious how spot on this Pipp commercial is. Kids aren't even going to know if they're only watching kid shows and seeing nothing but cereal commercials. That is if kids are even watching their shows on TV and not on their phones with adblockers.

37:04 If this movie weren't so well written, it could have seemed way too convenient that Zipp is such a good person and gives back the journal and lets them out of jail. She really doesn't know them at all yet. But Zipp's own life is such a dystopian nightmare that it works. She's not breaking them out of prison. She's breaking herself out of prison by following the first people she's ever met who have seen the outside world. She could have been the protagonist of the movie. It's just more of a journey if the camera follows Sunny and we get to meet the cast one at a time.

39:26 The happy mugshot never gets old.

41:10 This stained glass wasn't originally here.

44:44 Pipp's song. This scene originally took place in an elaborate amphitheater. Zephyr Heights was already a huge location to build so I don't blame them for dropping something. The castle works fine. Also Pipp doesn't seem to have a microphone here. Apparently she's classically trained.

45:23 This shot highlights something. Their mouths are too far from their ears. Because horses. Even with these distorted MLP heads. The point being, their phones should have been comically oversized.

48:52 We really didn't respect Pipp enough when this movie came out. How in the world did she escape?

53:04 There is no concept art explaining what Izzy is about to do to this tree. It's still a mystery.

53:26 Last time I noted that the third day ends too quickly. Well, there is a deleted scene involving a cave, and this may be where it was meant to happen.

55:50 Bridlewood. This place seems tiny and underwhelming after Zephyr Heights. That did make for a good surprise, but once the surprise wears off it ends up being kinda dull. Well, it appears that Zephyr Heights and Bridlewood were swapped. In the early plot Sunny and Izzy appear to have gone to Bridlewood first, added Hitch to the group somewhere along the way, and then went to Zephyr Heights, and gone directly from Zephyr Heights back to Maretime Bay. It was more of a linear escalation instead of the final film's ups and downs.

1:01:08 The Crystal tea Room. Bridlewood originally had a museum and a temple instead of this place.

1:14:47 Sprouticus Maximus. This thing was originally Phyllis themed. Yeah. Sprout being a broken pile of complexes was not only intended, but was originally intended to be worse.

1:14:58 He is so happy.

1:17:23 Another thing that was intended all along is how villainy changes Sprout's body language. He doesn't get a lot of credit for his villain qualities, but this is a good one.

1:17:52 Gak is a much more impressive weapon than it initially looks if it is strong enough to hold Alphabittle like this.

1:18:28 This is messed up. Sprout standing up to Phyllis ought to be a healthy moment, but they engineered a situation where him doing the healthy thing makes the situation worse. They better try to rehabilitate him. He is so broken.

1:19:38 It is actually not clear how Sprouticus Maximus is suddenly completely defeated. I think the idea is the lighthouse fell on it, but I'm not sure that should have tipped it over, and it's not covered in rubble.

About 53:04, there's a chainsaw revving sound effect so I think the implication is she chainsawed it with her horn, kind of similar to stabbing the can of beans open.

Unfortunately that kind of visual humor doesn't work so well in "realistic" 3D as opposed to the cartoony style of G4, so the joke didn't work well, and everyone is left going "huh?" But all the other jokes landed (for me at least), so one stinker isn't too bad!

(I also think most people aren't that familiar with how a chainsaw sounds and expect it to be higher pitched. I recognized it right away because I rented a chainsaw a couple months prior to take down a tree in my yard.)

Oh I'm not complaining. It landed for me. If it were anyone but Izzy it would have felt wildly out of place given how seriously G5 treats its setting details. But it's Izzy so I'll allow it.

And to be fair, she is clearly different from other unicorns. She's a happy puppy, and she can see auras. She must have some magic in her somehow.

Well, didn't see this coming.

That looks...incredibly janky. But, it's supposed to work with phones, so it's probably the best they can do.

Seems like you're playing through the first movie from Izzy's POV. "Finding where Sunny's lantern went" sounds like they might be expanding the lore a little bit. But, probably just a *little* bit.

That is janky but an absolutely fascinating concept. A partial VR adaptation of the movie plus extra stuff.

I have questions.

Izzy's arrival in Maretime Bay is chapter 8. If this is all going to be from Izzy's POV, what are the first seven chapters going to be about? That's more than a little expansion.

I wonder what the cave is all about. A late draft of the script had a cave scene that didn't make it into the movie. If Hasbro gave them that script and not the final draft, there could be some things we learn from this. Or maybe this cave scene is wholly made up. We'll find out.

If this is all Izzy's POV, Sprout is really not going to come across as the interesting villain that he is.

SHOW ME THE MAPS. A Maretime Bay' Adventure's assets have been thoroughly dissected, and unfortunately the maps are not designed to sync up. The open world mod will take a long time. I wonder what potential this game's maps have. It has locations that are not in AMA, so we'll want those at least.

In light of that Make Your mark trailer...

I'm gonna watch it again!

*click*

...

1:27 *hnnng*

1:59 Sprout already doesn't fit the stock jerk/bully archetype. Normally that character isn't a good student. By Hitch's admission here, this is what they're teaching. Sprout's grades in history class are probably better than Sunny's.

Here's a dark thought. Was Phyllis a teacher back then?

2:44 Sprout is not as happy to see Phyllis as Hitch is.

2:46 Sprout is physically recoiling. I've remarked on it before, but Sprout's lack of freedom to wander around is HIGHLY UNUSUAL by MLP standards. ... Also I appreciate the small detail of Phyllis' reflection in the window.

7:08 *hnnng*

7:28 It's interesting that this is our first glimpse of Maretime Bay. They avoided showing it in the whole opening. I wonder why. Were they deliberately trying to make Sunny's world feel small? Did she not get out much?

7:53 His destiny is already calling. This 'pretending to be reading a newspaper' thing is an old secret police cliche.

8:09 Sprout snacking x1.

8:39 Okay, so manhole pony here is also a red stallion with a hard hat. But no, that pony we saw in the trailer is DEFINITELY Sprout. Sprout has white socks. Manhole pony here does not.

Sticking with my headcanon that Sprout got launched by EVERY manhole he encountered and that's why his trajectory here doesn't match.

11:36 Sticking with my headcanon that the cart pulled Sprout down the hill a couple times and that's how Hitch managed to get here quicker. Even this film's errors get the characters.

12:37 Sprout snacking x2.

13:21 *hnnng*

18:32 Door to the face x1.

22:20 Sprout is way cuter when he has his mane messed up by the hat. He should keep it like that.

25:49 Sprout snacking x3. To be fair, it's late. This might be his dinner. We've all been there.

26:34 I was wondering when exactly that sheriff badge ended up on the floor, and here it is. It's what's pinning the calendar to the wall. ... I bet it's not a real badge.

32:46 Sprout snacking x4. There's four pizza boxes, and a drink. One of those boxes may have been from last night, but still. I tracked the days. He ate at least three of these in one morning. Dang dude.

32:52 I've talked about how good this shot is before, but this time I'm watching the body language. Sprout says "mommy." First time I saw this movie I thought that was an attempt at comedy that didn't work. But nothing about this scene tells me I'm supposed to be finding this relationship funny.

33:15 Door to the face x2.

49:57 Sprout snacking x5. Did Phyllis not allow him to have ANY snacks? Is he overcompensating for that?

50:27 INSTANT body language change when he hears Phyllis' voice. Keep watching him. He doesn't feel in charge when she's around. He feels like she could take all this away.

1:12:42 Maretime is strangely dilapidated for some reason. One food cart is still tipped over. The pizza cart is fine... and parked within very short walking distance of the police station. You wonder why I keep doing this, but there really are more details to spot every time you watch this movie.

1:14:28 His entire army preparing to quit right in front of him does not affect his body language like hearing one word out of Phyllis.

1:15:51 The bobblehead. Yet more evidence that he knows he's crazy.

1:17:23 This is almost a Kubrick stare.

1:18:11 There it is again. Even now she still almost controls him.

1:18:29 It remains messed up that his healthiest moment is also his craziest. Let's hope something good happens to him in Make Your Mark.

I think you've seen this movie more times than any of us, Fnu.

I just like it. Would recommend to a friend.

At this rate you're gonna have watched this movie more times then Caldwin's played Mass Effect...

Oh dear. Uh...I may have to start a new play through sooner than expected.

It rewards multiple viewings. I keep spotting new things in the background.

Anniversary! Three years ago it all seemed so promising.

I'm gonna watch it again.

Has it really only been three years?!

Wow, this generation just came and went, didn't it?