My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Friendship Games

Note: This review contains spoilers for My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games.

The year after Rainbow Rocks released, Hasbro released a follow-up, Friendship Games. This release coincided with my personal disillusionment with the Brony fandom, so I didn’t get to actually watch it until about four years later when I remembered I had recorded the TV version on a DVR. The long wait to watch it was actually a blessing, since I was able to view it more objectively. With that in mind, I feel that compared to Rainbow Rocks, this film took one step forward and two steps back.

Canterlot High School prepares for the Friendship Games, a competition held every four years between the Wondercolts and their rivals, the undefeated Shadowbolts from Crystal Prep Academy. Sunset Shimmer (Rebecca Shoichet) is concerned by her friends’ ability to “pony up” seemingly at random and contacts Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong) for help, but doesn’t get a response. Meanwhile, the human counterpart of Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong), who attends Crystal Prep, is investigating the magical energy at Canterlot High and creates a locket-like device to detect and contain this energy for research. She hopes to use this research to get into a coveted independent study program at Everton, but Principal Cinch (Iris Quinn) blackmails her by threatening to use her influence to revoke the application if she doesn’t participate in the Friendship Games.

Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong) is blackmailed into
participating in the Friendship Games.

The execution of these plot threads isn’t the best, but works well enough for the film. Human Twilight’s arc, a bullied loner who realizes the power of friendship, is decent and gives her a generally fulfilling and emotional character arc. One aspect that I would argue Friendship Games does better than Rainbow Rocks is firmly giving Sunset Shimmer the spotlight, which allows her more room to grow as a character independent of Twilight and forces her to tackle the main problem head-on. It’s a shame, however, that Sunset once again doesn’t have a proper solution until the eleventh hour.

It’s actually interesting, in a way, how this third film feels like a rehash of the original. While the world doesn’t need to be in danger for every film, the stakes are still much lower than that of Rainbow Rocks, featuring a comparatively less important school rivalry where the only thing on the line is reputation. Yes, the stakes are ramped up during the third act, when Human Twilight takes in the magic stored in her device and gains the power to break the barrier between dimensions. However, the final battle is itself a rehash of the original fight against Sunset Shimmer, when she gained the power of the Element of Magic and also transformed into a demonic version of herself. Additionally, like in Equestria Girls, the main villain, Principal Cinch, is rather one-dimensional.

Friendship Games also feels like an exercise in wasted opportunities. For one thing, Crystal Prep is underdeveloped as a school, presented as basically a more uptight version of Canterlot High. The most insight we get is that there’s a single-minded focus on success, which leads to rampant bullying. This leads into the biggest lost opportunity with the Shadowbolts. During the opening credits, the Shadowbolts, or at least six of them, are built up as evil counterparts to the six main Wondercolts, going so far as to show the visual parallels. However, this doesn’t go anywhere meaningful, as the Shadowbolts themselves have little screen time and have very one-note personalities, so their quick redemption at the very end feels unearned.

The Shadowbolts feel like wasted characters; L-R: Sugarcoat (Sienna Bohn),
Twilight Sparkle, Sour Sweet (Sharon Alexander), Lemon Zest (Shannon Chan-Kent),
Sunny Flare (Britt Irvin), Indigo Zap (Kelly Sheridan)

I also found myself asking questions while watching based on certain observations. For example, why go out of their way to establish that Principal Cinch has a dog allergy and then never follow up on it when there were at least two prime opportunities? Then there’s the idea that the Friendship Games, while quite odd on their own (why is there a motocross event during a relay?), come with the inexplicable restriction that neither team is allowed to know what the events are ahead of time. This is actually addressed in the film itself, including the argument that knowledge of future events would allow you to prepare for them, but this came off to me as a cover for lazy writing.

I’ll also address the post-credits scene here, since it provides the most direct connection to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The payoff of the scene works more in the context of Friendship is Magic Season Five, but the actual content seemed inevitable considering the events of the film. I’ll also admit that I liked the small interaction featured within.

In spite of my criticisms on the story, I have to admit that the animation was more ambitious here than in Rainbow Rocks. New camera angles and techniques came into play and I noticed more subtlety with the character movements and expressions. It’s still not the best thing I’ve ever seen, since it still looks like Adobe Flash, but I have to give credit where it’s due.

The songs, on the other hand, aren’t anything to write home about. The number is scaled back dramatically from Rainbow Rocks, five instead of 11, and they’re not bad songs, but I still forgot them as soon as the film ended. I’ve been made aware that there is a sixth song in the film, “Right There in Front of Me”, but this was cut from the Discovery Family broadcast version I watched. By comparison, I didn’t really have any complaints about the voice acting, but the talent of the Shadowbolts felt wasted considering they barely have any lines.

I don’t really regret watching Friendship Games. It’s not a bad watch and it did round out what seemed to be a trilogy. However, I couldn’t ignore the lazy writing and missed opportunities. Outside the animation, the film also seemed to generally play it safe compared to Rainbow Rocks. You could find better films to watch, but you won’t have the worst time either.