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.
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.
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