My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)

"We got this, We got this, We got this together!"

- The Mane Six, while singing "We got This Together"

My Little Pony: The Movie is a 2017 animated family musical fantasy comedy drama film based on the popular television series mh:besttvshows:My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic created by Lauren Faust, which was developed as part of the 2010 re-launch of the My Little Pony franchise by Hasbro.

The film was produced by Allspark Pictures and DHX Media, using traditional animation created with Toon Boom Harmony. It premiered in New York City on September 24, 2017, and was released on October 6, 2017, in the United States and Canada through Lionsgate.

Plot
The film begins after the events of Shadow Play, with a small group of ponies flying through the sky as the sun rises, and they flew down into the ground as they heading toward Canterlot, where the ponies of Equestria were preparing for their first Friendship Festival in Canterlot, while Spike is bringing some newspapers to the ponies, while most of the fillies are seen having fun at an inflatable castle, and we moved up to Canterlot's hallway where Twilight Sparkle, who doesn't even know how to handle anything about the festival. Spike goes over to her, and she states that she was very nervous about the meeting and asks about Equestria's huge favor getting rejected from her. She goes over tho the three main princesses, Celestia, Luna, and Cadence, and she shows a big board that they tell them about the sun, and the moon will shine through it, especially Songbird Serenade who will also arrive at Canterlot as well, though the three princesses decline her more grandiose proposals. Outside, Rainbow Dash is seen flying around exciting about the festival, while Pinkie Pie, is using the balloon animal of Discord, Fluttershy is seen looking at the bird when the flying balloon animal scaring them away, Applejack is seen carrying a wagon with Applejuce and Rainbow Dash drinks it, and Rarity is making decorations of it, though Rainbow Dash quickly decorated up altogether, it was poorly done. Twilight and Spike came back to see the Mane Five, and they together sang the song "We Got This Together!" by decorating the whole festival perfectly as Songbird Serenade arrives to prepare for the biggest festival of all.

Unfortunately, it all interrupted when a huge darkest fleet of evil Airships that contains evil creatures arrives at Canterlot, fearing a lot of ponies, especially the fillies in worries, and the airships landed on the ground, they encounter Grubber, that he announced that he reveals that The Storm King is here to invade the entire land of Equestria, especially Canterlot, and it also encounters a female villain named Tempest Shadow and askes to have a total surrender to all of Equestria, and then threatening to take everything from them, or make if difficult. Suddenly a group of Storm Guards lands into Canterlot and Tempest petrified Princess Cadence, before Celestia gets petrified, she tells Luna to get to the Hippos or the badlands, but both of them gets petrified, and Tempest laughs evilly and Twilight Sparkle was about to be the last one to be petrified, however, Rainbow Dash saved her, but Derpy Hooves was petered, anger Tempest and destroys Twilight's crown. The Mane Six including Spike attempts to run away from Cantrell, but the King's army blocks them, destroying the stone bridge, and falls into the cliff, but they survived the fall. Twilight informs that Celestial tells Luna to find the Hippos and they on their way south to find the Hippos. Meanwhile, the population of Canterlot are now slaves, with no fun, the Friendship Festival, nor the party, and some of the ponies were locked up in a cage. Inside, Tempest talks to The Storm King about their conversation about a hundred of armies, and they must find their way to capture Twilight.

We cut to the Mane Six, who are find themselves in a nearly empty desert, but they discover a city nearby, and they about to take anything from them, until a cat named Capper, and they sing a song about a friend in need. After a little while tempest arrives and found Twilight, but they managed to escape. Inside, the Mane Six are caught by the eagles, and threaten to title them up, until they changed to lunch time instead and the eagles revealed they didn't like working with The Storm King, and Rainbow Dash sings about being pirates instead of being part of the Storm Kings and it was time to be awesome......Until Tempest and the Storm King caught them The Mane Six escape before they attacked the entire ship. They managed to create a hot air balloon. They entered a creepy town and they founded a lake to a cave, discovered a Waterland of Seaquestria, and The Mane Six meets Queen Novo, and they turn themselves into Seaponies, and they sing a song about little things to do without Twilight, but Twilight attempts to steal Novo's pearl, and they force to be kicked out from Seaquestria, and The Mane Five were mad at Twilight for taking their stuff, and Twilight gets furious at Pinkie Pie, feeling down and the Mane five they were done for their quest to stop The Storm King, leading their quest into a total fiasco. Twilight feels deeply upset, and she feels like that she failed and ruined everything, suddenly Tempest caught and she takes her away. Tempest sings about opening your eyes, and she has a backstory about her lost horn and became evil as they went back to Equestria.

Back at the Mane Five, they were aimless, and depressed, until Spike comes back and tells them that Twilight is captured by Tempest, thankfully, Capper has his own heroes and they set off back to Canterlot to rescue Twilight. Meanwhile at occupied Canterlot as the Storm King meets her, and Twilight suddenly became very powerless thanks to The Storm Kings's evil powers, and he laughs very insane and now Twilight became even weaker than ever, and he plays around the moon and the sun with his staff, until the Mane Fix and his heroes arrive and attacks most of his enemies, And they arrives at the festival, but The Storm King creates a massive cyclone, causing his armies to blew away, and he suddenly betrays Tempest by not having her new horn at all, and she nearly flew off until Twilight saves her just before The Storm King petrified both, however, The Mane Five flies into The Storm King, and they're sorry for hurting their feelings about their quests supposed failure. Suddenly The Storm King's breaks Canterlots big hallway, though the Mane Six attempts to take the King's Staff, but both Twilight and The Storm King sucked out into the cyclone, and they thought they lost their friend forever, until they see Twilight floats back down with the staff in her possession, and they faced her a hug, and they thought it was soon over, but The Storm King suddenly climbs up to another orb to turn Twilight and her friends to stone, until Tempest jumps into him, jumps in the way, and the orb turns herself and the Storm, King, to obsidian. Twilight keeps Tempest from falling off the balcony, leaving The Storm King falls down and shatters into pieces, but Tempest was saved by The Mane Six with his Staff and they unpetrified Tempest, Princess Cadence and Celestial, and Luna, and they fixed everything they damaged Canterlot.

The invasion is finally over, and the Friendship Festival has begun, with Songbird sings her beautiful song "I Can See The Rainbow". Twilight and Tempest had a nice talk with each other, and she makes toms of fireworks around Canterlot. And Tempest reveals to Pinkie Pie, that her real name is FizzlePop. As a result, Pinkie Pie is happy about her name to reveal how awesome can be.

In the credits, The ponies and The Storm Guards were having a fun time, while The Storm King has seemed alive, despite his served stones.

Why It Paints Rainbows

 * 1) Very stunning animation, which is a huge step-up from the series and was made with Toon Boom Harmony instead of Adobe Flash like in the television series and " Equestria Girls" movies. The movie feels as if the movie was made by Walt Disney Motion Pictures, or Warner Bros. Pictures from the last few decades, before this film.
 * 2) * It was also great to revive traditional-animation movies as it was overshadowed by computer animation and never used for many years.
 * 3) Amazing voice acting, due to not only having all the cast from the show reprise their roles, but also new actors like Liev Schreiber (who would later play Wilson Fisk/Kingpin in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse) and Micheal Pena (who was also the actor for Luis, the character from the Ant-Man movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.)
 * 4) Many likable and entertaining characters, including Applejack, Fluttershy, Skystar, Spike and a whole bunch of others.
 * 5) It introduces new characters that are interesting and haven't been seen before in the show and the IDW comics, and had later appeared in Season 8 (the latter being mentioned in the show and later appearing in IDW Issue 67-68 and in the Season 9 finale).
 * 6) *Hippogriffs, who are a race of bird-like ponies that can turn into mermaid like underwater creatures called sea ponies.
 * 7) *Tempest Shadow, a unicorn (who had her horn broken as a filly) who had starts out evil, but, after getting betrayed by The Storm King, then sides with the Mane 6 after realising the true meaning of friendship.
 * 8) It does very well to follow the TV series directly as it's from the same people who made Friendship is Magic.
 * 9) Great, heartwarming or tear-jerking moments such as Tempest losing her horn as a filly.
 * 10) The musical numbers are very good, especially "We Got This Together" and "Time to Be Awesome".
 * 11) Funny scenes, like a hilarious scene with Fluttershy during the climax. Spike and Rainbow Dash have some of the most entertaining scenes in the film.
 * 12) The score of Daniel Ingram is really good in this film, and the theme song "Rainbow" by Sia is also pretty good too.
 * 13) It has better storytelling than in other Hasbro films like G.I Joe or even in any Transformers film (mainly the Michael Bay ones).
 * 14) The climax is sort of creative and fun with the help of the Mane 6, Spike and the new characters.
 * 15) It comes with a cute short of Hasbro Studios' (now eOne) web series, "Hanazuki: Full of Treasures", which was unfortunately put on hiatus after 2018 and leaving the show's second season unfinished, and sparking an ongoing petition to revive the series, which garnered 2,561 signatures as of February 7, 2022.
 * 16) The world of Seaquestria is amazing and has cute Sea Ponies, something that the show didn't do until Season 8.
 * 17) This film surprisingly has a pretty dark tone for My Little Pony standards, due to the PG rating.
 * 18) *Part of this includes that the fact that they actually kill the Storm King, especially when you consider how extremely reluctant writers and parents are these days about showing death or any other comeuppance.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The Mane Six's portrayal in this film, like all of their character development, was sucked out as they seem to be more aligned with their portrayal of season 1 in Friendship is Magic. It causes a few of them to act out of character in a few scenes that go against how they've been built up as characters for seven whole seasons.
 * 2) * The scenes where Twilight gets her friends to distract the sea ponies so she can steal the sea ponies pearl, gets enraged at her friends while telling Pinkie Pie that she'd be better off without having her as a friend is the main highlight of this.
 * 3) There are some things in the film that don't follow the TV series. Like Canterlot's description as it's portrayed as some stereotypical happy pony paradise instead of a city that had well descriptive socioeconomics, and it featured a lot of upper-class cultures.
 * 4) Despite the very stunning animation, there is some poor CGI in places, especially for Captain Celaeno's ship.
 * 5) The Storm King gets little screen-time despite being the "Big Bad," and he only appears in conversation with Tempest and at the climax. However, he was one of the biggest threats to Equestria, even putting the majority of the pony kind into slavery.
 * 6) Some of the characters like Grubber, Tempest's sidekick, and Songbird Serenade (Sia) are pointless.
 * 7) The story does suffer from being cliché and predictable, unlike the show itself.
 * 8) Some of the characters do lack chemistry, such as the Storm King himself.
 * 9) Some of the main and supporting characters in the show don't appear in the film:
 * 10) *Starlight Glimmer and Trixie Lunamoon only get a couple of appearances: A scene of them together during the "We Got This Together" song number, and the end credits.
 * 11) *Discord only makes two cameos via a balloon animal Pinkie Pie makes and the end of the credits.
 * 12) *Other characters including Princess/Dragon Lord Ember, King Thorax, Shining Armor, and the Pillars of Equestria don't make an appearance as well.

Box office
As of December 3, 2017, "My Little Pony: The Movie" has grossed $21.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $30.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $52.3 million.

Critical response
Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film received positive reviews from audiences, particularly from My Little Pony fans, because they were promised a feature film that would make it more entertaining for the fans of FIM. And as of October 2020, it holds a 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus states "Charming and sweet, "My Little Pony: The Movie" will please its dedicated fanbase, even if it's unlikely to encourage non-devotees to gallop along for the ride." The film has an IMDb rating of 6/10.

Trivia

 * The movie makes references to Hasbro properties like a sound effect from "Transformers" and characters saying Easy Bake Oven and Hungry Hungry Hippos.
 * After the film released, the show was overhauled in Season 8, with additions such as the updated Celestia and Luna throne, the addition of locations such as Mount Aris, and names being mentioned like Tempest and The Storm King.