My Little Pony: Origins Review

You've seen the original My Little Pony/ Rescue at Midnight Castle special in the previous post. Now here's my review. Big spoilers.
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Pegasus Firefly, unicorn Twilight, and earth pony Applejack are playing with their friends outside when all of a sudden (literally in the first two or three minutes) all hell breaks loose. Scorpan, a bat-winged hairy guy, is riding a dragon and leading a group of other dragons and he captures one of the ponies. Back at the Midnight Castle his boss, Tirac, a giant centaur, is really pissed off that he didn't manage to get the necessary four ponies he asked for to complete his evil plan.

Firefly flies up into the sky to get help and apparently ends up at Earth where she crashes into a well. A girl named Megan, who has a normal non-talking pony, pulls her out. Megan is not the least bit surprised that the creature she pulled out of the well is a brash and impulsive pegasus who can talk. I think if that happened to just about anyone else one would be filled with shock and disbelief, but, apparently, Megan finds this completely normal. Firefly tells her that she is the only hope the ponies have of survival and Megan agrees to fly with her back to the horse world (I don't think they named it at this point).

Scorpan is back, catches three more ponies, and Megan, but Firefly knocks her out of the dragon's claws. She falls to the ground and Scorpan of all people (or beast men) saves her life, catching her, bringing her gently to the ground, and warning her that she should get to safety. And then she gets pissed at him after he just saved her from splatting on the ground!

They go off to the rescue their friends at the castle, crossing the most broken down bridge in the history of bridges (just who made it? Who made the castle the ponies live in anyway? They don't seem capable of doing humanoid activities like construction work.). Applejack falls into a river, Megan dives in after her, and they get trapped inside a giant clam.

Then come the sea ponies. And they sing. For no reason whatsoever. They push the pair up to the surface of the water.

Back at the Midnight Castle Tirac is pissed at Scorpan because one of the ponies, Ember, is too young. He threatens the life of Spike, Scorpan's baby dragon friend/pet? and then opens a bag that beats like the tell tale heart and magic dust turns the three ponies into horrible tusked monsters.

They find a gnome named Mr. Moochick who tells them all that Tirac needs the four ponies to bring about endless night. How he knows this is not explained. In fact, nothing is explained really. But he does sing. There's a lot of singing. The only thing that can stop Tirac is a rainbow of light. And his Bugs Bunny like friend had it hiding in his trousers the whole time.

The sea ponies ferry the group (which includes a blue pony I'm not sure they named) across yet another river so they can sneek into the Midnight Castle. Those things are so annoying.

Scorpan turns out to really be a good guy, or at least not evil enough to want to destroy the world, so he busts Spike and Ember out of prison and tries to save the other ponies from Tirac and his goons. He's not quick enough. Applejack becomes the fourth pony to be turned into a monster and Tirac leaves to bring about forever night. Scorpan nearly dies trying to stop him, and we find out that blue pony's name is Bow Tie, even though there is absolutley no way Spike could have known.

The rainbow blows Tirac to smithereens, turns the ponies back to normal, turns Tirac's goons into animals, and Scorpan turns back into the prince who rules the land that Tirac had conquered. In the closing credits Firefly brings Megan back to Earth.

One of my biggest complaints with the new series is something I call Rushed Ending Syndrome, where the setup is really good, everything flows nicely to the climax, and then an ending is shoehorned into two or three minutes when it could have taken ten to properly explain everything. Well, Rescue at Midnight Castle suffers from what I guess you could call Rushed Everything Syndrome. Nothing is explained at all. The whole first sea pony scene is forced in just to introduce the sea ponies so they make sense the second time they appear, but that sequence could have been cut and replaced with something that actually explains more of the story.

Where did Tirac come from? Why did he want to destroy the world? Why did he need four ponies to complete his evil plan? How did the gnome guy get the rainbow in the first place? How did he know anything at all about Tirac's evil plan? How did Firefly know how to get to Earth, and how did she know one little girl would be able to save everyone? How did any of this make sense?

This short film could have been three or four times longer. It would have greatly benefitted from a full 80 minute cinematic treatment. Unfortunately, it's far too short to explain anything that happened. I felt I had watched the highly abridged version.

The similarities between this and the first two episodes of Friendship is Magic are astonishing. They tell the same story in slightly different ways. That's cool.

The animation is good, the voices are good, there was huge potential to make this into something amazing if it was longer than 22 minutes, but rushing through absolutely everything and not giving one single bit of explanation for anything that happened is going to cost this some serious points.

73/100