The basic plot of the first movie is that Sunset Shimmer, one of Princess Celestia’s former students, steals Twilight Sparkle’s crown and takes it through a portal into the alternate human world. Here, there are copies of all the ponies from Equestria, but they take human forms and go to high school and use cell phones and social media. Twilight’s crown is somehow identical to the one that is normally awarded to the "Princess" of the Fall Formal Dance at Canterlot High. So a dutiful Fluttershy ends up finding it and returning it to its rightful place in this alternate world’s school. Twilight has to get her crown back, but apparently is above petty theft. Instead, she rallies her alternate world friends together and wins the crown back on her own by becoming Princess of the Fall Formal. Although Apple Jack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity keep most of their personality traits, it’s not the same for the princesses of Equestria. No, a Frumpy Celestia and Luna who look like they shop at the most mismatched thrift store ever are what we get here. Little of their personality makes it across in this movie, and they seem like burned out and grumpy adults. Moving on, the movie culminates in a battle between Sunset Shimmer, who manages to steal the crown back anyway, and Twilight Sparkle and her friends. There’s a little bit of "ugh" here too for me, as Sunset Shimmer’s corrupted demon form was more like a goofy bat with an overbite, although she did get a few cool magical moves. In the end, the girls summon the magic of their individual elements (the magic of friendship), and transform into, well, sort of ponies. Everyone gets ears and a longer hair that looks like a "tail," the pegasus girls get wings, but the unicorns don’t get horns, so shrug there. The final move ends up being the girls floating into a heart shape, which kind of killed it for me too. I mean rainbows I can accept as badass, but somehow the cheerleader heart shape was just too saccharine sweet. Still, the movie overall has some funny scenes, some good resolutions to the girls’ problems, and the acting is pretty good too.
Rainbow Rocks inexplicably puts the girls in a rock band as part of the school’s musical program. (Seriously, that was never even hinted at in the first movie). The girls discover that even though Twilight left through the portal and took her magic element with her, they still seem to be able to access the magic when they play music. At the same time, a trio of evil songstresses (Adagio Dazzle, Sonata Dusk, and Aria Blaze) gets a whiff of their Equestrian Magic" and decides to track them down and steal it for themselves. It’s strangely the only movie where the girls get rainbow streaks, but eh, when you’re in a rock band, I guess your super powers match. Twilight gets summoned back to the human world and discovers that the evil songstresses turn out to be sirens, monsters once banished from Equestria. Sunset Shimmer struggles with feeling useless as she tries to atone for her ways in the last movie. In the end, she deals the final blow against the sirens and helps save the day. Again, it’s that magic of friendship that proves to be the ultimate weapon, and Sunset Shimmer finally realizes she has it. It’s a decent movie - certainly way more colorful than the first movie. And it’s certainly the only one with a legitimate reason for everyone to sing their each and every thought. But let’s talk about who really saved the day. In a magical battle of the bands, who’s the pony you call when you need a kick ass sound system and a makeshift stage? That’s right, if it weren’t for DJ Pon-3, the world would be destroyed!
The final movie, Friendship Games (no relation to the Soviet Union’s Friendship Games of 1984), is the only one where pony Twilight never crosses over into the human world (except when the movie has ended). Instead, we finally see her human counterpart in a competing school called Crystal Prep Academy. Human Twilight has grown curious about the strange energy coming from Canterlot High, and builds a magic detecting device to find out more. Twilight then finds herself in the middle of the Friendship Games, a competitive set of events that are held by Canterlot High and Crystal Prep. She realizes too late that she has built not a magic detector, but a magic absorber. As the games get underway, Twilight manages to absorb the magic of the entire group including Sunset Shimmer, Apple Jack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Fluttershy. At the final moment of the games, Twilight is tempted into unleashing the magic she has absorbed. Even this alternate Twilight can only get so evil, and her main motivation for going power hungry is to "learn more" about this magic. She’s transformed into a demonic version of herself with black wings and a horn. She’s bested by Sunset Shimmer, who finally learns to wield the magic of friendship and transforms herself into not a demon, but a kind of angelic, horned as well, super-powered Sunset Shimmer.
There are a lot of really hilarious moments in all the movies, but it really gets good from the second movie on. There’s a running gag in Rainbow Rocks where each girl manages to make a reference to Sunset Shimmer’s demonic form right in front of her, ending with "No offense." There’s also a sleepover at Pinkie Pie’s house, and it’s actually Pinkie’s sister who manages to be the funniest one there. She gets up in the middle of the night, pours some cereal over a rock, and says in a total deadpan voice, "Boulder was hungry." As an incredulous Twilight and Sunset look on, she exits without another word.
Friendship Games ends up having the most points for cool moments, in my opinion. Finally, we have some cool horns on Twilight and Sunset’s powered-up form. And finally they look badass, instead of merely goofy like demon Sunset and her fanged overbite in the first movie. And there’s more personality from Luna and Celestia, at least, although they still look as frumpy as ever. Princess Cadence manages to make the best human so far, with her features blending nicely with her preppy suit. There are also enough new characters in this final movie to make almost every moment interesting (though they could have had more distinct personalities instead of being uniformly nasty and mean). Also, these are schools with not only an academic competition, but archery, motocross, and speed skating events. How cool is that?
Honestly, this is a pretty entertaining set of movies. There may be problems here and there, and some artistic decisions I don’t agree with (all the colors of the rainbow available for skin color, but most of the ponies end up being some shade of light beige?), but they are still pretty colorful and fun. And Sunset Shimmer, a character created for the movies, shows a lot of growth over the course of the movies. The extra features round things out nicely with audio commentaries, deleted scenes, animated shorts and sing-alongs, and making of features. The alternate ending and alternate hallway scenes included in Friendship Games is especially interesting as it shows a little more about Sunset’s motivations. The animated shorts are also pretty entertaining, exploring some of the background characters like Photo Finish and her photography hobby, and Lyra and Bon Bon’s friendship/rivalry. You might have to let go of a bit of what you enjoy about MLP to fully enjoy it, but these movies give back enough to make it worth it.
