Equestria Girls: Legend of Everfree Review

Short Version: Not the best summer camp themed animated misadventure to come out in 2016. (In case you’re curious, this is number 1).

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Long Version:

I haven’t been in the best of terms with the Equestria Girls series for a while. I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I argue that things started very strong with the first one, a fun little adventure that knew exactly what it needed to do and executed it as best as it could, only for the series to decline with its sequels. I suppose Rainbow Rocks is technically superior in some respects, but I ultimately disfavor it due to an almost relentlessly harsh tone that sucks nearly any sense of fun and optimism once things start to go bad. I regard it as an example of how a villain who’s way too good at what they do can be just as detrimental as any hyper-competent hero. Then there was Friendship Games, which felt like it was spinning way too many plates only to fumble most of them in favor of an origin story for Sci-Twi, which largely feels like it’s running down the clock until we can get to the interesting bits. It presented several unexpected plot developments that, after watching Legend of Everfree, feel like they aren’t just there to be self-contained to a single movie, but rather to mark a new direction for the entire series, and honestly, I think the series is still going through those serious growing pains. Even if that weren’t case, I feel like it’s more evident than ever that if this series has problems, they go beyond the surface.

Let’s break it down, shall we? Canterlot High is putting together a week long camping trip to Camp Everfree. Unfortunately, shortly after arriving, they learn that the camp is in danger of shutting down. Things get more complicated once the presence of magic begins to be felt at camp. It manifests itself in some cool ways, such as giving the Mane 7 superpowers, but also some destructive events that put the students in danger. Twilight Sparkle (AKA Sci-Twi) is convinced she is responsible for this after having a seemingly prophetic nightmare where Midnight Sparkle, her evil alter ego from the previous movie, announces that she’s still within her and it’s only a matter of time before she returns. While the other girls keep themselves busy with camp activities and getting a hang of their newfound abilities, Sunset Shimmer sets out to sort out what really is going on and help Twilight come to terms with the magic inside her, all of which comes clashing with a mystery involving camp counselors Gloriosa Daisy and Timber Spruce, as well as the local legend of Gaea Everfree, the magical protector of the forest.

Let me start by bringing up one of two major realizations that came to me while watching this movie. I’m not sure how common this was for other people, but I was genuinely surprised to realize that Sci-Twi wasn’t gonna be just another character in Friendship Games, but THE protagonist of that movie. I assumed that once the series got her introduction out of the way and settled her into the main group, we would have a status quo reminiscent of what we have with the ponies back in Equestria. However, it’s clearer than ever that Sci-Twi is inherently a very different character to Princess Twilight, and I don’t think that’s as good as it sounds. As I was watching the movie unfold, once again putting a lot of emphasis on Sci-Twi, I came to an uncanny realization: Given how little we’ve gotten to see or hear of Princess Twilight since Rainbow Rocks, Sci-Twi is here not just to be another Twilight-esque character, she’s here to take over as the series protagonist, pretty much replacing Princess Twilight entirely (at least for now).  It’s gotten to the point where the only time she seems to come up this time around is in a subplot involving Flash Sentry (more on him later).  

I understand the need of letting this series stand on its own and not using Friendship is Magic as a crutch, but this move feels very reductive to the series’ scope, and it takes away a good chunk of what made it appealing to me in the first place. What used to be a series about the bridging of two worlds, one normal and one of magic, now feels like a series where the magic world only brings damage to the normal world and it’s up to the girls to fix said damage. At least, that’s how it’s felt for the last two movies.  What makes it more egregious is how Rainbow Rocks ended with Princess Twilight proclaiming she can now visit CHS at any time, as she can control the opening of the portal, but so far the series has no intention on following up on this. It’s like the series was worried about how they wouldn’t be able to come up with a good enough excuse to bring her back, so they introduced Sci-Twi to fill in for her. She feels like the answer to a problem that didn’t exist until she brought it up, and so far, we don’t have a valid reason for why they both can’t be featured together in a story.

Now, all of this would be easy to ignore if it weren’t for one thing:
OK, this is gonna upset a lot of hypothetical readers, so don’t say I didn’t warn you (AHEM)….
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Sci-Twi kinda sucks.

She’s not bad, but if she were a supporting character, or used to show off the duality between her and Princess Twilight, I would be fine with her, but she really has no business being the lead of a series that’s primarily about idealism and the strength of moral values.  This suits Princess Twilight very well: she’s proactive, commanding, good at directing others, good at solving problems, someone to rally around, a good leader all-in-all. You could largely say the same thing about post-Rainbow Rocks Sunset. But Sci-Twi? She’s a mopey, self-pitying sad-sack who immediately blames herself for everything that goes wrong at camp without having any kind of proof, has little to no autonomy in her actions that don’t involve running away from her problems, constantly needs to be “picked up” by other characters, and is generally her own worst enemy. THIS is the character they want us to see as the face of this series going forward, let alone stand in for Princess Twilight? Yeah, no thanks.

This wouldn’t be a problem if it were easy to sympathize with her, but given that her big problem in this movie feels like it would’ve been resolved if she just trusted her friends enough and asked for help, I just can’t do that. After all, they stopped Midnight before, and they could surely do it again, especially now that they would anticipate her. This kind of thing could be excused if it were in a 22 minute episode of Friendship is Magic, but not in a feature length film. I get that Sci-Twi is new to friendship and doesn’t wanna lose it and hurt her friends, but good lord, not even Fluttershy is this self-defeating about her issues. At least she acknowledges when something is wrong and generally does her best to confront it. Oh yeah, and after all the hype for Midnight’s return…yeah, turns out it was actually pretty easy to keep her under control, to the point of being anti-climactic. What felt like should’ve been this big cathartic moment of release ends up just being exasperating because Sci-Twi FINALLY caved in and got help. I feel like the writers must’ve realized how much of a bummer her M.O. feels like, so they attempt to inject some frivolity by introducing Timber Spruce as a love interest for her to give her a couple of moments of brief contentment. It’s just as artificial and clunky as I’m making it sound: Twilight is sad, Timber shows up, she feels better for a bit, goes back to feeling sad about herself when he’s not around, rinse and repeat. This wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t have any kind of issues with Timber, but this paragraph is long enough already, so I’ll save him for later.

One of my most recurring criticisms of the series since Rainbow Rocks has been the downturn that the role of main characters not named Twilight or Sunset has taken. In the first film, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie felt like a vital component in Princess Twilight's quest. Without them, she never would've gotten the general population of CHS on her side. In Rocks, they were mostly there to make what was a complicated enough situation even more stressful. In Games, for the most part, their biggest contribution to the story was serving as magic fuel for both Sci-Twi and Sunset, to the point where they could've been replaced with some kind of maguffin collection. Other than that, they've been showing up in these films to do exactly what you'd expect each of them to do. Applejack will do and say Applejack things, Rarity will do and say Rarity things, so on and so forth. They're still entertaining here, but when that's the bulk of what they've been doing for 4 movies now, it's starting to get seriously repetitive, especially when you can get the same basic thing from them with almost any FIM episode. I understand how characters like Sunset and Sci-Twi are exclusive to this series, so they should get to be in the spotlight more often, but that doesn't mean the other girls need to stay in the same relative position they've been in since 2013. On the plus side, their superpowers are fun, and their usefulness doesn’t get relegated to the final boss fight, which IS an improvement from before. Still, I can't help but feel that this is about as good as it gets for them in this series.

Gloriosa and Timber are featured as part of a mystery regarding the supernatural occurrences at camp. The former is presented as peppy and gleeful, which turns into high-strung annoyance when it starts to feel like things are gonna go south for the camp. On the other hand, her brother is presented as this "cool" and "charismatic" guy who alternates between opposing her sister's decisions and being a red herring, especially when he starts to put his moves on Twilight. However, by the time we get to the climax, we find out that the guy who seems too good to be for real actually IS for real, and the character with every possible reason to fly off the handle and do something crazy ends up doing exactly that. It's nowhere near as shocking as the movie thinks it is. I'm usually not one to talk about the movie I'd rather see instead of the one I got, but this would've been a much more effective twist if the roles here were reversed, if Gloriosa's indignation really came down to her frustration in the face of losing the camp while things keep going wrong around her without having to resort to magic, and if it was Timber who wants to unleash it. In the end, Gloriosa ends up being a so-so villain, though I will give credit to the series for introducing an antagonist who isn't really evil, but instead has been led astray by her own good intentions…

...which brings us back to Timber.

Now, let me make something perfectly clear before I say anything else: Timber does not deserved to be condemned or maligned just because he's a love interest for Sci-Twi.

No, Timber deserves to be condemned or maligned because of his own awful merits.

Despite getting a shocking amount of screen time, his role as plot mechanics barely works, and when it isn’t, it’s grossly unappealing. If the story kept him focused on his relationship to Gloriosa, and how he's supposed to be looking out for her, he probably would've been fine. But, they also decided to make him a love interest for Sci-Twi and this is where he falls apart. Given his primary function as comfort for Sci-Twi, I would call him the character equivalent of a safety blanket, but at least safety blankets are supposed to be pleasant. At several points in the film, he comes across as someone who thinks he's the coolest guy around, but isn’t as interesting as what he thinks and hasn't really done anything to back that up (I can think of at least two different words to call people like that). Some of his dialogue is so agonizing, it makes me wanna slap him in the mouth. Repeatedly. Pro-tip: People who actually ARE cool and charming don't have to verbally remind other people of that. And if they do, they know how to back it up with actions. (Why do you think Rainbow Dash constantly gets away with bragging about how awesome she is?).

The worst part of all, though, is that Twilight and the others girls actually fall for this, and believe him to truly be “a great guy”, even though he’s done nothing to earn that and a lot of what he does in this movie come across as extremely tone deaf. He knows his sister is messing with power she can't comprehend and could potentially put a lot of people in danger? Instead of actually helping her or protecting the CHS students, he creates the legend of Gaea Everfree to cover for her (What sense does that even make?!). Also, he thinks that this very critical situation is the perfect time for him, as a camp counselor, to hook up with a girl he barely knows, who happens to be a client of his. Somehow, the movie doesn’t think this is creepy at all. Also, when his sister at one point actually gets to go on a rampage, something he should’ve stopped from happening, putting everyone's life in real danger, and is ultimately brought down because Sci-Twi came to terms with her emotional baggage and turned it into power she could use against her? He casually jokes to Sci-Twi about how he's technically the hero because of that one time he helped her, which allowed her to help everyone else.

Seriously. It’s astounding how much he sucks.

I don't think there's ever been this much of a disconnect between what the series wants us to think of a character and what the character actually is. Say what you will about Flash and Princess Twilight, but at least Flash never came across like he was full of himself. Or that he was pretentious. Or downright idiotic. Even worse is that the movie actually believes that things are gonna get serious between him and Sci-Twi, even though he's still one of the only two people who seem to run Camp Everfree, and according to him, has grown up in the woods most of his life. So unless they have the girls return to the camp in whatever the next installment will be, it’s very questionable if we'll ever even see him again, especially given the series' track record for not bringing back new characters since Rainbow Rocks. He'll probably get a cameo at best, though if that were to happen, you KNOW that the makers of these movies will never hear the end of it from Dazzlings/Shadowbolts fans.

As far as characters being on point in this movie go, Sunset is definitely the best one. I'm that one fan who's always liked her, even when she was a villain, but feels sorry for her, mostly due to a feeling of how she's never had her proper due in this series. I know it's weird for me to say that given what a huge fan-favorite she's become, but hear me out. In Rainbow Rocks, she was the character with the most to prove, but felt like a guest star in her own story. She sorted out a lot of issues there, but her role had the unforeseen side-effect of being a very passive one, consisting mostly of standing in the sidelines while her friends did the heavy-lifting up to the very end where she truly gets to shine. I feel like something similar happened in Friendship Games, where she was given the barest possible semblance of an arc that gets overshadowed by Sci-Twi's story, never really gelling together until the last several minutes of the movie. It feels like ever since Rocks, she had emerged fully-formed and more than capable to take over as the series' lead role, but the omnipresence of Twilight (especially Sci-Twi) never allowed that. By this point, it feels like that just isn't going to be, so they're just gonna let her make the best of it, which is a shame, because this is probably the best she’s ever felt in her post-reform state.

She's a lot better at being a source of relief for Twilight, is very proactive in the role of making her come to terms with who she is now (even if she's held back by the plot's insistence of dragging out Twilight's pity party), as well as motivating others into embracing their powers in a standout musical sequence. Best of all, through her newfound mind-reading powers, which seem specifically designed for understanding people’s emotions, we get the best possible image yet of what makes Sunset so essential to the series. Her path of redemption has made her a deeply empathetic person, one who seeks to use her experience to help others and connect with them, so that they don't fall into the depths from which she once came. She's truly the heart of this series right now and I love her for it.

Her presence in this movie includes a couple of short bonding moments with Flash, which I was surprised at the number of levels at which they work. Not only do we finally get some sort of small insight into the relationship they used to have (a detail about both their backstories that feels oddly overlooked), not only do they feel like a logical continuation of Sunset's redemption story, they're also the strongest insight yet into how Sunset can be a force for good outside of her main circle of friends (Remember how Rainbow Rocks made such a huge deal about how everyone still hated Sunset and then by the end when she's proven herself all we get to see are two very short clips of her getting along with other students during the credits?)

As for Flash...well, it's complicated. On the one hand, this movie presents what may be the most downer presence he's had so far. On the other hand...it just might be the best thing they've done with him. Yes, I can hold these two very opposing opinions as equally valid. That’s how messed up things are right now.

First of all, it's disappointing how this movie more or less closes the door for him to start any kind of thing with Twilight (either of them), and no, it's not because of shipping or some fanboy thing like that. I understand why it would be unfair (and kinda creepy) for him to expect the same from Sci-Twi as he did from Princess Twilight given how they're very different people, but he doesn't even get a chance to try to see if they could actually make things work. While I'm grateful the movie doesn't go for some love triangle thing with them and Timber (who given how little he accomplishes, probably didn’t even need to be in the film to begin with), it's still very unsatisfying. Also unsatisfying? His chances with Princess Twilight are pretty much shot down on the spot by both him and Sunset without even so much as bothering to question whether she would think the same. While the possibility of her agreeing with them was real, at the very least we should've heard it from her. So yeah, that's three years of fan flame wars right down the drain. All this talk about whether or not it's worthwhile for him and Twilight to hook up has been pretty much for nothing, with three movies (and change) teasing something that was never going to happen to begin with. It's sad how this gives off the impression that there never really was a plan for Flash at this point, especially since it's more evident than ever that there does seem to be a story going on with him, even if it’s by pure accident or if all of it seems to be happening off-screen. Sure, a story about a guy sorting out his romantic hang-ups in a "coming of age" sort of way isn't the most original story ever, but at least it's SOMETHING, far more credit than some of his most vocal detractors would otherwise say…

…and then something funny happened. Remember when I said that these scenes feel like a part of Sunset's redemption story? Well, patching up a relationship that went bad while she was still evil is certainly a way to keep that going. At first, this feels like it’s only there as an attempt for the movie to soothe Flash's disappointment over his failed prospects with Twilight, but you know what? It works. I was digging the chemistry between the two, how Sunset believes she can trust Flash with her problem, and the short glimpse it gives us into how things used to be between them, opening a window to make things better between them. Regardless of the outcome, Sunset really does seem to have good intentions at heart, and believes that letting go of Twilight will do more good for Flash in the long run. And while we don't get to hear it from her directly, it's implied that she would be just as open to starting over with Flash as he is with her. (At the very least, she seems touched by his kind words). In the end, it's a genuinely sweet interaction that did more for me than the movie's copious amount of Timber and Twilight together and I REALLY hope future installments build on this. (Seriously, this guy needs to catch a break two years ago).  I mean, at this point I expect Flash to still be around,: the boy is certainly resilient, but at least it's nice that he still has some sort of reason to carry on in the series, and what we have here may be the biggest effort it has done towards making Flash a more integral part of it, capable of connecting with other characters on a deeper level. If weaving him into a key aspect of Sunset's development is the way to go for that, I’ll take it. I liked these moments so much, I was almost not feeling like flipping a table when Flash gets the same kind of hasty, oddly harsh dismissal from Sunset that he got from Sci-Twi in Friendship Games, leaving him very confused and dejected. The operative word here is "almost".

You may have noticed this, but I keep bringing up how a lot of what happens in these movies feels like it's happened before. Well, this is the second realization I came to that I mentioned earlier: this movie feels highly derivative of its predecessors. All four movies follow the same broad structure: CHS puts together some kind of big event that is threatened to be ruined by a development involving magic, and it's up to the girls to save the day, which will probably include a boss fight against some kind of monster whacked out on magic, where the Magic of Friendship (TM) will always prevail. What’s good is still good, but you can REALLY feel how samey things have gotten by now, how every movie seems to do the same thing while tweaking the formula just enough so that they don’t get to be called rehashes of each other. It’s like the movie’s script comes with a checklist of recurring plot points. Taking just a cursory glance at Friendship Is Magic, it’s easy to see how this series has found a far broader range of scenarios and stories to tell, even just counting the season premieres/finales. While most of these stories focus on Twilight to some degree, they all stand as their own unique story with their own particular set of circumstances. How is it that a TV show that produces over 20 episodes for the majority of its 6 seasons so far can pull that off, yet these 70 minute yearly films keep coming back to the same kind of ideas for each of them?


Despite this, Legend of Everfree manages to get by. The change of location is refreshing and the movie gets plenty of mileage out of it, and does bring some vitality to what’s now its standard formula. While a main character that doesn’t really work, a villain that’s not all that great, and a main conflict that feels dragged out for far longer than it needs to be are issues that no film can just shake off, I can’t say that I had a bad time, at least not all the way through. What’s good is good, though it’s interesting how those elements are the things that have been around the series for the longest, so I guess I can’t be all that ungrateful when I say it feels like previous installments. I don't know for however long they plan to keep this going, but the Equestria Girls series could really use a bit of an overhaul; something to shake things up before things get too stale. While the final tease as for what the next installment will be about is pretty ambiguous, it does make me hopeful for something like that.