To find out, I took my four-year-old daughter to watch today’s other big new release, My Little Pony: The Movie. What follows is our conversation about the movie over a couple bowls of cereal.
Spoiler warning: Turns out children don’t understand the concept of spoilers, so tread cautiously if you don’t want to hear one key (though totally obvious if you’ve seen a trailer or have even the faintest familiarity with the world of Equestria) plot point from the final bit of the movie.
What was your favorite part of My Little Pony: The Movie?
Well... all of it.
Fair. Not sure what else I could have expected. Who was your favorite character?
All of the ponies. Oh! Except for Tempest… Except for Tempest. I only like the nice ponies. Tempest is a bad guy. She wants to take the good ponies' magic, but then she gets friendly by Twilight [as in Twilight Sparkle, the series' purple protagonist a.k.a. the Princess of Friendship] and Twilight teaches her a lesson.
Wow. Spoilers, kiddo.
What?
Never mind. So, Tempest Shadow is a new pony voiced by Emily Blunt. She’s cynical on the whole “friendship is magic” bit, which is basically the 24/7 focus for the Mane Six, the six key ponies of MLP. This, and the fact that she wants to steal the pony princesses’ powers for her own evil purposes, puts them at odds. The bulk of the story is Tempest pursuing Twilight and her friends, which results in some tense close calls. Did you think it was scary? Is it too scary for little kids?
No. It was so funny. I was just like staring at it.
You were entranced by the screen. I tried to give you some popcorn—I even put some in your hand--and you just let it fall out to the floor
I was like… I couldn’t see you. I didn’t want to miss any part—sorry. Maybe next time when we go to another Pony movie can you pleasssse give me popcorn and I promise I’ll remember to eat it?