Review: "My Little Pony - The Movie"

“I am so over the whole cute pony thing!” exclaims the Storm King, the antagonist of the story.

Some parents in the audience might feel the same way. But if there is one thing that sets Lauren Faust’s version of the My Little Pony franchise apart, it is self-awareness. This movie knows exactly how cheesy it is, and goes ahead anyway.

What the more cynical viewers might see as cheesiness is, actually, a deliberate moral message. The full title of the popular TV series, now in its seventh season, is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. This means that the heroine, Princess Twilight Sparkle, and her five best friends can always find a peaceful solution to their problems, whether it’s a squabble between co-workers or an unleashed god of chaos.

In this movie, the characters’ values of trust, empathy and teamwork are put to the test like never before.

It begins when a flying warship crashes the ponies’ national holiday, and its commander, Tempest, demands their unconditional surrender.

“I’m sure we can talk this out,” says Twilight.

Tempest responds by setting an army loose on the city.

Having barely escaped, Twilight and her friends embark on a dangerous mission to find the Hippogriffs, a distantly related tribe they believe might help them. They quickly discover just how dangerous the world is outside their happy homeland of Equestria. Asking for help earns contempt, trusting a stranger leads them into a trap, and showing off their skills to impress a potential ally only draws the enemy soldiers’ attention. If doing the right thing doesn’t work, doing the wrong thing might be the only option.

“This isn’t Equestria,” an anxious Twilight snaps. “You can’t expect everything to work out!”

The question this movie asks is, do the ends justify the means? Is it all right to compromise your principles in order to survive a national crisis? Or should you hold on to them more than ever?

The Mane Six are not the only ones with ethical challenges to deal with. The Storm King, self-proclaimed “super-powerful bad guy”, may be a disappointingly flat character, but the effect he has on his subjects is surprisingly realistic for a children’s movie.

The various groups of characters the heroines run into represent the ways people cope with living in a dictatorship. Commander Tempest follows the Storm King to gain power and to channel a private anger. A flock of pirate parrots turned cargo haulers obey in order to survive. Still others, such as a charming feline con artist, are driven to crime by the harshness of their lives. 

Can a group of naïve young mares win the allegiance of creatures who gave up hope a long time ago?

In a time where each remake of a popular movie seems to be darker than the last, My Little Pony’s unashamed idealism makes for a refreshing change. 

Review: "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik

Cover Summary:

“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

On the Goodreads page for this novel, I saw someone shouting in all caps about the implausibility of this story. The reviewer appeared to think that, as long as the wizard calling himself “the Dragon” doesn’t actually eat, rape, or torture the girls he takes, that makes everything all right and Agniezhka, his newest servant, should have nothing to worry about.

But I disagree. Being taken away from your home for ten years, forbidden all contact with your loved ones, living alone with a powerful, incomprehensible (and frankly quite rude) immortal, and gradually losing your identity so that you cannot connect with your family anymore when you do see them – that’s enough to frighten anyone. And it’s far from being the worst thing that happens to Agniezhka.

Still, the Dragon is not a villain. It’s more complicated than that. He is someone who’s been alone for so long, concentrating on nothing but his magic, that he’s almost forgotten how to deal with ordinary people. Especially an impulsive, messy young woman with power of her own, whom he’s duty-bound to train whether he wants to or not.

Also, Agniezhka is no traditional fairytale heroine. She may have the power to save the world, but she still can’t cook without getting dirty, and she drives the Dragon crazy with her slapdash approach to magic. (Think My Fair Lady meets The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.) Her peasant girl narration is pitch-perfect; by describing impossible things like magic in terms she can understand, she makes them almost real enough to believe in. For example, her only talent growing up was gathering useful things in the forest, so that’s the analogy she uses for learning a new spell – unlike the Dragon who, she says, always insists on using the road.

The arguments they have about each other’s working methods are some of my favorite scenes in the book. Their partnership challenges them both, intellectually as well as emotionally.

Another relationship I loved was Agniezhka’s with Kasia, the classic heroine everyone thought would be chosen instead. They should (and do) envy each other’s very different fates, but not for a moment do they let it ruin their friendship. Kasia, too, breaks free of the villagers’ (and the reader’s) expectations, becoming just as strong in her own way as Agniezhka in another.

Considering the title, it’s fitting that roots are so important to this story. Agniezhka’s strength comes from her heritage: her family, her best friend, and the land she lives on. The Dragon, a solitary man, has no roots. He spends his life holding back the forest because he is afraid it will overrun the world. He has a point – this is not a Disney forest – but the best way to handle these monsters is with compassion and an open mind.

By the way, this is one of only a few stories I’ve seen where reading aloud saves the world. I’m surprised there aren’t more.

Surely we bookworms must have known this all along. ;)

Review: The Never-Ending Sacrifice (Star Trek: DS9)

A boy looks up. He sees a Cardassian's hand on his shoulder and knows that this is usually a prelude to a beating or, if he is fortunate enough, arrest. The boy knows how many disappeared during the Occupation of Bajor. So he does the one thing he can think of: he bites the Cardassian. Then the nightmare begins. 

He is ripped from the family that took him in as an orphan, clothed him, fed him, always loved him unconditionally. And no matter how earnest, how caring the commander of Deep Space 9 is, the boy knows this is all a horrible mistake. How can someone from Starfleet judge him by what he looks like, not by what he is? He prays to the Prophets; he is Bajoran. They all keep telling him that the test proves the large Cardassian man is his father, that the other Cardassian -- that oily gul -- took him away from his father. But the boy keeps telling them that he is Bajoran, he only wants to go home with his father. So they send Rugal home -- to Cardassia. 

On the homeworld of the Cardassian Union where sacrifice and devotion to the state are surpassed only by the government's need to keep its people in check, one very lonely boy discovers that if he doesn't resist, his life -- like those of so many others -- will be added to the tally of the never-ending sacrifice.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has one of the most complicated storylines of any TV series I know. It ran for seven seasons and involved, more or less, seven different political entities, with alliances that were constantly shifting back and forth. Today’s enemy might be tomorrow’s ally, or vice versa. It’s realistic, as any history student will tell you, but also somewhat confusing. 

That’s why The Never-Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack is very helpful for putting all seven seasons in perspective.If you don’t know the series, you might not understand everything that’s going on, but there’s a glossary at the back of the book. Besides, the protagonist doesn’t understand it all either.

Rugal Pa’Dar is a one-off character from an episode called “Cardassians” in the second season of DS9. He was adopted by Bajorans, whose planet was once invaded by his own species, the Cardassians. Then his biological father found him and took him back. 

Needless to say, he’s got identity issues. He doesn’t fully belong to either culture. This makes him the perfect character through whom to tell the story of the Dominion War, because the war is being fought inside him as well as across the galaxy. This inner conflict almost tears him apart, but as he grows up, it also helps him make connections across all kinds of borders: class, species, sexuality and politics, to name a few.

Rugal is not much like the usual Star Trek heroes, brilliant diplomats, scientists and warriors who always save the day. He’s an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary circumstances, who mostly gets by on luck, resourcefulness, and a deep loyalty to his loved ones. He’s not trying to end the war or save his species. He just wants to go home, if he could only figure out where home is.  

McCormack does an excellent job of balancing the large and complicated plot lines of the original series with Rugal's individual story. He is clearly a product of a certain political landscape, but not a passive one. The older he gets, the more he refuses to let parents, commanding officers and governments make his choices for him. 

The Never-Ending Sacrifice is still a quintessential Star Trek story. It’s a story about war, and it does get very dark at times (Rugal’s time in the army is bleakly reminiscent of All Quiet On The Western Front), but more than that, it’s a story about love that transcends boundaries.