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YMMV / My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Magical Movie Night

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  • Adorkable: Juniper Montage. She's as genuinely excited over anything that has to do with Daring Do as Twilight and Rainbow Dash. But it stops being endearing when Juniper starts throwing a tantrum about her uncle not letting her star in a big-budget Daring Do movie. Even after her façade is exposed and becoming unhinged, Juniper is still quite dorky, as evident by her awkward attempts to use the magic mirror and her huffy temper tantrums, which is still rather cute.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Juniper Montage's Magic Mirror seems to be playing on her desires as opposed to outright mentally compromising her like prior magical incidents, at least until she went One-Winged Angel. This has led many questioning to what, if any, degree it was responsible for her villainous actions.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: Juniper Montage imprisons and gains the power of the Rainbooms...just so that she can grow a little taller, gain an overly tacky outfit, and scare some kids. And then she's easily talked into giving it all up in a matter of minutes.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Starlight Glimmer, as usual. Much of the fanbase was excited for Sunset and Starlight meeting and Starlight visits the human world with her. But then Sunset and the Humane Six are made completely useless so that Starlight could be the one to save the day once more. Once again, this usual aspect is criticized by her detractors. Her supporters on the other hand don't mind this since this is Starlight's only appearance in the Equestria Girls series and seeing her get a chance to show how she would shine in the human world is worth focusing on.
    • During the climax, she performs a midair flip kick on Juniper to grab the mirror from her and free herself; detractors decry this as implausible or lucky, because there's no way Starlight should be so athletic in her unfamiliar human body, while others claim this is just the nitpicking of haters and it's a minor detail not worth getting upset over.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • In "Dance Magic," Applejack, Rainbow, and Pinkie get Imagine Spots when trying to come up with alternate video ideas, none of which have anything to do with an actual music video and are just things on their mind. Rarity herself lampshades that their ideas are completely useless and of no help to the problem.
    • In "Movie Magic", the seven are accidentally mistaken for actors in a Power Ponies movie and made to dress up as them. The bit comes out of nowhere, makes no sense, and serves no purpose except for ostensibly providing Fanservice via the Power Ponies being referenced and the girls dressing in their outfits.
    • The Shadowbolts sole appearance in the novelization ends becoming this, as they're basically never referenced again and are completely inconsequential to the plot.
  • Cliché Storm: "Movie Magic" has every Scooby-Doo trope you can imagine, it even has the talking dog.
  • Fanfic Fuel:
    • Twilight allowing Starlight to vacation a few more days in the human world is basically an open gift to the fanfic writers.
    • As a human, Canter Zoom is an obvious Expy of Steven Spielberg. Which raises the question, what's the pony version like?
    • What were the circumstances about Cinch leaving Crystal Prep like? What is she doing now?
    • What about the Starlight Glimmer of the human world?
  • Fan Nickname: Juniper Montage's corrupted form is often called "Juniper Monstar" by the fandom.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Among the fans of both series, "Mirror Magic" is more looked forward to than the other shorts for various reasons:
    • A lot of folks who don't care for the Equestria Girls series are still interested in seeing Starlight and Sunset meet and Starlight visit the human world.
    • Sunset was already one of the main attractions for the whole spin-off franchise, but many were excited to just see Sunset as a pony again, after almost four years.
    • For the other two specials, some fans are interested just to see the Shadowbolts again.
  • Moe:
    • Starlight's human design for some. Even some fans who don't like Starlight admit that her human design is cute.
    • Many found Pony Sunset's acting awkward while in Equestria very Adorkable, especially compared to the last time people saw her.
    • Even for those that consider her The Scrappy, Juniper Montage's design can come off as this, at least before her Womanchild nature kicks in. Even then, her initial attempts at using the Magic Mirror do come off as amusing. After her redemption, she's seen happily hanging out with the main characters. The Novelization adds in a Friendless Background to make her more sympathetic, adding to her cuteness.
  • Narm: In the second special, Juniper renders six of the seven girls helpless by... throwing a net over them. And it apparently takes them several minutes to get out of it.
  • Nightmare Retardant: The One-Winged Angel form of Juniper formed thanks to magic is simply a giant version of herself without any added power.
  • Salvaged Story: "Dance Magic" tied up a few dangling plot threads from Friendship Games. For one, the Shadowbolts (sans an absent Indigo Zap) receive plenty more screentime, dialogue, and development than their initial appearance, and manage to solidify their Heel–Face Turn after a partial relapse. A throwaway line also reveals Principal Cinch to have finally received some form of comeuppance by getting replaced with the much nicer Principal Cadance.
  • The Scrappy: After "Mirror Magic", Juniper Montage is being seen as easily the worst Equestria Girls villain. Complaints include her selfish motivation and personality even before the mirror corrupts her, her One-Winged Angel form without interesting powers and attitude as well as threatening factor (and that's not even getting into its design, which looks tacky even by Equestria Girls standards), along with her rushed redemption. note 
  • Tear Jerker: Both times we see Canter Zoom rightfully scolding Juniper for her childish actions and seeing Juniper cower and try to explain that she only wanted people to like her.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: One exclusive to the novelization, the Shadowbolts get Demoted to Extra, only appearing once, when they meet Rarity at the mall. Worse yet is that they aren't even mentioned beyond Rarity telling her friends that the Crystal Prep girls are also competing.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • "Dance Magic," is about the Shadowbolts and the Rainbooms competing to win a music video contest, and ultimately coming together to do a joint project so they can all win. The focus of the short is on Rarity, who has the idea for the Rainbooms' music video and the Shadowbolts steal her idea, until Rarity suggests the groups collaborate. It could easily be argued that a much stronger story could have been made from putting Twilight in the spotlight, since she actually went to Crystal Prep and thus it's natural she would be the one to bring the two rival teams together as friends, and it would add an extra layer of story and character significance if it's Twilight that has her ideas for the contest stolen by the Shadowbolts. As-is, Twilight's participation in the special is just to take Rarity to Crystal Prep since she doesn't know how to get there.
    • The circumstances with Cinch's departure from Crystal Prep are left entirely vague, with just an off-hand mention that Cadance is principal now and has improved things.
    • Several with "Mirror Magic".
      • Fans rejoiced about upon reading the pre-released synopsis that said Sunset would return to Equestria, as her finally coming home again and perhaps reuniting with Celestia have been hotly discussed. However, Sunset's return is only to visit Twilight's library, get a new journal from Starlight (Twilight isn't even there), and then she goes back to the human world with her. She's only in Equestria for a few minutes and has no emotional response to coming back except for her difficulty in adjusting to her pony body again. Though this is rectified in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Forgotten Friendship which does show Sunset visiting Equestria again and reconciling with Celestia.
      • The meeting between Starlight and Sunset was also highly anticipated thanks to the fandom endlessly speculating on how they would interact. In fact it turns out that Twilight has avidly talked about the two to the other off-screen, and Twilight told Starlight that Sunset would be coming to Equestria to get a new journal. The result is that when the two meet face-to-face they're entirely unfazed by it and any significant interaction on the screen is just Starlight helping Sunset without the possibility of an inverse situation.
      • Episode descriptions imply a team-up between Sunset and Starlight to fight the villain and save the day with the others are trapped. In fact, Sunset is banished along with the group the second she confronts Juniper and Starlight saves the day herself. Any potential to be milked from a team-up of the two ponies is unexplored.
    • The novelization has one that ties into the fact it wasted the Shadowbolts; with the amount of small and not-so-small changes to the three specials' plotlines in the book adaptation, it's disappointing that Perdita Finn didn't think of, for example, including them in what would be the events of "Mirror Magic", or having them interact in some way with Starlight Glimmer (who crosses over to the human world in what would be the events of "Dance Magic" in the book, and thus participates in "Dance" and is mentioned in "Movie").
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: One of many complaints about Juniper Montage in "Mirror Magic" is that she's a major jerk even before her corruption. Her only motivation is that she wants to be adored, she actively talks back to her boss, she intentionally slacks off (and admits it outright), she attempts to make a mother and child "go away" with the mirror, and all she gets after trapping the first six heroines is a brief "Oh, Crap!" expression before she's finally corrupted. She's supposed to be our to-be-redeemed villain of the hour, by the way. Not so much in the Novelization, though, where she gets an Adaptational Angst Upgrade that arguably makes her more of a legitimate Jerkass Woobie.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The new Magic Mirror's, well, magic — especially regarding its White Void Room is well done such as the limitless "wall-less" nature of it.

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