This movie was for lack of a better term- asspulls. Asspulls for every major event. Not the usual funny Tamers way of doing asspulls where someone pulls out a gun or a Bomb Pop. Cheap fanfiction-y asspulls that try and raise the stakes or make the viewer feel like 'whew that was close!' when it wasn't. The spell ending in 48 hours? Nope, it's able to end early because our favorite gay ponies kissed and it breaks the 'no magic' clause. Apple Bottom being able to control the mindless infected husks? That wasn't brought up in the last Infection movie, and it's never explored or discussed beforehand beyond a 'oh yeah isn't Arinos part of Apple Bottom what if he could do that'. No guarantee it'd work, no prior ideas, tests, just straight to success. Soarin being able to resist mind control because of some bullshit on how Arinos works for some reason in a way that's not clever, never previously established, it's just cheap and it gives the protagonists a way to save the day and stall out long enough. Clean Sweep sparing Big Mac because he's 'interesting'? We shoulda seen this coming, Big Mac was gay/hinted at being gay, he'd find someone. But come on the supposed 'villain who wants to burn down the world' suddenly becomes infatuated and steals Big Mac's heart over the course of less than 48 hours? I get it's Tamers world but given how Tamers wants to do more 'realistic' shit, it's only fair to criticize this for what it is. Cheap fanservice to whip up the yaoifaggots.
Then there's the fetish material. So much of it. So goddamn frequent. Thankfully we didn't have the cringy musicals like we had for the first movie, but we instead get so much more 'casual' fetish material. The strip club and the obvious inspiration from Hazbin Hotel on Care Package's 'pimp' design. Arinos flashing the camera his groin at around 18 minutes in, that fucking caught my eye like a bullet to the head. Braeburn and Apple Bottom at the church with fully detailed sweaty feet is something I wish I could say was only present in /mlp/ fanfiction, not an actual Tamers episode. Then the scene where Apple Bottom gets vored by a Weird Little Bitch, do not fucking tell me that isn't meant to be sexualized. I want to say the entire scene where they're pissing could be taken as fetishy but that's a Tamers staple- but it does branch into something I've noticed so much over these last few episodes. The 'humanization' of the ponies. I don't know what the fuck is going on in Tamers head or what, but the ponies noticeably seem to be getting more and more humanoid as time goes on. The ponies seem to be standing up on two legs more and more, they seem to have more Human conventions- like pants- which make no sense in MLP where everyone is buck-fucking-naked unless of course the concept of (in)decency also comes along.
This whole movie was a pain-in-the-ass to sit through despite being less than an hour or even 50 minutes if we don't count the post-climax scenes. It fundamentally changed nothing about the relationships of characters or how characters think about the world. Big Mac is still gay- we all fucking knew that. The Hazbin Hotel ponies still act like Hazbin Hotel ponies. Soarin and Braeburn are the closest thing to character development, but I wouldn't call putting a ring on Soarin a sign of proper character growth. Braeburn and Soarin were still together before, they still liked one another, they were still the more 'mature' half of the gay melodramatic ponies. The wedding ring changes nothing. Clean Sweep, Arinos, the Big Weird Bitch all of them are just flat as cardboard and as interesting as it.
