For me, cutting a good majority of Luna’s subplot from the film was hard because Luna was originally meant to be more connected to Twilight’s story. This was one of the key reasons as to why the film initially got cut down. I’m not spoiling a lot since nearly all of what I’m gonna talk about is no longer in the film.

Luna would’ve had a whole arc within the film that covered her alienation from her subjects and loved ones because of the Nightmare Moon debacle, only to become more and more frustrated and angry towards Twilight. Originally, we had ideas of making Nightmare Moon a Jekyll/Hyde persona for Luna that comes out when she gives into her greatest fear: Celestia having never loved her and Twilight existing only to phase her out of Celestia’s life. One key conflict that would’ve happened in the film was that Luna would’ve been persuaded by Discord to become Nightmare Moon and exact revenge against Twilight in a last ditch effort to seize Celestia’s throne.

Naturally, a lot of it made the story extremely convoluted and I was sad to see it go mostly because it was an interesting look into the dynamics between Twilight and Luna and how Twilight is connected to both of the Royal Sisters. There were key sequences that made me cry when I had written them, but that’s kind of the reason as to why this movie underwent the overhaul it did. Nearly every subplot could’ve made for individual movies that it was taking away the focus from what really mattered: Twilight’s journey and her reconciliation with her friends. 

Because of this, nearly every subplot was scrapped and we had to make major changes so that the initial story stayed the same and the emotional weight and dramatic flair was still there. It was extremely tough, but we found a way to make it all come together.

Absolutely. The whole reason as to why we brought the changelings into the film was because we wanted to flesh them out away from the show. They act towards their Queen, but they have distinctive voices. They have personalities, there’s more than one type of Changeling so to speak.

We fleshed out multiple aspects when writing the script. We really wanted to differentiate the Changelings from their show counterpoints by giving them a voice and giving them pure personality. The same idea went into designing the Changeling Empire.

I told the team very specifically that I wanted a more authentic design that leaned more towards a “Starship Troopers” kind of atmosphere. I wanted it to be a place where if you happened to have stumbled upon that place, you definitely wouldn’t wanna go there!