Sonic 2 (Movie) Spoiler/Discussion Topic (Stay away if you don't want to be spoiled)

I hope this makes money because it deserves to.

If the first one was a good adaptation of Sonic… this was close to perfect. I don’t actually have fault with it. I felt like a kid again.

 

I just finished viewing less than an hour ago - launch day in the UK.

The cinema wasn’t completely packed as it’s not a Marvel film or a blockbuster, but there was a decent turn-out. A lot of the audience were families with kids, of course, but there were also some teenagers and adults, me being one of them of course

The film was really good. Certainly, it’s a film that requires a specific audience; kids, families, fans of animated character films, fans of Sonic… but what it does it does incredibly well. Jim Carrey is excellent again, all of the characters, including the human ones, have time to shine, and it’s just a fun, goofy, well-crafted film that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

I loved all of the references (the SA-2 helicopter for example), the build up to the S3&K (and Heroes) styled finale, and the presentation and art was spot on too.

I really liked how the weird bird art in Labyrinth and Hydrocity helped create the backstory and fleshed out what many of us speculated regarding my the Angel Island / Island links in the originals, and I also really enjoyed seeing what happens when Dr Robotnik finally gets what he wants.

Overall, an enjoyable experience and I’d recommend most fans of Sonic to go see it; that is if you can stomach kid-friendly character films in general.

I forgot to mention until now, but this is my favourite version of Knuckles in any media, and I could totally see him as being the one from S3&K.

 

Watched the film, but I won't talk too much about it for a number of reasons. What I can tell you is all the kids in the room roared when Shadow showed up, so they made the right choice no matter how we feel about it (and I feel ok about it). Surpised that GUN is formed after the first film because I thought it was already operative in the first film, but the guy that looked like the GUN commander is now the GUN commander so everything's in place.

As I see this, Amy, Metal and Shadow will all show up in the next film, with the space colony ARK being only in the blueprints Robotnik will use as a base to build the Death Egg.

 

Was it me or did they have subtle drowning music when Sonic is underwater?

Jeez this film did so much right by the games.

So many chuckles just because of the video game nods.

 

I thought I heard the music. Like just one phrase of it in between other parts but it was so quick I wasn’t sure. Glad someone else heard it.

Overall, I vastly preferred it to the first even if I could see everything coming. Eggman using the emerald in the way he did was odd though. Expected it to be powering a robot, not himself.

I’m guessing that Shadow end scene had been leaked but I didn’t read about it. I was 99% sure I’d see him teased though so I wasn’t surprised.

Edit: With the overly stilted and weird way Knuckles was speaking in the final scene, I legit expected a “do u know da way” joke.

 

I saw the film. I liked it. There was some goofiness in that film I didn't like, but I wasn't the target audience so I guess that was to be expected. I liked Knuckles' characterisation and it felt like Idris Elba had a lot of fun being that character. Jim Carey's Robotnik was... Well, weird and unlikeable but I guess that was the point. There were a lot of references that made me happy and overall, it really feels much more like the source material than the first film. I will offer additional, specific thoughts behind a spoiler tag as a courtesy.

Spoiler

Okay, so... Few things: Who were the people that were with Knuckles at the start of the film? Robotnik summons them using the spine energy and three humanoid jobbers step out of the portal which Robotnik dispatches really easily. But who were they? Was Knuckles with them? He did step out of the same Ring Portal as them, albeit later and they all seemingly wanted the same thing, yet Knuckles doesn't seem awfully concerned about them nor are they ever brought up again. Felt weird.

So I knew that Super Sonic was coming the very moment they spoke of how the seven Chaos Emeralds were inside the Master Emerald. The moment the Master Emerald shattered into the individual emeralds, I knew Super Sonic was imminent. I really liked Super Sonic's design in the movie, I actually really liked Sonic's design in this film overall. I also liked how titchy tiny the Chaos Emeralds are. I also like that Knuckles just nonchalantly puts the emerald back together, which matches his abilities in the Adventure games.

I had largely avoided discussion of this film to avoid spoilers, I didn't even watch the "Final Trailer" that was released. One thing I did know was that there was a mid-credits scene as I had unavoidably seen articles that the headlines were some variation of: "Sonic 2's post-credits scene and what it means" that tipped me off to what was likely going to be included. Still I was not expecting Shadow, to be honest, but the moment they said the words "50 years ago" I knew at that moment what was coming. I, like many, assumed Metal Sonic was coming. Kinda crazy they're going to go full Sonic Adventure 2 on us. Can't wait for big-budget Hollywood CGI of half the moon getting blown up.

I wonder if someone on the writing team was a reader of a certain Fleetway comic.

 

Spoiler

I don’t like Shadow’s design and am not sure if I want the film to go the whole SA2 direction, but if I hear Live and Learn in a cinema I will lose my shit.

 

Saw it earlier. Enjoyed it as much as I did the first one, loads of little easter eggs in that I dug and I thought Knuckles was bloody brilliant. I'll probably post more substantial thoughts tomorrow as went out for drinks and now trying to stay up for Wrestlemania...

 

I think the ‘creatures’ with Knuckles at the start is explained in the comic tie-in?

I actually liked the more goofiness of this one.

Spoiler

Stone holding up a manual for the Robotnik Mech

It is ‘stupid’ but it felt very much like the team are going ‘ok this is a big talking hedgehog. Let’s have fun’

It didn’t take away the steaks for me… Dr Robotnik was terrifying when he got the Emerald. Like he goes from panto villain to Judge Doom very quickly haha

Spoiler

At one point I thought he was going to be killing people by sucking their brains out when he mentioned he can feel the electric in their brains

 

I thought the bird creatures were related to either Longclaw’s tribe, or the true enemies of the echidna tribe and they’ll expand on this in future.
The fact that their masks were pretty much spot on with the art from Labyrinth and Hydrocity suggests that they have history with the emeralds and the architecture of the palaces and caves. The games had Knuckles’ tribe look after the emeralds and the ultimate power, but was it always them? Perhaps in the films they took over this land after war and held it, and the birds were co stably at war trying to get it back. I look forward to seeing what they do with this further.

 

I caught a show this morning. The cinema was fairly empty, but what do you expect at 10am on a Sunday? It wasn't dead though.

So the film was... Pretty good. Its definitely on par with the first one.

Spoiler

As an adaptation that's similar to but not exactly the same as the games that it pulls from, it felt authentic. They changed things like the Chaos and Master Emeralds, Knuckles' back story, GUN and so on, but it all worked. I was especially pleased with how they handled Knuckles. He's not stupid, and he's not dark and broody. He's honour-bound and naive. And he was of course very goofy. It was a really, really good interpretation of his character. The fact that he was never portrayed as actually being evil was good too.

And this might sound like something small, but I'm so pleased about the fact that Knuckles and Tails were portrayed as being capable of super speeds. That's such a big part of the series and I was worried that they would omit it from characters other than Sonic to make it stand out as his superpower. Everyone is fast, but Sonic is able to take it to another level.

The credits scene was super predictable. Shadow has always been a more bankable, popular character than Metal ever since his first appearance. I'm surprised to see people thinking otherwise. It'll be interesting to see how they adapt SA2's plot.

On to the negatives... The film was definitely too long. The entire Siberia portion of the film? Absolutely awful. It added nothing, except a forced bonding moment for Sonic and Tails at the end of it. That was trash. And so was the Hawaii part. I feel like that part could have been handled better, because the plot with the human characters felt too secondary. Whilst Tom and Maddie were a surprisingly decent part of the first film, they were out of the picture for too long this time. There wasn't enough of them, and at the same time everything that happened in Hawaii with them was a slog.

On the whole and as I said before, it was on par with the first film. Higher highs and more game material all handled in a clever way, but lower lows that dragged the movie down. It gets a thumbs up.

 

I agree with the wedding part. Maybe the Four Seasons kicked in some dough lol. My girlfriend got so frustrated that the

Spoiler

wedding was ruined haha.

The whole Siberia stuff was just nonsense for the kids. Not unbearably awful but unnecessarily long. I’d skip it on a rewatch.

 

Honestly I think that the wedding part was serviceable. The problem with it is...

Spoiler

that the human characters are underdeveloped in this film compared to the original, and the main plot development with them feels inconsequential to the viewer. I almost want to say that Tails encroached a bit on the role the role that Maddie and Tom should have occupied in terms of bonding with Sonic and giving him drive to be a better hero, but that just sounds crazy. How could the second Sonic movie not have had him? Tails was a fun part of the film and didn't feel like a dead weight, even though he was secondary to Sonic, Knuckles and Robotnik. Maddie and Tom just didn't do enough. They were a surprisingly solid part of the first film, which found its strengths in how it differed from the source material.

The Siberia stuff was dreadful though. The kids in the cinema giggled loudly at a fair few things over the course of the runtime, but they were pretty quiet during that part. It was pretty unbearably awful for me.

 

I figured this problem was going to happen when they started bringing in more traditionally Sonic elements; what was the most prevailing criticism of the first movie? Not enough Sonic elements, so of course the sequel was going to address that complaint and have a more traditional Sonic-like story. Unfortunately, they had to push the humans to the side to make room for that stuff obviously despite the humans being the foundational elements of the first movie.

Going to be interesting to see how they try to balance the two out for the 3rd movie.

 

I was paying attention because why wouldn't it be there and I think I heard it a bit but, on the other hand, I didn't notice Emerald Hill music at all; I've found it a bit hard to notice even when I've watched a dedicated clip in YouTube.

Is there a list of game/fan references in the movie out there? When the Death Egg Robo shot a laser from the nose to a Sonic running over a rail bridge, I remembered the first time I played that boss in S3K. The moustache smash was probably another reference, but I had no idea where it came from.

 

I din't notice any Sonic licensed music in he entire movie. A missed opportunity, IMHO, since even the first one had a Green hill remix at the end.
I really hope they add some Sonic music in the third one, Crush 40 would be mind blowing.
PD: I'm not counting the ringtone.

 

Btw, I might be the weird guy, but I've always seen Knux similarly to how he's presented in this movie, to the point that in this film I still find him dumber than I imagine him. of course, it's a much better portrayal than any game of the last 20 years, but I had Boom Knux vibes on the final part of the movie.

Oh, and I'm so glad Robotnik finally found a real sidekick in agent Stone: it's not a dumb robot like orbot and cubot, it's not a potential traitor like Snively... Ok, he's like doc's Amy and Robotnik mistreats him, but he's quite competent and smart on his own and he's the only human that gets some degree of appreciation from the doctor. I liked the character on the first movie but here's when he gets interesting and when we finally see some improvement on the antagonist side of the franchise.

Then Tails it's a stalker that spies Sonic from the other side of the universe and praises his hero for constantly needing to be rescued. They went a bit far with him, if you ask me; he's amier than Amy.

 

I'm not going to pay to see it again (until the blu-ray ofc) but I think unless the previous guy and I were both imagining the same thing (though it is an octave + minor second repeat so it's not impossible the composer did it inadvertently), there was a little snippet of the drowning theme in there. I did mention to my GF walking out that it was funny that they picked the GH theme for the ringtone considering they would have had to pay Nakamura-san royalties on that. I seriously can't imagine the sequel not having Live and Learn though, so I think our wishes will be taken care of for the next one. I'm guessing City Escape will be somewhere there too.

Despite what others here are saying, I am surprised that they would go with Shadow considering "Shadow kids" are like 20 now at the very least. I was born in 94 so I'm right around the earliest for the Adventure fan generation (though I don't consider myself as such), but even the youngest are still way older than the kids the movies are aiming at. Idk. I guess many of us are just super detached from what kids like. I can't imagine actual children between like 5 and 12 know anything about games where Shadow actually played a role in the story. Maybe the archetype is just a winner.

 

The movie was pleasant to watch, especially when compared to the first one. There were some meh-moments (eg. the dance competition) but I also realise the director wants the main cast to have interactions with humans. I enjoyed the fighting scenes between Sonic and Knuckles, it shows to the audience that Sonic's powers can be challenged. The expanded lore of the chaos emeralds and the battle between the echidnas and the owls is a very nice touch that reminded me Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure 1 and I wish they would have expanded it more in the latest Sonic games. I knew that the post-credit scene was going to be either Metal Sonic or Shadow, still I was sooo excited to see the latter! I think those metal parts surrounding his arms and chest are not part of his design but rather constraints to keep him in that capsule. Also consider that the appearance will probably be tweaked for the next movie like what they did with Tails between the first and the second movie.

I am still considering this trilogy to be a completely different experience from the games as the targeted audience is different. I want the movies to be successful so the positivity to the brand will boost budget and sales for the next games, merchandise, concerts and more.

 

I also had this inclination, however

Spoiler

It was on the whole "Super sonic going evil" fake out. I would have lost my shit if the design was to change his pupils to spirals and an evil laugh got thrown out