Eddie Lebron's Fan Film, "Sonic"

Yeah, I think that the movie's biggest weakness was it's lack of a concise, unified vision. You've combined SatAM with Adventure, with Shadow, with '06, with the classics, with Sonic X, and the combination just feels very jumbled. The combo is a bunch of contradicting universes causing awkward juxtaposition against each other.

Or Madonna ;P If you would have done this, I would have saluted you. Though it was obviously already a bit of a burn against '06, so it was okay I guess :v:

But I think that the biggest issue here was that there was no plot whatsoever. There is the most basic of backdrops, evil scientist decides to take over the world, Blue Hedgehog wants to stop him, but there is no story told. It's a bunch of disjointed action scenes that leave no impact on the overall narrative; Robotnik is the only thing that lends a bit of an anchor to the film's continuity, but even then, he becomes a totally reactionary character after Sonic appears. The scenes that appear in this movie feel more like the "fluff" scenes that would appear between major plotpoints in a full-length movie, but those plotpoint scenes don't really exist. The only things that even resemble that would be Robotnik getting an emerald (totally out of place, since besides the credit opening, there is no point to the Emeralds here), and Knuckles at the end, any of these scenes could have taken place in any order, and no one would have noticed. That's not a progressing narrative, and it makes the entire film feel pointless.

I can at least appreciate the effort and resolve that went into completing this film over the course of two years. But the final product itself was lacking in many fundamental elements.

 

I have to say that I just sat and watched it, and I applaud Eddie lebron for making the film as obviously it took a lot of effort, but he made some very bad decisions that really marred the whole thing for me. it wasn't the CGI, because I expected it to be how it was- what with it being a fan-made product. I thought the voice acting itself was pretty good, but the script was terrible. Absolutely awful in most places. Some of the humans just can't act either, well, at least in the situations this film throws up- I just think the people he chose were more likely to appear in a drama on UK's Channel 5 than anything else. The best humans were the GUN soldiers half way through cos' I've gotta admit that it must be fucking hard to interact with things that aren't really there- Buzzbombers in that particular case. Kudos to them for that.

I also thought that Sonic was really funny (in a good way), and that was obviously the point. I had a bit of a chuckle at some of the stuff he said

Anyway, there's a list of things that it really messes up on:

Firstly, Dr. Robotnik doesn't pronounce his name right- it's Robotnik with emphasis on the 'bot', whereas it sounded like "Robutnik".

Secondly, "You've let your pride get the best of you" doesn't sound like something a robot would say- it's too human sounding.

After saving a human, Sonic calling himself "Way past cool!" is just TOO cocky- even for Sonic. Saying something like, "Take care of yourself next time, huh?" Would have been cocky, but not so self indulgent and cringe worthy. The line was obviously just put in as it's an old Sonic catchphrase.

And what the hell is up with "The blue blur"? That's an affectionate name given to Sonic by his fans- why the hell are Badniks and Robotnik calling him it? It's also used FAR too often. We know it's Sonic, JUST call him Sonic, or "THAT HEDGEHOG".

Also thought the Sonic model should have used either NO actual hairs at all or more of them.

Other than that, if some sort of filter is put on to make the CGI and the real life feel a little more like a whole entity, they clean up most of the dialogue, put in some screaming and fear in the city scene and change all of the above, then they have an alright fan-film. Maybe they should hire Freddy Wong to do the explosions too- he does it on Youtube often...

 

So Generations could have very easily have had the same Sonic voice.

 

Did you know gaming needs a lot of citations.

 

Well, never mind. Since I posted the picture, an update said that Jaleel was never approached by Sega. I guess this was the plan at some point, but they never went through with it.

 

I believe that Weber mentioned that once, but whether or not it was a serious idea is another story. I would have loved classic Sonic to be voiced by Jaleel white IN CUTSCENES ONLY. but he was left mute, and that's good too.

Spoiler

Least they didn't get Martin Burke :specialed:

 

Here's a cool commentary with Eddie Lebron justifying his stuff or whatever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95fwhlaxdWU

 

I don't get a lot of the hate that's brewing around this movie. Before I go into my thoughts on it, yes, I did help out on the set of the movie and I am IRL friends with the crew, but I'm not letting that cloud my vision of the movie itself. Really, I enjoyed it. The only big "done goofs" that bothered me were Sonic having his mouth centered and Knuckles having fingers. As for the storytelling, it seemed more like a trailer than an actual short film, a lot more could've been done with that twenty minutes.

Mega Man was really good, from a story perspective. The acting and special effects could've used work, but had those been on the money the whole thing could've been considered one of the best film adaptations of a video game of all time. Sonic might've been a little harder to accomplish that with, especially since the main idea behind the Genesis games was to show man's effect on nature rather than the evil villain takes over the world trope, but even still, it was an honest attempt and a lot of hard work, love, and sweat was put into it over the past couple of years and I'd be proud of it if I was Eddie. Hell, I'm proud to say I helped build the Egg Carrier!

But really, as with how people jumped on Kuta's movie, it really does feel like people are trying to put this movie down even though no one else had the balls to step up and try something on this level. That's why Eddie shouldn't, and probably doesn't feel bad about it. The only reason Kuta had his internet-drama coming to him was because he actively responded to the negative comments and let them bother him, I'm not saying he deserved it, I'm just saying he had it coming to him. First rule of the internet, don't feed the trolls. If you're going to do dream about something and try to make that dream a reality then you need to focus on that and not what some nay-sayers are saying about it.

 

I dunno; it would make sense for a robot to point out a particularly human quality when taunting a human adversary. And it may not be the best comparison considering the tone this movie went for, but listen to Orbot, for instance – totally fond of poking fun at traditionally human traits.

All the people saying “the blue blur” was definitely overdone, but that excessiveness aside, in the context of people who had no idea who or what Sonic was, it does make more sense than his name or species – which, again, they didn't know.

 

I will honestly say that this project lacks substance entirely. So much ad-libbing story content, so off model, off atmosphere. I get that it isn't trying to stick to any canon in particular, but it's just a mishmash of bad ideas, rolled into 20 minutes of mediocre special effects, somewhere between Ken Penders and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers in the spectrum of effort. No amount of motion blur and CGI is going to change the fact that while action-y, and certainly suited for a movie of some kind, the script just doesn't fit Sonic. It's not that you're treading on sacred ground, you're just doing it wrong.

TL;DR: It would be better if it wasn't Sonic.

 

"(...) Transition of Robotnik to Eggman (...) in Sonic Adventure (...)"
Oh boy.... This is one of the stupidiest things one can say in the context of the personality of the character.

No Eddie, the biggest change was to a no-talking boss character with minimal "laughing" and "Oh Crap!" animations to one with cutsceens and in-game plot. Name change is another deal altogheter, and in meta-level he always had and have the two names.
People love to speak about character derailment in the games as if they were developed at all. Tails was always the Taxi, Amy the clinging girl that needed to be rescued.... If anything who was changed was Knuckles from the Laughing trickster to the serious butt-monkey (and he had butt-monkey moments back then, like his fantastic exit in Lauch Base Zone.)

I smell the idea of SATAM=Classic characterization, the "movie" reeks of that vibe.

Why some people have the fascination of bringing SATAM to the games or vice-versa... Personally I like both things as they are... It wouldn't be better just a real SATAM adaptation or a simple game-based story than robotized GUN agents in pre-Green Hill?
The Archie Comics for me are a good example of a bloated and cofusing lore that is a good result of that idea.

 

I'm sorry if this isn't the thread for this, but...

As some of you may know, I leaked the existence of Roger Craig Smith months before the new voice cast was actually revealed. Later on, before Colors DS came out, I posted audio clips from the game featuring the new voice actors. I have a source with connections to SEGA, and I'd like to chime in about this Jaleel thing.

I've gone over this before, but the reason Ryan Drummond wasn't rehired was because he was a union actor. As I said before, Ryan Drummond was actually promised by SEGA at the auditions that he was going to have his role as Sonic back. Later on, though, they told him he had to quit the union.

This would have created similar complications for Jaleel White as Classic Sonic. I haven't actually been told anything about Jaleel by my source (who mostly gave me info on new voices, Colors, and preliminary Generations info), but I really doubt SEGA would be willing to convince Jaleel White of all people to quit the union just for the game. He still makes a lot of money through guest starring on shows like Psych and acting in Asylum's movies, and I don't think he'd throw his career away just to be Classic Sonic in one game.

If SEGA ever actually considered Jaleel White, they'd be even more moronic than even I thought.

Oh, and yeah, this does confirm that Eddie Lebron put tons more money into Sonic voice acting than SEGA has since 2003.

 

So wait, is it now a credible theory that Sega planned to have Classic Sonic speak but just couldn't find anyone who'd bend over far enough (=quitting unions)? If that turns out to be true, that would mean one of the best decisions they made in a long time wasn't actually their intended course of action. In any case, citations are majorly needed, everywhere.

 

It's not credible and he didn't even suggest such a thing...

 

Yeah, you're right, it totally wasn't suggested as a hypothetical possibility, either in these sentences or in the quoted image.

 

Well...

All that's suggesting is that he was never even considered for the role.

 

I sat and watched this today and although I accept the amount of hard work and effort (along with the money spent) that was put into it, I feel Eddie may have missed the mark here.
The 'Kintobor' and 'Blue Blur' uses rubbed me the wrong way from the start and as impressive as the CGI pieces are, they stick out compared to the rest of the live action film.
The 20 minute length was also very confusing to myself. I understand that it was a Proof of Concept, as it were, but it felt like a long glorified advert for a product that won't be finished.
Whether or not that is a shame though is down to personal preference. Still, it was something.

 

Thank you, Guess Who. I was half-expecting this thread to either get locked or that giant chunk of posts get moved into an entirely new topic. :specialed:

 

I'd like to iterate an apology. I should stay in my Monkeysphere more often.