Sonic the Hedgehog Cinematic Universe Thread (& Knuckles)

The lookalike stuff isn't just because of Terios. If it was, that angle would have been dropped in SA2.

Shadow and Sonic look similar. Not similar enough to realistically mistake them for one-another, but similar enough that the audience of a game or movie about a superhero, bipedal hedgehog can suspend their disbelief. It serves a narrative purpose to showcase how Sonic and Shadow are like two sides of the same coin.

 

I've never understood why people assume Sonic and Shadow wouldn't realistically be mixed up. Anyone that doesn't know Sonic will see Shadow IRL and ask "is that sonic?"

 

tbh even when I first played SA2 as a teen and the mistaken identity plotline came up I was not convinced. From an audience viewpoint or an in-world viewpoint where Sonic is a world-famous hero and has a bunch of other talking animal friends, neither really landed for me. If Sonic was the only thing like him in the world, sure I could understand the confusion. But things like Amy living in the city with no notice says that there are lots of these guys running around. Sonic isn't even the only sentient hedgehog in the city.

 

I always thought the idea is that from a distance he looks like a silhouette of Sonic (hence the name Shadow lol)

 

I think that's the idea, yeah. But I think why it didn't land for me is why is it so quickly assumed that this known hero is up to no good instead of "this guy with a completely different color and silhouette is probably Sonic." Like I get the narrative purpose of it, it just always felt too flimsy for me to buy into.

 

I subscribe to Khonjin's theory that Sonic wasn't mistaken for Shadow. It was an intentional decision by the military. I will not be defending my position.

In other news, I would watch a Shadow Knuckles TV series, maybe one where Shadow goes on a road trip to Mexico with Knuckles and Wade.

 

We all know how much Shadow loves











tacos!

 

Me too. I'd hate-watch it for sure.

 

Honestly considering that Amy briefly mistakes Shadow for Sonic and Elise briefly mistakes Sonic for Silver, maybe we are supposed to assume everyone just has Hedgehog face-blindness

 

How many hedgehogs are running around at the speed of sound in universe? Last time Sonic would have been on the news, he had spiked up quills and glowing gold. I don't think it's that far of a stretch to think Sonic would be rocking a new look again.

 

SA2 has a lot of untapped potential, but I always saw it as what happened in stories like Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.

Does the Phantasm look exactly like Batman? Of course not.

And you do have to turn off your brain a bit to accept that, because it's dark, people are confusing both of them despite living in a city where Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Catwoman, Scarecrow, Lock-Up, Joker, Riddler, Harley Quinn, etc., operate and play dress-up.

Is it really that far-fetched that some other person put on a costume and started killing mob people?

But I think the other angle the movie does right is that the Phantasm’s actions give both the criminal underworld and (some) law enforcement an excuse to go harder against Batman.

I walked out of SA2, and especially after reading some of the extra material and Sonic X, feeling that there were some within G.U.N. who knew about Project Shadow and wanted to keep a lid on it, while others didn't have a clue.

And I wished that they would have focused more on G.U.N.'s motivations in the game.

If you see security footage of a hedgehog moving at mach speed in a dark base attacking your mech, that suspiciously looks like Sonic (especially the transformation he had where a whole city saw), is it really far-fetched that both sides of G.U.N. might jump at the chance of going after Sonic? Especially after, later on, he breaks in to steal a Chaos Emerald at night.

He is a force outside of governments, organizations, and even "superhero teams," so this might give you the excuse to go after him. If you know about Shadow, then Sonic is just collateral damage until you get both of them and keep your secret.

So again, it was a missed opportunity not adding more on G.U.N.'s motivation.

I do hope they don't go too crazy with the spinoffs after this. I would just prefer they stick to main movies instead of TV shows. I don't hate the Knuckles show, but that one felt like he became a guest character in his own show along the way. So I wouldn't like that again.

And I'm not sure how well a movie spinoff would do, especially knowing that if it doesn't do well, then that just has a blowback effect on the main movies.

 

The frame job angle absolutely works a lot better logically. But it's not presented that way even in subtext, you just kind of have to assume. The notion that Sonic was gold last time so maybe he's black this time makes enough sense. Though given where they started with Terios I don't know if that was actually the angle they had in mind. Amy mistaking another hedgehog for Sonic became a running gag, but given that it's the first time it happened in this story it really just felt like everyone believed they looked the same.

 

I saw the movie tonight.

I'll post what I said on twitter...

If you can't see it day 1, consider going offline a while, every fan theory was wrong! There's tons of surprises and the ending is very different to what the trailers show/make you believe.

2 post credit scenes. One of these is... VERY significant. The details of this will be all over the place on day 1.

Consider this your Canary in the mine warning.

There are LOADS of big surprises in the film, not just related to the post credit, literal plot and action details we don't know or have even speculated about.

 

And waffles!
And muffins!
And sporks!
And Invader Zim!

 

I missed my screenin today. I need the heads up now brother. Where in the credits are the post credit scenes? Middle? Very end? This will determine if I buy a large Coke or a small Coke. I can't have a repeat of Sonic 2.

​

 

I've watched the clip with Shadow's introductuon, will people stop acting like I don't know what I'm talking about when I say Reeves was an awful choice and justify it by saying we haven't actually heard his performance? Because it's just as bad here as it was in the first trailer.

 

The 2nd one is at the very end of the credit sequence.

 

Better bring a water bottle...

​

 

That's just mean I can go to the bathroom and comeback and not miss it.

And yeah, I arrived at that frame job angle since there has to be a reason G.U.N goes after Sonic. It is their base after all.

I understand maybe that the Hot Shot pilot or someone else down in the ladder might mistake Shadow for Sonic, but the leader/leadership didn't realize oh didn't we have a hedgehog sealed up there?

Unless the story was written with the G.U.N from 50 years ago doing such a great cleanup that the present G.U.N has no idea.

But yet the current president seemed to have some info and suspicion about the organization and the events about 50 years ago that he commissions Rouge to investigate. And she does find info through G.U.N classified jurisdictional data.

So that just leaves the question of why go after Sonic in the first place other than frame him?

I am curious how this movie is going to handle all of the Gerald/military stuff lore. I do wonder if it's going to recontextualize what we saw in the first movie.

Was Gerald aware of the owls and echidnas? Why was Sonic so important to them? Was there a hedgehog tribe as well and Gerald took something from them to create Shadow? Is there some kind of time difference between planets so Gerald actually took a quill from baby Sonic but decades passed on earth? Was Walters worried that Sonic was related to Shadow during the events of the first movie?

Is there going to be another Olive Garden joke?

I am excited to see how the SA2 plot gets interpreted for the film.

 

Soak the chair like a man.