Sonic the Hedgehog Cinematic Universe Thread (& Knuckles)

I will neither agree nor deny. I promised to not continue this discussion and have no more to say until the final numbers come in.

 

"Final numbers" have zero relevance to our discussion here about the appeal of the movie or how it's classified but sure.

 

So I'm rewatching Knuckles for timeline details, and got back to the scene where the two Agents got caught between two Rings and disappeared. Do you think they got flung to random places in the universe or got Farscape'd?

EDIT: Also, they mentioned an alien visiting the bowling tournament in 1974. What the hell were Maria and Shadow up to back then?

 

I'd like to think Knuckles killed them so that he can have a body count. Sonic, despite trying, has yet to kill anyone, making Knuckles the superior space alien.

Wait, The Buyer is absolutely dead too. I'm sure if it. Knuckles owns.

 

The thing is, I do agree that this movie took some of the edge off certain themes and setpieces from SA2. I also think one of the biggest flaws these live-action projects have is that their humor sometimes deflates moments of tension or drama.

That said, I don’t think they’re bad, and I’m glad they’re doing well.

I also came across some box office predictions from fans suggesting the movie could make $700 million to $1 billion. That, in itself, isn’t bad. Of course, fans want their franchise to achieve huge milestones. However, it’s important to remember that many of those making these predictions don’t closely follow the industry or understand the factors involved.

The franchise doesn’t need to hit $1 billion to be considered successful. While I hope it can one day, that doesn’t mean its current achievements aren’t impressive. So far, the movies have defied expectations and broken records of their own.

This just shows they’re doing some things right, and that Sonic is still relevant.

Again, these movies aren’t perfect, but it’s also important not to dismiss the good they’ve accomplished.

Spoiler

Maybe it was Doom's Eye looking for Shadow after he fell on earth but was seduced by the bloodthirsty arena that bowling offers.

 

​

 

"Who do you think you are? I am [all of me]"

 

Guess we've found the Shadow series premise.

Spoiler

Black Doom demands Shadow defeat the Echidna's apprentice, Wade, in the Tournament of Champions!

 

But will it have Radical Highway?


As positive as I am about the third movie in particular (as said, I don't have any issues with the tone switches, but in turn my biggest issue with it is that some scenes don't get to sit enough).

I think particularly the third act could've had 10 or so minutes added to the final action set piece because it was so awesome.

 

Spoiler

Radical Highway is the name of the bowling alley they're playing at.

 

Oh, that's cute.

Still probably never watiching it because it seems to have the spin-off issue of barely having the starring character in it?

 

Indeed, but something could've been done with that series in general, so...

 

I figured they would be stranded somewhere. Since Wade was in Sonic 3 for all of 1 minute, I wonder if they don't have another season of Knuckles planned.

 

https://x.com/TheCartoonBase/status/1877876721069769070

surpassing "into the spiderverse" in US was not on my bingo card

 

Into the Spider Verse is the lowest grossing Spider-Man movie of all time.

Transformers One, TMNT Mutant Mayhem, and Spider-Verse 2 (649 million vs the 1.9 billion No Way Home made) have shown that animated film versions of these type of franchises consistently do worse than the live action versions.

I don't even understand why Cartoon Base is making tweets like this because it really doesn't say anything or prove anything. What Sonic 3 does on its own is all that matters until it starts breaking records (for example being the 2nd highest grossing video game movie in the US which is pretty neat).

 

Is anyone taking into account that less people go to the theatre to see films in general these days? The fact that Sonic 3 is doing these kinds of numbers in this kind of environment is pretty fucking impressive. I don't think some of you quite get how well these movies do with non-fans considering how irrelevant Sonic has been to wider audiences for decades. It's nothing short of miraculous that they've done as well as they have.

 

I am, but that applies to all movies, not just Sonic 3. I also made note of two additional things in my previous analysis posts. For one, Sonic has never faced an actual competitive market. When both films came out, they were pretty much the only films on pretty quiet weekends (were you really going to see Ambulance?). They grossed well enough and carving records within their niche. Sonic 3 was the first film of the franchise where it had to face off against multiple films and strong hold overs, and it still performed very well.

For another, Sonic had no access to IMAX PLF screens domestically. Mufasa had all of the IMAX screens. I need to look up the numbers, but IMAX screenings made up something like 20% of its gross. The IMAX exclusivity gave Mufasa the edge in terms of theatre counts. It was available in far more locations at more premium prices than Sonic 3 was and yet Sonic 3 is still ~20 million ahead of Mufasa.

By all accounts based on the conditions the Sonic movies previously had and what it was up against, Sonic 3 should have been buried. Hell, this is me on December 5th after using my resources in the industry.

Boy do I have an egg on my face. At least I don't look as dumb as this guy!

Still, the film stood firm. There's clearly a stable and growing audience.

That's why waiting for the final numbers is honestly stupid as fuck point to make. Yeah, you can point at a number and say the other one is bigger, and you'll definitely fool people using that metric, but you're intentionally omitting all context if that's your only metric that you use to judge.

 

I'm most surprised by the critic reception.
It's still 86% with 125 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Granted, it still only has half of Sonic 1's reviews and 60ish less reviews than Sonic 2.

Logically, of course, those who cared would've stuck around, but it's still a pretty big jump.

But it did also have some pretty obvious improvements as far as the very basics go, like pacing.