Sonic the Hedgehog Cinematic Universe Thread (& Knuckles)

I mean, the classic Sonic games have the literal Death Star in them Sky Sanctuary is just Laputa from Castle in the Sky (and Ghibli is not obscure over there).

 

Referential humor in films has been around long before Aladdin. What Aladdin kicked off was casting celebrities instead of voice actors and then marketing the films around them. That's something that pissed Robin off because he specifically told Disney not to do that.

 

yeah, as far back as really old looney tunes, if not farther. It is just simply that we are now so far removed from those cultural references that we don't notice them.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is also referencing something by a media critic.

That is true, but I think it's also true to say that after Aladdin and Shrek, there was a shift in how referential humor worked.

 

Yes, referential humor wasn't invented by Aladdin and I don't think I implied that? Bugs Bunny himself is a reference to a movie in which Bugs vastly outlived the relevance of. What I'm saying is that Aladdin and Shrek both cemented in Hollywood the idea that overly referential humor (and famous casting in animated films, and marketing around the famous casting in animated films) are both necessary features of a kids film in a way that it wasn't before.

 

Just wanted to say I completely agree with this. I don't think this is a generational thing at all, it's just people's tastes not aligning with the product we're getting here. If anything it seems like the younger generation has embraced the movies just fine despite the inaccuracy to the source material.

For what it's worth, I'm an Adventure-era kid myself (kind of). I'm 30 and as a young kid loved watching my VHS tapes of AOSTH and the OVA and even got to watch SATAM on air in Syria during my summer breaks when it had long been absent from any American networks. At the same time I was playing Adventure 1 and 2 on my uncle's Dreamcast and a few years later tuning into Sonic X every Saturday morning. The stories in these games aren't sacred to me and I'd be more than happy with adaptations that improve them, but I'm also grown enough now to have seen this franchise change over time and know which parts of it I like. The novelty of seeing Hollywood Sonic was fun with the first movie but these characters are not recognizable to me, the cinematography and action choreography is average, and I find the comedy actively detrimental to the experience.

I'm glad the OVA came up because I think it's a perfect comparison point - the setting is wildly "inaccurate" but it's cool and fun to engage with in a way that "Small Town, USA" is not. I don't think the disappointed fans are upset about inaccuracy, I think they just don't like Hollywood CGI-Live Action family comedies and slapping in a CGI character that looks like Sonic isn't going to change that.

 

I would still say not really. If we stick to Disney for just a moment, no other film cast or writing after Aladdin matched the frantic energy that Robin brought to Genie. The spin off projects where Dan Castella took over tried to emulate Robin but they mostly fell flat. The other Disney films following Aladdin also didn't match it either. The closest I would say in terms of casting matching Robin's energy and humor would be Eddie Murphy as Mushu in Mulan. The humor from Genie was entirely the result of Robin's performance . They created Genie for Robin Williams rather than cast him after the fact like most films these days.

Emperor's New Groove definitely took it over the top, but that was 8 years later and the result of a rushed production after numerous delays.

I'm not saying you implied that, but I wouldn't attribute Aladdin as a changing point. If you said it started with Shrek (which came out 9 years later) I'd be agree with you. The garbage humor and output you're describing are the result of the low quality content from the lower tier studios that spawned during the early CG era when almost every studio wanted to jump into the "new genre" with their own animation production. CG opening the field to more garbage scripts is where I wouod say this started. DreamWorks definitely started to lean in to that hard after Shrek and they ended up falling off. Illumination's entire filmography is nothing but that which is why everyone was worried about Mario. The less said about Sony projects not by Lord and Miller the better.

 

Sonic is also very derivative of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball itself takes inspiration from several places, including Journey to the West, which is hundreds of years old. Even the oldest of literature references its peers.

This is a great point to bring up because that kind of "environmental" or "design" inspiration doesn't really bug me, but the loud direct dialog really does.

Sure the Death Egg is really obvious, but I think if Sonic had dialog that really loudly declared this was like Star Wars it'd be annoyed.

I guess it's the packaging for me. Been annoyed with it since Superhero movies started leaning into that Whedon-style writing.

And here I was a bit back defending SA1 when it had "Aw yeah! This is happenin'!" in it, lol.

Guess it's a really specific dislike of mine.

 

Lol one of my favorite thing about going back to older Looney Tunes, Simpsons, and Family Guy episodes after I got more into classic movies, TV, and books, is all the stuff I appreciate more now because I realize the references. Sometimes they can be very subtle or a deep cut then I end up doing that pointing at TV meme when I catch it.

In relation to the topic about Sonic, I don't think Paramount cares if these movies have a long shelf life or not. As we can see from their other film franchises based on children's cartoons (Transformers, TMNT, GI Joe) they do not mind rebooting or revamping their franchises every so often.

As long as they are in charge and as long as the franchise doesn't go under I'm 100% certain this won't be the last version of the characters to make it to film.

So if people still watch these movies in 15 years, great, (and the fact that this is Carrey only trilogy will be very notable as time goes on), if not they'll have a new version for us by then.

 

There is definitely a difference between using popular iconography and quippy pop-culture references. One is artsy and can outlive the thing it's referencing, and the other is lazy and often dates the movie making it less fun to watch as time goes on. It's like watching an 80's sitcom and not knowing who any of the guest stars are. It detracts from the story much moreso than if they weren't famous and the story was written to stand on its own rather than on the star power of the guest star.

 

I don't know why it's so wrong to want a movie you can point to and say "That's Sonic Adventure 2, that's how it feels, that's Shadow the Hedgehog as I know him, I hope you love it too", isn't the whole point of cheering on these movies to have what you actually love be loved by more people?
It was so fucking cool to see The Last Of Us so faithfully adapted to a format more people will be able to see and appreciate it and even having some of its more extreme changes be something that elevates the experience even more instead of betraying it in favor of something that misses what made it successful in the first place.

I also don't really like that my attempts to express how I think they fumbled at trying to marry this previously different version of Sonic into the story of SA2 is boiled down to fanfiction when the whole series so far has had "here's my 20 new human characters, the Chaos Emeralds are inside the Master Emerald, and Sonic and Knuckles already have Chaos energy inside them, and Knuckles gets the Flames of Disaster which is actually a super cool fire power up, also Sonic's mom is a super cool owl" and is more fanfiction-y than my relatively tame suggestion that "yeah maybe Biolizard could be something a little different while serving the same role", this is the place we're at, we're allowed to do different things I thought?

And if people don't think it's worth it to have something to point to and say "this is an authentic SA2 experience made for everyone" over "good enough for a kid's movie" and nobody's really enthused by what "my" Sonic 3 would have been, we're back to "why live", because what's the point of life if you can't share what you love with anyone. I can't even tell people to go play SA2 instead of watching Sonic 3 because it's not available anywhere the audience of Sonic 3 would have any way to use it.

Idk if people still don't know what the fuck I'm saying I guess that's my last shot at trying to say anything at all.

 

Yup, pretty much had this in mind.

Adaptations that do their own thing are my personal preference because I generally find more rigid ones pretty boring.

There is nothing wrong with wanting that even if I think that approach comes with its own potential issues.

(I think a lot about the Ghost in The Shell adaptation – it took all of those very iconic moments and put them together so very rigidly, yet somehow still didn't get the source at all. I never watched it in full because it didn't even get the foundational ideas of that series correct, but it had all of the imagery, though!)

Movie 3 just never promised one, so I personally didn't expect one. Sorry you didn't get one and whoever wishes for a more 1:1 CD or Heroes adaption from Sonic 4 probably won't get one, either.

 

And we're back to "it sounds like you want to commit suicide because 8 year olds cannot play Sonic Adventure 2 on any modern platforms", which is fucking concerning, man.

 

It's available on Steam

 

I don't know how to react to that part of this discussion, yet I feel like I should because it feels so serious/uncomfortable/wierd.

It's a game/movie, why these exclamations?

 

finally a reason to live

 

Personally, I think this particular aspect is inherently impossible because the biolizard serves no role other than Random Final Boss Monster, which would play even less well with movie audiences than it would for a game audience (and, at least in my case, didn't play well with me as a member of that game audience lol)

I agree that they changed a lot about the setting and that many of those changes are inherently unnecessary, but it's also the reality that the first movie set up so many things differently that it is basically outright impossible to get back to where the games are, so people are naturally happy that even with starting off on like Mars in terms of distance from its canon and the game canon, it managed to get closer to that than any of us imagined when the first movie came out. And additionally, yeah, it's getting people old and new hyped for Shadow again, which means they stand a good chance of playing the available games he's in (which includes SA2, which as previously stated is indeed on Steam), which means they do experience the original story.

Like, I thought the first movie was alright and would've definitely had less of a positive opinion if Carrey's Eggman and matching-his-freak Stone weren't in there, or if Tom and Maddie weren't so charming, but I also wasn't very enthused with potential future movies following the exact same dull "live action kids movie with wacky CG character that gets them into trouble" formula. Cringe "Fellow Kids" scenes aside, it has been kind of insane that they have managed to stray further and further from that formula with each new movie, to the point where kids are legit getting hyped af for Super Saiyan Hedgehogs In Space.

 

It also saw a massice increase in players around the movie release, actually achieving all time high in concurrent players.

More people actually got to play the game because they loved the movie, this is a cause of celebration.

 

No, the audience of Sonic 3 is clearly everyone because everyone says so, so I wanna kill myself because the 8 year olds AND everyone else can't play Sonic Adventure 2 on any modern platforms. Get it right.

For who I'd be telling "play SA2 instead", it's very likely even people who have a Steam Deck aren't that big a part of the audience, on top of PCs being uncommon these days in general, so steam doesn't count, I should have kept that part in but for some stupid reason when I wanna cut down my word count I cut any parts where I preemptively address anything like that.

I already provided alternative buildups and justifications (thematic and otherwise) in the post where I suggest Biolizard can work. He's a part of the past turned into Gerald's final servant & a showcase of the darkness his mission and later grief has driven him to despite Maria's own wishes, and what Shadow could Be/ultimately isn't. I feel like you couldn't get a much better something - to - fight - at - the - end for a "DBZ fight" in place of GUN robots they build into the cannon they built for some reason and "Gerald's Just Still Alive for a reason we cut so he's here too" than that. Unless Gerald is just an AI singularity now built into some robot body or the cannon (lacks real effort) or you combine SA2 and Shadow into one story where Black Doom was here the whole time instead of Gerald. which they also didn't do. In this same hypothetical version of the movie there'd be way more happening in the flashbacks and room to set him up, so if society doesn't like that then that's a problem with society and not the combination of storytelling and spectacle. This is deviations serving the story at hand and building up an aspect that could be said to be weak in the original through a combination of text and subtext. And to repeat myself there's still so much more to fill in in a new way with all the characters trying to collect the emeralds that can be almost anywhere you want for a unique setpiece.

 

I looked at it and it's a pretty big increase, too. It usually hovered around 100ish players quite a bit ago, went up to 200-300 the past few years, but last few months have been 500, 800 and 700ish players respectively.

It's not an "staggering" increase, but pretty big for a pretty old game.

Didn't think to really think about it. I was one of the people, too because I bought it during the winter sale.

Shadow Gens and Movie 3 hype are part of why I truly got back into the series.

This thread is now really making me want to fire up the Adventure games again even if I just finished them.

Though, truth is there is still all of the emblems, missions and going for 100%.