Sonic the Hedgehog Cinematic Universe Thread (& Knuckles)

I have a feeling we might get a trailer for Knuckles series in TGA.

 

I heard somewhere that he said he MIGHT return to play Eggman again in the third movie, if he likes the script.

 

If we don't get to see Maria get mag-dumped by a GUN soldier I'll riot.

 

I've pretty much dropped any idea that the movie will actually adapt SA2, or any idea that that story could be told in a way I'd really like it to be told in general. I think I've just come up with what I think would be the "perfect" version of it and I know it won't ever come together the way I imagine.

 

Wouldn’t it be wild if Perfect Chaos was the ultimate life form Prototype?

 

The first Rated R Sonic movie, JUST because of all the blood squibs used in that scene. It's like the beginning of Robocop. The rest of the movie is parfectly family-friendly. LOL

You MIGHT be right? But SA2 is probably THE most famous Sonic story, and it's a story all about Shadow. This movie is about Shadow and the logo is essentially the SA2 logo... so I'm kind of expecting us to get a reinterpretation of SA2 that is designed to hit the most famous story beats and most iconic moments.

My guess is that AT-LEAST Sonic will run away from a Gun Truck, Shadow will run on the Golden Gate Bridge, there will be a showdown in Space, some sort of Space Lazer, Shadow will be seeking revenge on the world for the death of someone he loved killed in a government coverup, and in the end will be talked back from the edge and agree to help save the world from some issue he created (hopefully involving a giant monster) and we'll get dual Super Hedgehogs.

Oh, and if JimBotnik is back, he'll have to reluctantly team up with Sonic and Shadow in the end as well.

I could be wrong, but this seems like an easy slam dunk as long as they have the budget. The previous movies had much less to go on in terms of plot, and the previous movie really did hit most of the key points of Sonic 3K's story from a character perspective. They just didn't have Angel Island since the movie takes place on our Earth, and they changed the nature of the Master Emerald and it's relation to Knuckles a bit.

 

The biggest reason I do this is to sort of untether myself from the typical expectation/request that they put city escape or live and learn in. I honestly can't imagine reasons they would because I can't imagine a scenario where everything they've set up to this point naturally comes to that point. Things could probably change once Knuckles is out but from my perspective I'm thinking they're going to pull from the game in a more superficial / homage capacity, the same way stuff like the Mushroom Planet is only really a homage to Mushroom Hill and the Labyrinth fight is a recontextualized version of Hidden Palace without being Hidden Palace and the Echidnas had something to do with the chaos emeralds but it's completely different to what you'd expect.
Basically I don't think Maria is a factor, I don't think the Ark is involved (they'll probably simplify it to Shadow being sealed on and basing on prison Island and it being abandoned since he was sealed), I doubt GUN will be after Sonic in any capacity, and I think maybe there's a certain twist on the story that would more logically fit in to the universe that nobody's considering.

 

Chaos as the being that Shadow was derived from would make a lot more sense than the Biolizard IMO, even if it in practice means that it'd come out nowhere.

 

I understand and respect tempering expectations 100%.

Novel incoming for those interested in my reasoning, but there's a TL;DR at the bottom for the more sane amongst us. LOL.

We'll have to see, but my expectations are a little different because I think the Sonic movie series is coming out at an interesting time where the film industry thought on video game adaptations is actively changing.

We went from Sonic 1 being pretty superficially Sonic to the point where at the beginning of its production, Sonic didn't even look like Sonic. The Green Hill Zone and Echidna stuff were last minute additions. At the end of the day, the first movie is a road trip to get Sonic's rings. Sonic makes friends and beats Robotnik.

Flash forward to Sonic 2. Now we have Tails, Knuckles, the Master Emerald, Chaos Emeralds, the Tornado, GUN, super forms, Labyrinth Zone, and a fight with a giant Death Egg Robot. That's a WHOLE lot more Sonic than the previous movie, and the movie was a success. They had to cram in so much more lore into the second movie so fast that they kinda rushed through developing Sonic & Tails' friendships and did several exposition sequences. And the plot of Sonic Movie 2 is literally the Sonic 3 plot with some obvious changes because there's no Angel Island: Knuckles works with Robotnik, Robotnik betrays Knux to get the Master Emerald, Knux works with Sonic to recover the Master Emerald from Robotnik.

Now we have the Mario movie which was just 100% non-stop Mario. Imagery, music, characters, locations, everything was Super Mario through-and-through save the odd 80s pop song. And that movie MADE. BANK.

SO, if I'm Paramount at this point, I'm seeing that staying true to the source material and including a LOT of it is super popular and super profitable. It's showing in my films and in the films of my competitors. So while adapting one of the most iconic Sonic games of all time, I'm sticking as close as I can to SA2 and giving the people what they want.

I agree, though, the ARK is kind of a long shot. And they're not blowing the moon in half, as sick as that would be. But I do expect Maria and at-least the Gun Truck chase. They might not have the City Escape song in the movie, but it'd be a huge mistake. People cheered when The Living Tombstone song played at the end of the Five Nights at Freddy's movie.

TL;DR: This Sonic film series has been rapidly becoming more and more like the source material between Movie 1 Pre-production to Movie 2's release, and the super-faithful Mario movie made a literal billion dollars. Faithful adaptations filled with references make money, and I'm sure Paramount sees that at this point and I believe they'll be chasing that in movie 3.

I could be wrong. I just like theorizing about this stuff.

 

Excuse me, @Lambda, for being nitpicky, but...
Your definition of "faithful" is regarding a source material's spirit or so?
Because none of those films was "faithful" to any of the games' stories.
They had some locations, elements and character details, but that's all.

 

Fair criticism, and I think you're correct.

I'm saying they're "faithful" because they feel like their respective properties, not because they're 1:1 retellings of specific plots.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting a shot-for-shot remake of SA2. I don't think Knuckles and Rouge will be doing emerald shard hunting, Tails won't be chasing the president down the highway, I kinda doubt we're going to do the whole pyramid thing, and I doubt we'll have the ARK.

What I do think they'll get right are the things the average person who played SA2 thinks of when you say "Sonic Adventure 2" to them. City Escape, Chaos Control, and a recognizable version of Shadow's backstory including experiments, coverups, and Maria.

Shadow is prettymuch the only Sonic character with a backstory, afterall.

How they'll handle everything else is anyone's guess. They have a LOT more story to directly draw from for this film. They might use it, and they might not.

 

That might've actually been SEGA's problem with Shadow after 06.
Him being a more structured character, with backstory and all, might've made it hard for SEGA to figure how to deal with him.

 

I agree, 100%.

IMHO, he needs to either still not be over Maria, or he needs to lighten up a bit and take himself a little less seriously.

I prefer the latter and think it could be done well without Shadow ceasing to be Shadow. 06 and the end of SA2 kinda rode this line, IMHO.

Right now he's an angsty loner with no real reason to be angsty, and a lifetime of experience proving that being a loner doesn't benefit him at all. It makes him feel immature and irrational, when he's supposed to feel like one of the more mature characters in the cast.

It's kinda dumb, but it is what it is.

 

Right. That "upwards trend" from Movie 1 Pre-production to Movie 1 release to Movie 2 release is kind of what I'm talking about, and the Mario Movie's financial success has got to be motivating Paramount as well.

I'm essentially expecting Movie 3 to be better than Movie 2, because Movie 2 was better than Movie 1, which was better than what Movie 1 was planned to be before we all made a stink and they changed it.

 

I don't imagine that the film will incorporate every element of SA2 into it, but I don't think they would go so far as to dump Maria. She's the reason Shadow was created, and the reason Shadow is out for revenge, without her they would need to come up with a new reason for his existence and a new motivation for wanting to destroy the world (assuming that is his plan in the movie). I think it's more likely that Maria and Gerald will both be in the movie even if not necessarily on the ARK.

 

I hope we get movie 4 eventually purely so it flushes Sonic 4 (the game) out of google search results so we can all just pretend it was just a bad dream that never happened.

 

I'm expecting the most superficial, consumer-friendly interpretation of SA2's story for this film. No way in hell is it going to be a 1:1 adaptation because this film series is not and never has been interested in being an adaptation of Sonic, but just using its elements to tell an otherwise different story entirely. I expect it to hit all of SA2's story beats, but they're not going to hit the same probably, generally because the context and meaning could be interpreted differently.

Just have cool CG fight scenes, an orchestral version of Live and Learn and Sonic fans will eat it up regardless of anything else that's thrown in here.

 

Fifty years ago in Green Hills, Montana a G.U.N. agent spilled a hot chicken & gnocchi soup from Olive Garden on Maria's favorite dress.

Due to Gerald Robotnik altering of Shadow's memory to get revenge on the world for being convicted because of tax evasion, he doesn't remember Maria's words of "dont worry about it, when you're here, you're family" to "the soup has spilled, only chaos is next for humanity."

 

I guess we found Tyson Hesse's alt account, everyone. The movie's leaked.