Sonic the Hedgehog Cinematic Universe Thread (& Knuckles)

As someone who works in retail, products also can be marked as unreleased, not to be sold, and wouldn't go through at the register. It makes me wonder if the trailer was meant to release in June or July.

 

Transformers One (Paramount) first trailer was in April btw, 5 months before the movie comes out in September. Tyson Heese did say animated movies release trailers get released a little further out because they have their assets ready sooner but...

I know every movie is different but I follow this stuff and couldn't find many examples of movies that wouldn't at least have a poster out by now. When I made my initial post that's actually all I said.

I wasn't even asking where the trailer was, I legit was just wondering why we didn't have a poster or anything. Again I'll trust Paramount but I don't think it was wrong to speculate. Isn't that the point of a forum?

 

Toys and other merch are part of the marketing so them getting released months before the film isn't unusual. The fun ones are when plot details are leaked beforehand like the Legendary Godzilla toys always revealing the mystery monster designs before they were officially revealed.

Bruh come on

 

I joined fairly recently, and that was still the case.

 

Zeph already posted the title treatment was promoted on February 2th. Before that there was a teaser image on November 29th. And I posted a whole spreadsheet showing a number of titles with short windows. These are some very clear examples.

It's fine to speculate and ask questions, that's how people learn. But it's annoying when people decide to have a battle of egos and cement themselves into their starting positions. It makes it awkward for anyone else to jump in and comment.

 

Rumours in general suck, but in this case I'd say it shows people are pretty excited.

Not a necessarily bad thing.

 

Why even put them on shelves?

I don’t think a trailer was supposed to come out for this yet but generally speaking I’m surprised how toys that are clearly not supposed to be available (like with GB) are sent out to any retailers.

You’d think they’d be prevented from leaving the manufacturers until a certain time. Not that it’s a huge deal. It’s just kind of weird.

 

Employees that aren't paid enough to care. Simple as that. Either it gets caught at the register, or people get the toys early!

 

Worked in a BestBuy warehouse for years. Boxes that aren't meant to be put on shelves are always marked with a release date but very frequently people just don't look, or need to make room for inventory elsewhere. As for why the merch ends up going out early, shelf space is very competitive and if there's a window during a peak season you have to pounce or you'll miss your window. With Christmas coming up everybody is vying for toy shelf space and the earlier you can stake your claim the longer you can ride it out for the holidays.

 

Hell, I worked at Best Buy very recently for years and this was still the case. A lot of times it was just human error by either misreading the box, not seeing the label, getting distracted and forgetting… but many times we would receive an email from corporate or even the company themselves with a hard date for SKUs to go out on the shelf, usually much sooner than you’d expect after receiving them in freight.

 

Cruising down the Targets every day until I get my Shadow figure...

 

So it was already known that Japanese police were set to appear in Sonic 3 thanks to these film set photo leaks from last year

But there's further confirmation that Japan is not only a location that will appear in the movie, but a rather major one at that, as the translation of the movie's full title in Japanese is "Sonic x Shadow: Tokyo Mission"

 

So they're going even further with game/movie synchronicity? Gotta raise that profit margin it seems.

Ironically, it seems that SxS Gens' purpose in the west is to promote Sonic 3, while in Japan it's the other way around.

 

Ha, so the third installment of a movie series about a character known for being fast is almost called "Tokyo Drift", how original. Would this make Shadow the furious?

 

This was the first thing that came into my mind

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Sounds interesting, but who in the world saw this coming? Sneaky spoiler alert.

I'm not expecting a close adaption of SA2 any more, which is fine by me, because the first two movies were also doing their own thing.

But the question now is, will it be the grand finale of a great trilogy or the beginning of the complete alienation of what made the movies so popular by milking it to shreds?

Refreshing, being completely left in the dark for once.

 

I wasn’t really expecting a SA2 adaptation exactly. Maybe there’s an Ark or Death Egg but it only appears as a giant object in the sky or shots in space.

I think the main villain/threat is either Metal Sonic or Chaos. Biolizard is not really iconic and was kind of random in the game imo. Although I don’t know if they’d go with 2 Sonic clones and Chaos would require a lot of CGI.

We’ll get a better idea from the trailer which I guess is almost here.

 

Yeah, something revolving around Chaos preferably should happen sometime soon. We have buildup for the previous two movies of a scuffle between the echidnae and owl armada, and a decent way to settle on what exactly spurred their demise would be to throw some Tikal-induced shenanigans into the mix. Would kinda blow if they stopped that momentum.

Also, Paramount has to make good use with Knuckles so their Idris Elba gold money doesn’t go to waste, and if it means sending him onto an Adventure-esque arc then that should prove reasonable, no?

The concern I have is that, due to the further influx of human characters, the film may suffer from a lack of focus. I probably expressed my feelings months before, but I just hope there’s enough time for everything in the film to breathe if we followed this hypothetical haha.

 

I don't think anything with Chaos will happen in the movies. He's a 1 off villain that really only works in the lore of the games. To unleash Chaos the Master Emerald needs to be shattered... But we have seen it shattered in Sonic 2, and it acts as a container for the Chaos Emeralds. Also the villains in the movies so far have always been iconic mainstays, Eggman, Knuckles, and Shadow. If anything the next villain to come in would either be Metal Sonic, Silver or...... Zavok

 

Haha yeah, I don’t think Chaos has a significant chance of appearing, it’d just be a smarter choice to build off of what’s already been established in comparison to other decisions.

I’m going to write down my current understanding of antagonist use cases in relation to the current Sonic movies - I’m speaking generally, so I implore folks to contribute if y’all have any additions or clarifications:


[Chaos]

• Would require a bit of the runtime to be dedicated to Knuckles reconnecting with Echidna heritage + Tikal interactions, depending on balance of the film could take away the limelight from other new characters.
• Water animation and rendering generally sucks. To do it on such a scale that, in order to make appealing for fans would require solid shots of a whole city, would be majorly exhausting to funds when that could probably be poured into characters instead.
• Nicely slots into a backstory that already exists.

[Silver]

• Time-travel shenanigans are in vogue within children’s media, so there’s incentive to include such in a film. Might make things confusing for audiences, though.
• A single character! That’s much easier to animate compared to a giant, elemental monster. I’ve messed around with physics in Blender before, how bad could portraying telekinesis be?
• How would be fit into the currently existing story? We already had a subplot where Knuckles was basically saying Sonic was the harbinger of all things awful due to his connection to Longclaw, might feel like a bit of a retread to do it essentially again. (I know that it’s a major simplification , it’s just the feeling that I’m trying to get across.)

[Iblis]

• I can barely follow along with the ‘06 plot as it is, so I’m leaving this mostly to your guys’ interpretation on whether it’s competent enough to adapt.
• Yet another giant elemental monster that’d cost a bunch to fully realize. We going to get a vaguely Italian city to pair it with, as well? A destroyed, fiery locale? That’s a lot of 3D environments / sets to produce for to make it fit within the setting we currently have.
• Already technically adapted via theatre in the Knuckles tv series. It’s kind of odd to punch the creature in a grossly comedic manner just to eventually gonna bring back as hypothetically serious opponent for a film… But, y’know, whatever works?

[Metal Sonic]

• Following up a rival character akin to Sonic with a rival character akin to Sonic (with an even more aggressive resemblance) right after it is certainly a creative choice one could make. Not terrible, just sort of Monster-of-the-Week-y.
• Single characters shouldn’t be too terrible to work with, unless they take a sort of Omnidroid direction with Metal, and having his model be continuously improved. Would make up for the lack of Silver Sonic and Mecha Sonic’s appearances (if that makes any logical sense?).
• Okay, follow me with this. I’m making the assumption that the Ark / Death Egg is going to be a significant location in the coming film, giant laser cannon threatening the Earth and all. Doctor Robotnik is going to want to use it, and in turn utterly fail. He’ll realize that all of his plans so far have never worked to stop that meddlesome hedgehog, and has an epiphany: If he can’t beat him, make him. I dunno about you, but that’s a decent enough continuation to this hypothetical.