Sonic The Hedgehog

[CoffeeHorse]

Box office update.

This is hilarious. No change from last time. It was still #3 for the weekend, beating the new Firestarter despite being in fewer theaters. Any theater manager who has to decide whether to keep Sonic 2 in their lineup has to really think about it. It struggles during the week (never leaving the top five for a single day though) but brings in solid money on weekends. It keeps humiliating new films in their debut weekends.

I have to agree that the family movie approach is helping. It's not making comic book money but it's not trying to. It occupies a space that has been kinda underserved for a long time now. Its only direct competition this whole season has been The Bad Guys. It seems like a lot of the industry got scared into thinking that if you're not Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, or Minions, the family movie market just isn't worth it.

All they needed to do was just make better movies.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Alright, I guess we don't have a thread for the original, so I'm going to put it here.

I finally got to watch the original last night, despite the universe still trying to stop me (first time I was going to go, there was literally the beginning of a global pandemic, followed by close to a year of lockdown. Last night I got 8 minutes in and my wifi crapped out. Came back though.)

The animation was incredible, and the story they told was fun enough. Different enough from the normal sonic conventions so that old fans would be interested to see it, and it would bring in news one. It was a very well done take on the "cartoon in real life" trope without being stupid about it.

I've got like three complaints:

1.) who the **** was the owl and why didn't they just use his parents?
2.) Why did they call him robotnik right off? Why not start with kintobor and then change his name in the final scene when he was staring into "the mirror"?
3.) A real robotnik is power hungry as well as unstoppably ingenius: he wouldn't have been running around doing missions on his own; he would have been pushing to incorporate his drone technology as widely as possible so that when it was fully impregnated into the world all he would have to do is flip a switch and be in total control.

Otherwise, yeah, not bad. Liked it, want to see the sequel now.

 

[Confuzor]

Sonic's parents are likely owned by Ken Penders now, or at least tied up in that mumbo jumbo. Best to ignore anything that might perk his ears.

 

[wonko the sane?]

God, I forgot completely that penders was being a pedant.

 

[Sabrblade]

1.) who the **** was the owl and why didn't they just use his parents?

Longclaw is an original character made for the movies. Sonic was given a brand new backstory to avoid any of that Penders nonsense.

2.) Why did they call him robotnik right off? Why not start with kintobor and then change his name in the final scene when he was staring into "the mirror"?

Because "Robotnik" is the name people recognize. If he were to ever outright change his name to anything in these movies, it'd be "Eggman" to mirror his adopting that name in the games.

Besides, Carrey plays him eccentrically enough to make the name work from the get-go.

3.) A real robotnik is power hungry as well as unstoppably ingenius: he wouldn't have been running around doing missions on his own; he would have been pushing to incorporate his drone technology as widely as possible so that when it was fully impregnated into the world all he would have to do is flip a switch and be in total control.

Robotnik isn't an evil megalomaniac with delusions of world-domination in the beginning of the first movie. He's just a mad genius with a big ego. His character journey in the first movie is to show how he becomes a megalomaniac bent on world-domination, but he's not full-on supervillain evil right out of the gate. It isn't until he is faced with the challenge of capturing the little alien hedgehog who's just as cocky and full-of-himself as he is, and who pushes Robotnik's buttons enough to finally push him over the edge into outright villainy.

 

[Zamuel]

I've got like three complaints:

1.) who the **** was the owl and why didn't they just use his parents?
2.) Why did they call him robotnik right off? Why not start with kintobor and then change his name in the final scene when he was staring into "the mirror"?
3.) A real robotnik is power hungry as well as unstoppably ingenius: he wouldn't have been running around doing missions on his own; he would have been pushing to incorporate his drone technology as widely as possible so that when it was fully impregnated into the world all he would have to do is flip a switch and be in total control.

Broadly, 1 and 2 (well, and 3) can be rather easily be answered by noting it isn't the same continuity. Similar to how superhero movies aren't the same canon as comic continuity. More specifically:

1) Longclaw is a brand new character. However, she's based on the owl wall carvings in the Labyrinth Zone stage. Her character get more elaboration in the second movie.
2) "Robotnik" is already an American creation that's different than the Japanese "Eggman". Kintobor would be an incredibly obscure reference for all but the oldest/most hardcore fans. The bigger issue is that simply using Robotnik and Eggman simplifies things for the runtime.
3) Robotnik was power hungry in the movie. The movie just leaned into his ego. Also, in the games he usually does do things on his own. Leaving things to others is usually either making henchmen do the work or double crossing someone else's plan.

Intriguingly, the end credits stinger for the second movie set up possibilities for versions of 2 and 3 to show up in the third movie.

EDIT: Wow, ninja'd.

---

Separate to the movie, I think there needs to be a decision on if this will be the movie thread or a general Sonic thread (and the title altered if the latter). It alters how spoilers should be handled.

 

[Shadewing]

As three has been firmly addressed:

1. Sega actively discourages sonic characters from having any kind of direct family nowadays; likely due to Penders bs. I suspoect the only reason Knuckles' Father gets shown is becuase 1. he definetly died 2. the scene is incredibly brief and doesn't bother to do anything but acknowledge Knuckle's had a family and again, are all dead.

2. Besides popularity; Robotnik fits in with the adventure game cannon, where his grandfather his Gerald Robotnik. I suspect a lot of stuff will be based on things from the games before any other media. Which furthers the point above as well.

 

[Sabrblade]

To all fans of the Sonic movies.

If you have Disney+ and have not yet watched the new Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers movie... GO WATCH IT! YOU NEED TO GO WATCH IT! RIGHT NOW! DO IT! NOW! IT'S GOT SOMETHING IMPORTANT RELATED TO THE SONIC MOVIES THAT YOU NEED TO SEE!!! YOU GOTTA! GO! GOTTA GO FAST!!

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Don't do it. It's a trap.

 

[Sabrblade]

Don't do it. It's a trap.

Nay, good fellow. It's AMAZING!

 

[wonko the sane?]

I'll admit it: what he's talking about; it was so bad it was good.

 

[Sabrblade]

An interesting analysis about what makes Sonic 2 work as a movie and not as just another "video game movie":

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I guess Paramount is very slightly vindicated in that they obviously never wanted to make a videogame movie in the first place. They just wanted to make a boilerplate The Movie to make a buck off the family market. But then something went horribly wrong until the internet bullied them into making it right.

What they didn't realize until they took a chance on it was that what we wanted wasn't incompatible with what they wanted.

 

[wonko the sane?]

"bullied them into making it right"

Finally: we're using this awesome means of communication properly.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

FWIW, I think one of the old Sonic bibles had an owl as Sonic's parental figure, and that ended up being carried over into the British book Stay Sonic.

So beyond (or in conjunction with) the imagery in the game, it could be an incredibly deep cut.

 

[The Doctor Who]

Also, like, Longclaw clearly isn't his actual parent, so, you know, we could still see them later.

 

[Pocket]

I'm less interested in what makes it different from other "video game movies"—because it barely qualifies as one—and what makes it different from the other movies it's actually modeled after, which is the plague of live-action-but-with-a-CG-version-of-a-famous-cartoon-character movies of the late 2000s and 2010s. Because I can't point to any one obvious thing that Sonic did differently. It's tempting to focus on all the clever references, but that feels about as reductive as those people who pointed to stuff like the Big Lebowski cameos as reasons adults latched onto Friendship Is Magic back in the day.

 

[The Doctor Who]

I think a big reason for the success is that they aren't afraid to focus on the CG characters as people first and effects second. Sonic, Tails and Knuckles are all treated as if they're real, living characters, which I feel like most of the previous iterations of this have shied away from.

 

[Zamuel]

I'm less interested in what makes it different from other "video game movies"—because it barely qualifies as one—and what makes it different from the other movies it's actually modeled after, which is the plague of live-action-but-with-a-CG-version-of-a-famous-cartoon-character movies of the late 2000s and 2010s. Because I can't point to any one obvious thing that Sonic did differently.

To summarize the vid above, it's simply a good movie that cares about it's characters and isn't only a rehash. But something the video didn't say that's part of this is that the movie doesn't wink at us. It doesn't spend time patting itself on the back and shouting "aren't you nostalgic for this thing?!?"

What Sonic did differently is that it didn't suck.

 

[MrBlud]

I think a big reason for the success is that they aren't afraid to focus on the CG characters as people first and effects second. Sonic, Tails and Knuckles are all treated as if they're real, living characters, which I feel like most of the previous iterations of this have shied away from.

Very much.

That is (among others) one of Transformers big problems. The robots are not treated as characters. They expected us to be sad Ironhide died but he had less dialog over three movies than Sonic did in his first ten minutes of screen time.

Bumblebee seemed to learn this lesson only for Rise of the Beasts to disregard it totally by shoving in fifteen robots and four? factions.

It’s super maddening because IDWv1 solved pretty much all of this by having a small infiltration team and holomatter avatars which would allow you to have characters without needing $15,000 and three weeks of rendering time.