Sonic Live Action Movie Thread (Read OP for topic rules) "Trailer 2 on Page 482)

[Remynaka]

22 minutes ago, Shiroi said:

If indeed this was an early version of the final design I’ve got to say it doesn’t look that bad. The eyes are a bit weird but apart from that I’m OK with this.

Hopefully the final design is as close to this as possible.

I wouldn't be ok with that. It sounds like the animators are just lazy and dont want to keep him on model. :c

[Polkadi~☆]

4 minutes ago, Remynaka said:

I wouldn't be ok with that. It sounds like the animators are just lazy and dont want to keep him on model. :c

Character designers. The character designers are just lazy.

The animators did nothing, and are forced (and paid) to move around whatever is the final monster puppet design.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

6 hours ago, Dejimon11 said:

So um Idk what to believe at this point 

 

Also...why has everyone ruled out that this could be fake?

We have seen fantastic fakes in the past, it will not surprise me if this is another one.

[Jango]

3 hours ago, I Love Sticks said:

Lol if he likes it, it must mean he's paid by Paramount, obviously. I don't wanna defend him though, I think furry modern could have worked on the movie just fine.

I still don't like the concept. Although Milo Ventimiglia as a cop is something I didn't know I wanted, but I'm perfect with the cast we got, it's the best part of the movie for me.

I made the exageration on purpose to make a point. 

In a way or another, there's people ready to pay for any thing a franchise they like put on the market, even if it's clearly garbage (which this is). Every franchise has these, Sonic is no exception. It's just bad because when movies like this and Venom make money, the bar is set pretty low, and the devs get lazy, less creative and the final product will either be "just okay" or "outright bad". 

I don't get what's wrong with SEGA, last year they put on the market Sonic Mania, which is a quality product that... Guess what? Made super well! It's good for both sides. But now they're doing this. The thing isn't even out and people already making fun and hating it. If it's bad but it makes money, it's only good for them, it's money after all, whatever people think of the brand or the 25+ years IP that it's dear to so many, right?

I for one hope this bombs hard and SEGA realize, just like they did in 2006, that they can't get away with a bad product and good products like Sonic Mania also do well and make money. I'd rather have my product called "the best Sonic game ever" than "the worst videogame adaption since Super Mario Bros."... 

[KoDaiko]

Eh...I'm sure it will succeed, even if it may be moderate. As long as they don't mess up big time, it's gonna be a harmless movie that is hated by the core fans but indifferent by the majority.

The fact it looks like any other live-action CG cartoon mascot film guarantees it. I'm sure those unfamiliar/hating Sonic (or one of those people who worship americanization/hollywood-izations) will say "OH! FINALLY IT LOOKS GOOD" because they assume anything live-action with decent enough CG and realism is better than the original cartoon. And like the emoji movie, people will go see it as a joke or to see if it's actually bad. 

[Rowl]

8 hours ago, Dejimon11 said:

So um Idk what to believe at this point 

This doesn't looks that terrible to me to be honest. I have accepted worst.

 

 

[Unidus]

5 hours ago, PeterPancake said:

His shoes are very detailed 

Could've at least given him socks though, right? 

[Lord-Dreamerz]

I feel the so called teddy-bear Sonic from the early concept poster is actually fairly better then what we can make out from the current silhouette poster + legs only poster. While neither design are ideal... however at least teddy bear Sonic's head size is more realistic proportion wise to his body and doesn't look like a naked blue bodybuilding child wearing a huge fake mascot head resulting in a still very unrealistic and odd half-chibi bobblehead design. If one must make Sonic more realistic... then shrinking his head down in size little makes good enough logic.

[Tornado]

20 hours ago, PeterPancake said:

Technically 4, if you seperate the Adventure era from the Modern era like many do.

No, not "technically 4." Technically and officially Sonic has had probably a dozen; one for each different type of media he has a appeared in. People who are mostly just aware of Sonic from a point of view of character design not noticing much difference between his Classic or Modern appearance and his supposed appearance in this film probably wouldn't even be aware of most of them. Casual fans of the series don't even necessarily acknowledge (be it through ignorance or refusal to accept the retcons Sega threw out when they functionally rebooted the series with Sonic Adventure) the difference between Sonic in the Genesis games and Sonic in the Genesis games as those games were presented by Sega of America. Ohshima probably wouldn't have been too happy with SoA's changes and the wild derivations therein to his original designs either, but up until Sonic Adventure they were officially the same thing as the game one and probably all someone with casual knowledge of Sonic would know anyway.

 

Going a bit further:

Quote

Dreamcast, Modern and Boom

You're talking about design, and Sonic's design specifically at that. We're not talking about gameplay or tone or place in the series hierarchy.

 

 

 

These are not obviously different characters. Boom Knuckles is what everyone got pissed about when Boom was announced, for those who even cared; but no one had a coronary about Boom Sonic's arms being blue or Amy wearing a different dress or Tails being exactly the fucking same. Sonic is in fact so similar that I hadn't even remembered that his arms were blue in Boom until I grabbed that image. They were seen as unnecessary changes certainly (but even at the time I found it hard to entertain the arguments that anyone other than Knuckles were actually worse), but it's not even in the timezone of the TMNT images you posted. It's like arguing that Princess Peach is a notably different character design in Mario Tennis because she wears athletic clothes instead of her dress. So in this discussion that still leaves two, which Sega themselves have reinforced several times over the past 8 years or so: Classic (and the things a casual fan may conflate with Classic Sonic since they were notably different but close enough and treated as the same thing by Sega at the time regardless), and Modern (and the things a casual fan may conflate with Modern since they are barely different, like Boom for most of the characters and STH '06).

 

Now speaking of those TMNT images you posted, people who were casual fans of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could, just in the time I've been a casual fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since the early 90s, been exposed to and/or are possibly aware of:

1. The 1984 comic
2. The completely different looking 1987 series (and its comic adaptation)
3. The completely different looking (and concurrent to the above two) movie series
4. The completely different looking 2003 series (including its finale movie that discussed all of the above things as the main thrust of its plot)
5. The completely different looking but technically-related-to-the-above-films 2007 movie
6. The completely different looking 2012 series

None of those shared much in the way of design work or aesthetics with any of the other ones, so BayTurtles (with again another concept for character designs and aesthetics) is only another significantly different set of design parameters in an IP rife with them. At the very least, any kid growing up in the early 90s would have known about the 1987 series and the completely different looking 1990s movies and recognized that they were the same franchise..

 

 

 

I can raise more examples if need be. While I hated Arise anyway, not every Ghost in the Shell property needs to be a slave to Stand Alone Complex and its aesthetics because there are already plenty of different designs of the core characters that a new one would be easily understood, even if their complaints are usually that they'd rather just have more SAC. Mega Man is the same way, no matter how much hollering that SSMB thread liked to pretend otherwise. There's an inherent ability to better comprehend aesthetic changes in an IP that has already had quite a few than there is with one that treats a bunch of similar ones as the same thing, treats an even closer one as completely different and reinforces the single main deviation in style in the series' history to the extent of making it a plot point in several games.

[PeterPancake]

I prefer the final design. The beta one looks more like a custom Carebear modeled to look like Sonic. And it's also very cartoony, which runs contradictory to Miller stressing how he wanted to ground Sonic in the real world. If they were gonna make Sonic look like Yogi Bear 2010 a year ago, then they might as well have used the game design. 

[Tarnish]

Don't tell me I'm the only one..

[Lord-Dreamerz]

17 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

And it's also very cartoony

It's not really any more cartoony then what we can make out from the supposedly final design so far. There is nothing realistic about a giant cartoony animal head on top a small blue neutered naked human muscular body.

[GentlemanX]

I actually like the look of the concept art? one. He doesn't have the muscles or human appendages, the fur is smoother, and the face is cartoony. To be honest, if Sega saw this, I'm surprised they'd approve something else.

[PeterPancake]

32 minutes ago, Tornado said:

No, not "technically 4." Technically and officially Sonic has had probably a dozen; one for each different type of media he has a appeared in. People who are mostly just aware of Sonic from a point of view of character design not noticing much difference between his Classic or Modern appearance and his supposed appearance in this film probably wouldn't even be aware of most of them. Casual fans of the series don't even necessarily acknowledge (be it through ignorance or refusal to accept the retcons Sega threw out when they functionally rebooted the series with Sonic Adventure) the difference between Sonic in the Genesis games and Sonic in the Genesis games as those games were presented by Sega of America. Ohshima probably wouldn't have been too happy with SoA's changes and the wild derivations therein to his original designs either, but up until Sonic Adventure they were officially the same thing as the game one and probably all someone with casual knowledge of Sonic would know anyway.

 

Going a bit further:

You're talking about design, and Sonic's design specifically at that. We're not talking about gameplay or tone or place in the series hierarchy.

 

 

 

These are not obviously different characters. Boom Knuckles is what everyone got pissed about when Boom was announced, for those who even cared; but no one had a coronary about Boom Sonic's arms being blue or Amy wearing a different dress or Tails being exactly the fucking same. Sonic is in fact so similar that I hadn't even remembered that his arms were blue in Boom until I grabbed that image. They were seen as unnecessary changes certainly (but even at the time I found it hard to entertain the arguments that anyone other than Knuckles were actually worse), but it's not even in the timezone of the TMNT images you posted. It's like arguing that Princess Peach is a notably different character design in Mario Tennis because she wears athletic clothes instead of her dress. So in this discussion that still leaves two, which Sega themselves have reinforced several times over the past 8 years or so: Classic (and the things a casual fan may conflate with Classic Sonic since they were notably different but close enough and treated as the same thing by Sega at the time regardless), and Modern (and the things a casual fan may conflate with Modern since they are barely different, like Boom for most of the characters and STH '06).

 

Now speaking of those TMNT images you posted, people who were casual fans of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could, just in the time I've been a casual fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since the early 90s, been exposed to and/or are possibly aware of:

1. The 1984 comic
2. The completely different looking 1987 series (and its comic adaptation)
3. The completely different looking (and concurrent to the above two) movie series
4. The completely different looking 2003 series (including its finale movie that discussed all of the above things as the main thrust of its plot)
5. The completely different looking but technically-related-to-the-above-films 2007 movie
6. The completely different looking 2012 series

None of those shared much in the way of design work or aesthetics with any of the other ones, so BayTurtles (with again another concept for character designs and aesthetics) is a significantly different set of design parameters in an IP. At the very least, any kid growing up in the early 90s would have known about the 1987 series and the completely different looking 1990s movies and recognized that they were the same franchise. The ability to instantly understand something to be part of a franchise is far more built in for a 25 year old franchise that reinvents itself practically every 5 years than it is for one where the biggest change the series has had in the past twenty was taking the main character, changing his arm color and wrapping him in ace bandages.

 

 

 

I can raise more examples if need be. While I hated Arise anyway, not every Ghost in the Shell property needs to be a slave to Stand Alone Complex and its aesthetics because there are already plenty of different designs of the core characters that a new one would be easily understood, even if their complaints are usually that they'd rather just have more SAC. Mega Man is the same way, no matter how much hollering that SSMB thread liked to pretend otherwise. There's an inherent ability to better comprehend aesthetic changes in an IP that has already had quite a few than there is with one that treats a bunch of similar ones as the same thing, treats an even closer one as completely different and reinforces the single main deviation in style in the series' history to the extent of making it a plot point in several games.

I guess this is a fairpoint. Still, even though the TMNT had more changes and variations than Sonic, the Bayturtles designs were still radically different from anything that came before. The core design of TMNT had alway remained the same through different adaptations (Knee/elbow pads, bandana and an Obi) the Bay ones radically deviated from the established guidelines that all TMNT followed and added a bunch of mess and clutter, made them look like men in makeup with those godawful faces. 

 

All in saying is that Sonic doesn't look THAT bad. Even if the Turtles changing has more precedent than him 

18 minutes ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

It's not really any more cartoony then what we can make out from the supposedly final design so far. There is nothing realistic about a giant cartoony animal head on top a small blue neutered naked human bodybuilder's body.

Real animals have muscles in their limbs. Cheetahs for example are known to be the fastest mammal on Earth and they almost alway have developed thighs/legs to accommodate:

 

You look at Track runners like Usain Bolt and you see developed leg muscles 

So yes, Sonic's final design does make more anatomical sense than the Teddy Bear one.

 What animal has plush arms and legs like that Sonic? I'm sorry, but that looked something that belongs in Blue's Clues or Sesame Street not an action comedy blockbuster. 

[Lord-Dreamerz]

10 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

So yes, Sonic's final design does make more anatomical sense than the Teddy Bear one.

Yet you ignore my main point about the head size? Nice try tho.

[PeterPancake]

4 minutes ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

Yet you ignore my main point about the head size? Nice try tho.

Lest you ignore my point about the body making more sense? M'kay. 

[Diogenes]

2 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

Lest you ignore my point about the body making more sense? M'kay. 

Nobody fuckin caaaares, dude. Sonic isn't a real thing. He was never designed to be biologically accurate. Giving him a buff little man's body doesn't actually make the superhumanly fast talking blue hedgehog biologically realistic.

[PeterPancake]

1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

Nobody fuckin caaaares, dude. Sonic isn't a real thing. He was never designed to be biologically accurate. Giving him a buff little man's body doesn't actually make the superhumanly fast talking blue hedgehog biologically realistic.

It grounds it in reality. He wanted to talk about realism/what makes sense in the real world, so let's just be honest. If Sonic WAS a real creature, it would look more like the design we have now. At least there is precedent for fast mammals developing In a similar way to Sonic. 

[Lord-Dreamerz]

4 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Giving him a buff little man's body doesn't actually make the superhumanly fast talking blue hedgehog biologically realistic.

To add to that. Some of these posters give the impression he is running at lightning speeds... especially with all the lightning effects! No matter how much muscle and buff one is... that alone won't make a person magically super human fast. Meaning it makes almost no difference if the character is buff or not if they have basically magic powers.

[Jango]

17 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

It grounds it in reality. He wanted to talk about realism/what makes sense in the real world, so let's just be honest. If Sonic WAS a real creature, it would look more like the design we have now. At least there is precedent for fast mammals developing In a similar way to Sonic. 

Liiiiiiike? 

[Sonic Fan J]

Before the talk of anatomy gets to far out of hand I would like to ask which part of this

or @Tornado's above post is based in realism to begin with to use as a basis for a live action design?

Much as I know most of us here don't like it, frankly on the basis of it not being one of the above examples, if the intention is to make something that would exist through natural evolution (let's not go there please as we all no nothing about Sonic is natural except in his own universe where he does not stand out) then at no point should we have expected Sonic the Hedgehog. If anything, it's a shame on us for thinking otherwise. Sonic is not real and cannot be real. It's just not possible with the laws of reality as we know and perceive them. If anything, I'd like to know how the filmmakers intend to convince anyone that this

is a realistic take of the above when it itself claims to be this

It just doesn't add up no matter how you try to spin it.

4 minutes ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

To add to that. Some of these posters give the impression he is running at lightning speeds... especially with all the lightning effects! No matter how much muscle and buff one is... that alone won't make a person magically super human fast. Meaning it makes almost no difference if the character is buff or not if they have basically magic powers.

Honestly the lightning just annoys me 'cuase it feels like an unimaginative borrowing of the Flash's look. They say they spent all of this time trying to figure out how to represent Sonic's speed and they just end up copying the flash. It's cheap as anything to me and just plain annoying. If you want to see what the speed of sound looks like here's an example

No lightning, no electricity, not even the ability without a high speed camera to actually see the moving object beyond the light of the rocket exhaust. The speed of sound is astounding and the representation in the Flash and what we are being hinted at for the movie is already unrealistic.

The problem with the whole idea of make something inherently so fantastical that it can't exist or even be represented in the real world as realistic is a fool's errand. That the Paramount team is giving it a shot say's they don't understand that and as a result it is no surprise that their output is still something fantastical that can't actually exist in any capacity in the real world. That they call it Sonic the Hedgehog when it is neither Sonic the Hedgehog as he is designed nor taking any cues from a real world hedgehog despite supposedly being made realistic tells a story that @PeterPancake has tried to tell us again and again. No one involved cares about anything but the cash and will bastardize everything and anything to get it. The fans and creators both be damned because market research says this will make them money and create brand awareness even if it has almost nothing in common with the brand. That's all that's wanted with this movie is money and brand awareness, and from what I can tell it will probably succeed.

3 minutes ago, Jango said:

Liiiiiiike? 

His cheetah post is the example of sprinting mammals developing detailed and defined musculature with the pic of an actual sprinter showing how that looks in human anatomy, which makes sense both because SOnicis a hedgehog (read animal) and the movie iteration has him built like a human.

[Kazhnuz]

TBH, blockbuster design doesn't really have to be entirely grounded in biological reality.

Sure, there are some changes to do and I don't think that just reusing the plastic-y design of the last games would work. But, I feel that here, it get to an uncanny valley where it just doesn't look good. I think it's not just because of the muscle to be frank, but the combination of the muscle and the plainess of just them being blue hairy legs, basically… heck, with the lacks of socks, it's in the same time more (with the muscle, and details on the shoes) and less (with the lack of big color distinction that the original design have thanks to the socks and the shoes design).

And for me it sucks especially because several days before, Detective Pikachu managed do make works being similar to the original design and being "realistic enough" way better (and it's also why I don't really think that blockbusters don't really need "biological realism" to be honest). And TBH, Detective Pikachu was a reason that made me more optimistic for this project, so I'm a bit disappointed about all this xD

For the shoes, I'm pretty surprised to be frank. I don't understand why the shoes are so bland when they could have been inspired by all the cool shoes design that exists in the Sonic saga. I mean, the famous SOAP shoes (and I mean, who would have been surprised about a product placement ?), or shoes more like Riders'. Here they are kinda… plain. And that's why what we have seen make me afraid of the final product, the mixt between plainess and realism create on it some kind of uncanny valley.

[PeterPancake]

12 minutes ago, Sonic Fan J said:

Before the talk of anatomy gets to far out of hand I would like to ask which part of this

or @Tornado's above post is based in realism to begin with to use as a basis for a live action design?

Much as I know most of us here don't like it, frankly on the basis of it not being one of the above examples, if the intention is to make something that would exist through natural evolution (let's not go there please as we all no nothing about Sonic is natural except in his own universe where he does not stand out) then at no point should we have expected Sonic the Hedgehog. If anything, it's a shame on us for thinking otherwise. Sonic is not real and cannot be real. It's just not possible with the laws of reality as we know and perceive them. If anything, I'd like to know how the filmmakers intend to convince anyone that this

is a realistic take of the above when it itself claims to be this

It just doesn't add up no matter how you try to spin it.

Honestly the lightning just annoys me 'cuase it feels like an unimaginative borrowing of the Flash's look. They say they spent all of this time trying to figure out how to represent Sonic's speed and they just end up copying the flash. It's cheap as anything to me and just plain annoying. If you want to see what the speed of sound looks like here's an example

No lightning, no electricity, not even the ability without a high speed camera to actually see the moving object beyond the light of the rocket exhaust. The speed of sound is astounding and the representation in the Flash and what we are being hinted at for the movie is already unrealistic.

The problem with the whole idea of make something inherently so fantastical that it can't exist or even be represented in the real world as realistic is a fool's errand. That the Paramount team is giving it a shot say's they don't understand that and as a result it is no surprise that their output is still something fantastical that can't actually exist in any capacity in the real world. That they call it Sonic the Hedgehog when it is neither Sonic the Hedgehog as he is designed nor taking any cues from a real world hedgehog despite supposedly being made realistic tells a story that @PeterPancake has tried to tell us again and again. No one involved cares about anything but the cash and will bastardize everything and anything to get it. The fans and creators both be damned because market research says this will make them money and create brand awareness even if it has almost nothing in common with the brand. That's all that's wanted with this movie is money and brand awareness, and from what I can tell it will probably succeed.

His cheetah post is the example of sprinting mammals developing detailed and defined musculature with the pic of an actual sprinter showing how that looks in human anatomy, which makes sense both because SOnicis a hedgehog (read animal) and the movie iteration has him built like a human.

I think this is more so how a creature on another planet could have THEORETICALLY evolved. And the only thing we have to go on is animal biology and anatomy on Earth

[ShadowSJG]

1 hour ago, PeterPancake said:

I prefer the final design. The beta one looks more like a custom Carebear modeled to look like Sonic. And it's also very cartoony, which runs contradictory to Miller stressing how he wanted to ground Sonic in the real world. If they were gonna make Sonic look like Yogi Bear 2010 a year ago, then they might as well have used the game design. 

What?! Why do you think a grounded real Sonic is a good idea? Realistic doesn't fit Sonic at all. Sonic is meant to be cartoony.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

53 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

Lest you ignore my point about the body making more sense? M'kay. 

I ignored replaying to that part because it was missing most of what I was aiming at saying. I didn't say it is unrealistic for a runner's body to be buff... regardless if that even matters here when they made him have magical levels of speed... What actually I said was it is unrealistic for a "giant bobblehead" to be stuck on top of a buff tiny body. Which is part of why I like the teddy-bear Sonic slightly more because they made his head and body size more realistically proportionate with each other. For the most part only certain extremely cartoony styles have massively huge heads.