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

[Tani Coyote]

They've been keeping track of the fandom's reaction for Sonic Boom... maybe there's hope that they're keeping an eye on reactions for the movie as well?

I really hope that Mr. Frost's participation with the fandom is actually the beginning of a beautiful PR effort by SEGA for the future.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Yes, I hope to god he's a spy feeding Sega information about every rational thing we say.

[Tani Coyote]

Well no, Mr. Frost is only responsible for Sonic Boom, so it makes sense he keeps a finger on the pulse of the fandom.

I just hope that the movie will likewise have someone working on it who will take the time to just read the major sites to make sure the film appeals.

I can't wait until a trailer is released. That's when the crap will really hit the fan.

[Badnik Mechanic]

You will not change anyones minds with this movie. 

 

Tons will have already been spent on it, it would have gone through licensing hell just to get it to the green light stage. Like it or not, if it comes out, we're getting the announced product.

[Tenko]

Is it even on Sega's blog or anything yet? Anywhere comments can be placed? I looked a while ago and there didn't seem to be any posts on any of the normal Sega pages about this news at the time. Yet all the movie news pages had it.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Okay, so here's what I want:

 

 

Make every character CG. Use real-world, live-action locations. Those can look great when blended properly with CG characters. That should be the way you do a CG/live action movie.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Is it even on Sega's blog or anything yet? Anywhere comments can be placed? I looked a while ago and there didn't seem to be any posts on any of the normal Sega pages about this news at the time. Yet all the movie news pages had it.

 

Nope.

 

But official Sonic twitter re-tweeted it, even Takashi Iizuka and several other senior Sega staff have mentioned it.

[anna]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-d-V9jXYDE

 

Just pretend it's Sonic.

 

Seriously though, that's the most upto date Live action CGI hybrid movie. Whilst there's an artstyle, you know it's gonna be like that.

Oh man, I didn't know there's gonna be a Paddington movie!

 

Ahem. If Sonic looks like that though they may as well just make him a real hedgehog. Which is pointless.

The Sonic style is iconic and I honestly don't see why they would go through a whole new redesign just for this...Marza's Sonic is great, please leave it that way.

[Tani Coyote]

You will not change anyones minds with this movie. 

 

Tons will have already been spent on it, it would have gone through licensing hell just to get it to the green light stage. Like it or not, if it comes out, we're getting the announced product.

I can't wait until a trailer is released. That's when the crap will really hit the fan.

Then I guess my statement stands.

While I leave room to be impressed, I have a sore feeling I won't be.

We're back to the typical Sonic shooting itself in the foot fare, I think. I don't know who it is, but someone in the creative department is really good at coming up with bad ideas.

[Wittymations]

Is there any way we can contact Sony about this? It almost certainly won't change anything, but holy shit, we have to try. I'm being dead serious when I say that I would lose sleep if I allowed this to happen without trying to stop it in some way, no matter how small. 

Thing is, this movie is probably half-way done, if not more.

There's not a chance it'll be changed.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I'm wondering how long it's been in the making now. It's probably coming out this year, seeing as it's the "year of Sonic" and such.

[Tenko]

I doubt it would be this year, they usually announce movies with the date being the following year these days. Sometimes even further away. Tho in saying that its defiantly already part way done or at least past its major hurdles and planning to have been announced, well for a movie of its type anyway. It isn't a blockbuster sequel getting a date penned in for a sequel 4 years away like the Avengers or anything is what I mean.

[Tani Coyote]

The trend with the Sony films has been for 2 years notice. So this film will probably come out in 2016.

It'd be a perfect date, given it'd be in time for the 25th anniversary. Nothing to kick off an iconic celebration like a film.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

The trend with the Sony films has been for 2 years notice. So this film will probably come out in 2016.

It'd be a perfect date, given it'd be in time for the 25th anniversary. Nothing to kick off an iconic celebration like a film.

Sadly it looks to be possibly following the 15th anniversary as opposed to the 20th in terms of quality...the film that is.

[SchemingMinor]

Don't do this to me guys. I almost had a heart attack when I opened this thread  and read about all of the comments of Eggman being a live action actor and I thought they went through with it.

 

 

Hell hath no fury like a Sonic fanbase scorned on the usual days, but if anyone ever touches Eggman and then make him look bad then the shit will really fly.

 

Eggman is Kosher.

[goku262002]

We need some way for them to hear us is the problem, but I don't think there's anything we can do, unless someone can get to a higher-up at Sega at some convention or something and tell them to switch the CGliveactionbullshit to full CG before too much has been done.

Theirs always Twitter y'know? :\

It seems to work 7/10 times I tried doing that. if anything it at least gets the word out on what we want out of this.

[Salamander]

It's kind of sad that there is zero reason to ever feel optimistic about anything to do with Sonic now.  If you know basically nothing about a project, you can just assume it'll be bad and you've probably got a better than 50% chance of being right.

 

Yes, I hope to god he's a spy feeding Sega information about every rational thing we say.

 

So not much then, eh eh eh.

 

It'd be a perfect date, given it'd be in time for the 25th anniversary. Nothing to kick off an iconic celebration like a film.

 

Read it as "ironic celebration."  Still reading it that way.

[Kat]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-d-V9jXYDE

 

Just pretend it's Sonic.

 

Seriously though, that's the most upto date Live action CGI hybrid movie. Whilst there's an artstyle, you know it's gonna be like that.

 

Oh man, that trailer.

Who does this sort of humor even appeal to? I could never stand watching (likeable) characters make a mess of themselves (unless it feels really genuine, but it rarely does). I wanna be able to take Sonic seriously - as silly as it sounds - and I really hope they keep miles away from scenes like the ones in that trailer...

[Badnik Mechanic]

It'll either be late 2015, or early 2016 and be part of Sonic's 25th Anniversary celebrations.

[iDEATH]

To all the people saying mixing Live Action/Animation is the worst thing ever, one of the greatest films of all time wants to say hello....

 

 

Seriously though....while the Live action stuff does ring alarm bells...can't we at least wait until we've seen something from this project before we consider it the worst thing ever?

I can understand people's apprehension...but it's hardly an automatic death sentence...

[ElectricAngel]

But, you see iDEATH, the problem is, movies like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" came out ages ago. In recent times, most of the live-action/CGI hybrid movies have been horribly cliche, boring and just unpleasant to watch. Also, this is Sonic we're talking about. WFRR was an original movie. Here, they are taking an already made character from an already made up world and taking it to "our world" (presumably).

 

Last time we saw this in The Smurfs or Yogi Bear, they didn't do that good of a job. I don't have any memory of live action/CGI hybrid films coming out in the past 2 years, aside from Smurfs 2, so I can't say there's a chance it will be good. If recent films are an example of how this movie will play out (and it's highly possible, just look at TMNT) I will remain worried until we see a screenshot or hell, a teaser trailer of the film.

[Salamander]

I guess you could say that, rather than an automatic death sentence, CGI/live-action hybrids are like Russian roulette, but with only one chamber empty, rather than only one loaded.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Roger Rabbit.

 

Here is my problem with this idea.

 

That movie was made with partnership of Both Disney and Warner Brothers. They both worked amazingly hard to ensure that movie was good, because if it did, it would make both of their properties look bad. 

 

However, the key thing that they both had.... they both were the best people to get who understood their IPs on every level!

 

Ever since then, most animated movies, especially those who take someone else's IP and try to make a movie, simply don't get why it was popular, or in some cases care about the subject material. It would be shorter to find a list of movies in which a studio has taken someone else's IP and make something which shows they do care across all media.

 

Every few months or so, this forum has had had a topic or a bump about 'Hey what if there was a Sonic movie' and almost universally, everybody says "A live action movie is a BAD idea" And they're right to say that, Sonic is a cartoon! It's got nothing at all to do with a real world real life experience. We've seen what happens twice when that occurs both in official and unofficial adaptations.

 

So why would a studio decide to go for even partially live action when virtually everyone who understands Sonic agrees that live action is not the way to go?

 

Today we live in the era where many films, especially animated movies stick to a formula, have product placement all over the place, guaranteed to have some kind of celebrity tie in (in this case it'll be the soundtrack).

 

When it comes to the people behind this, there is absolutely NOTHING at all to suggest this will be different.

 

Just take a look at the bibliography of the producer: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0605775/

 

There is nothing in his entire library of movies that suggests he understands even the genre that Sonic exists in,

 

Now I want to be proved wrong with this, as someone who grew up during the 16bit era, ask any kid who owned a MegaDrive, they wanted a Sonic movie, heck even the OVA had in it's adverts 'The Prayers of Sega fans have been answered' as a selling point. But god, we want someone and people who understands the genre and the IP. And not people who will sit in a hotel room during interview times and say.

 

"We know this franchise has a long history, so we're working closely with Sega and the fans to bring a true experience"

[Nepenthe]

Roger Rabbit is always the cited exception to the rule, but it's not relevant anymore nor even an exception, considering most of the blockbuster films we watch nowadays are already a mix of CGI characters and live-action to varying degrees. Aside from the companies and people involved understanding the properties in Roger Rabbit, highlighting the differences between the humans and the toons was both a deliberate stylistic and thematic point. This isn't so with the children's films people are citing as indicative of trouble ahead with this production. It is always played perfectly straight, as if these creatures and their physics and brand of humor always existed in the "real world," and it's that very disconnect that allows you to realize that the filmmakers missed the point of the original property entirely.

 

However this is, again, ignoring the fact that one of the key people has worked on a slew of films with middling to awful quality. He is undoubtedly going to have an impact on the film as the main overseer, and I'm not willing to bank on him giving enough of a damn about Sonic to understand the property intimately. The fact is, this shit should have been fully animated.

[Milo]

Roger Rabbit is always the cited exception to the rule, but it's not relevant anymore nor even an exception, considering most of the blockbuster films we watch nowadays are already a mix of CGI characters and live-action to varying degrees. Aside from the companies and people involved understanding the properties in Roger Rabbit, highlighting the differences between the humans and the toons was both a deliberate stylistic and thematic point. This isn't so with the children's films people are citing as indicative of trouble ahead with this production. It is always played perfectly straight, as if these creatures and their physics and brand of humor always existed in the "real world," and it's that very disconnect that allows you to realize that the filmmakers missed the point of the original property entirely.

 

I just wanted to add to/further explain Nepenthe's post contrast of Roger Rabbit and today's CGI/live-action hybrids, which I feel is an excellent point as to why the comparisons don't work.

 

Almost every CG/live-action film adaptation I've seen always presents the characters in a manner as how they would look like in the "real world" or pre-existed in the real world as such. Since these are characters that despite bearing fictional origins are generally being portrayed in "realistic" manners, the result always comes off as off-putting.

 

Most live-action/CG hybrids feature characters who originally started out as comic or cartoon drawings are depicted in a realistic, detailed manner. Realistic fur. Designs (both in body proportions and in facial features) that look closer to their respective real-life (if the character was animated) species than their animated/drawn designs. "Human" eyes. And you see those characters moving around the screen, performing actions or interacting with the environment in "cartoony" manners. Characters that are based off of animals (Chipmunks, Scooby Doo, Underdog, etc.) are hit especially bad by this. You ultimately have a movie focused on a character that while you know is /not/ human in the story or in it's source material is nonetheless portrayed doing human things while being portrayed how he would look if he /always/ existed with real humans, which not only does this creates the disconnect Nep mentioned earlier, it at times can also veer off into the uncanny valley.

 

The live-action/CG adaptation of Rocky and Bullwinkle is probably the only exception to the rule I can think of-not only because their designs are faithful to that of the source material (their appearance in the movie is basically a CG -and slightly cel-shaded- 3D model interpretation of their 2D designs in the cartoons), but because that's also how they are depicted due to the plot-they were transported from their cel-shaded 2D appearances to CG characters in a live-action world. (It's also worth noting that despite it's tepid reception with critics and audiences, it's also generally considered to be pretty close to the nature of the original cartoon unlike most examples).

 

In addition, although Space Jam and Looney Tunes: Back in Action generally aren't adaptations of pre-existing LT material, the Looney Tunes also avoid this because they aren't necessarily depicted (both in design and in the films' plots) as "real people/animals/etc."-they still retain their 2D animation/designs and are portrayed as originating from a alternate "fictional" world separate from humans (Space Jam) or as special actors (Looney Tunes: Back in Action)-thus it's easy to understand that they are clearly played in a fictional manner even though they exist in in the "real world".