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


Badnik Mechanic

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I've seen Rocky & Bullwinkle. Its difficult to remember where I first heard of them before seeing it, but it literally just a single clip used in a documentary about The Simpsons or something. That was all. I seen it when I was 11, I thought it was OK at the time because I didn't have a concept of a good , and I didn't think much else of it, but I never went on to consume any Rocky & Bullwinkle media to this day. If I do eventually watch some old Rocky & Bullwinkle, it won't be because of the movie.

What are the chances of kids going to Sonic's games after seeing the movie, think just how different the games are from the movie not least because of the way Sonic looks, and the settings of each game, plus all his friends?

I can't speak for many other live-action movie adaptations of old cartoons, but Jem & The Holograms is pretty well known for being one of the worst cartoon-to-live action movie adaptations ever made.

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2 hours ago, Splash the Otter said:

But why isn't the movie being made for Sonic fans? Shouldn't we be the target demographic?

You're going to think I'm insane when I say this...but not necessarily. The Sonic fanbase isn't large enough to fill in a multi $100 million dollar box office. Because again...general audiences. This film is essentially going to try to add MORE fans to the franchise (or at least the movie itself), and engage with people who hardly know anything about Sonic. People got mad at how Boom was aiming for that too, but I'm going to be real guys...

 

I hate to sound another repetitive news article that says this same crap, but Sonic isn't as popular as it used to be. It doesn't have the greatest reputation. Remember how I mentioned all that biasy about people hardly knowing anything about the franchise (like how some people I know called Shadow, "black Sonic")? This is kind of why. So many articles, popular people on the internet, and big authorities blindly hate Sonic, which causes general groups of people to also blindly hate Sonic (even if they haven't played any of the games themselves).

 

This film is trying something new, to appeal to those who don't know anything about Sonic. It's a movie. A theatrical film. It might have little Easter eggs in the background to appeal to fans, yeah, maybe, but it's telling a story that EVERYONE can get (and it's also clearly based off of the first game. Probably so they can expand and experiment more with a story that doesn't have much story).

 

I'm not saying it's succeeding in anything so far, I mean I constantly see comments about the poster of people saying "I'm not even a Sonic fan and I don't think this looks right" (personally I think people will get used to it more once we get a trailer and see Sonic in motion).

I'm just saying there's a logical explanation as to why it's not aimed just at fans.

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The Sonic fanbase alone is not going to push this movie over 5 million dollars let alone 100 million. 

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On 3/26/2019 at 1:28 PM, Dr Ryan said:

This movie will do just fine and the current situation is normal. Literally no one else is even thinking about this movie outside of the Sonic fandom yet (probably most of which are on this thread) and that's fine at this point in time. The Sonic fandom will make up a tiny percentage of the audience anyway. At about the six month mark promo with be ramped up like it is for literally every mainstream film and we'll start to see a lot of more of this movie. We didn't see anything of Detective Pikachu until November (six months before). We haven't seen ANYTHING of Terminator 6 or Star Wars yet and they're both out at the same time as Sonic (depending on territory).

The only difference with Sonic compared to these other franchises is that we're all balls-deep into the character and are tracking the film ridiculously closely.

The current situation is normal and it will be fine.

It's not a faithless project. We have Jim Carrey, Tim Miller, what's-his-face who's voicing Sonic and a bunch of other known actors, a great composer and a huge budget.

All of this is normal.

 

On 3/26/2019 at 2:53 PM, Gamecuber64 said:

Everything on here is exactly what I keep trying to tell people. You guys are forgetting that the majority of the audience seeing this film is just going to be a general audience. The Sonic fanbase likely a small percentage of everyone who's seeing this movie

 

And that's also why I mentioned that most people I know remember the name "Robotnick" and not "Eggman" (even if they have been using "Eggman" for the past few decades, it still isn't iconic). Hell whenever I have a picture of Shadow or Silver or someone, they always ask "Why is Sonic black?", "Why is Sonic grey?", "Why is Sonic a pink girl?", etc. I even met a couple of people at my high school who thought Sonic was Nintendo.

 

I completely disagree with SEGABits when they said playing Gangster's Paradise over Live & Learn during the trailer is "a middle finger to fans" .

GENERAL AUDIENCES DON'T KNOW WHAT CRUSH 40 IS PEOPLE!!!

If the bulk of this film's audience isn't going to be preexisting Sonic fans, then instead it is going to be children and the parents of children.  You'd have to make quite an argument to convince me other types of people want to see a film about Sonic.  So operating on the base assumption that the film is mainly for children, why the fuck isn't it animated?!  Why the fuck are most characters humans?!  Why the fuck would children prefer to hear "Gangser's Paradise"?!  Why the fuck would children even know of that song?!

Even if audiences aren't smart enough to distinguish one hedgehog character from another, that still should leave room for Tails; plus you can convince them that there are multiple hedgehog characters by showing them the characters together and putting their names in the script.  Likewise, a song being fanservice to people who already know it doesn't make that song repulsive to people who don't.  Meanwhile, what is the benefit of using "Gangster's Paradise" supposed to be?  I for one think including it in this film's trailer would be a bigger middle finger to Coolio than it could ever be to Sonic fans.  I already found it rather tasteless when Happy Feet misappropriated Grandmaster Flash's morbid staple, "The Message" into a vacuous party jam.  There's nothing wrong with writing songs for the specific purpose of entertaining people, but when songs are written to call attention to groups of people living in poverty, just stripping out that intent and playing them for entertainment feels like the height of disrespect.  There always has to be a first time for every person to hear every song.  A Sonic movie could be someone's first time hearing a Sonic song just as easily as a Sonic game could.  It should not be the first time someone hears "Gangster's Paradise".

You're both grasping at straws that are meaningless to the bottom line here.  The biggest problem isn't just that this film seems to lack a lot of what Sonic fans want; it's that this film doesn't look poised to deliver to anyone what they want.  It's a mishmash of elements that might  still be entertaining to the people who see it, but if there aren't enough elements with enough innate appeal to bring many people to see it to begin with, what does that matter?

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5 hours ago, Enderwoman said:

sonic is a sassy talking animal who will be featured in a movie that will be heavily advertised. children will love him, and that's who the movies for. Movie isn't meant for aging Sonic fans who get all picky about how much from the source material they borrow.

But the source material can be there without repelling children!  Children would still like things from the source material!  That should be fucking obvious since the source material itself was for children! 

Why is it so hard for this movie's apologists, along with apologists for any media whose scope gets contested, to grasp the seemingly obvious truth that "It doesn't need to do this thing" does not equate to "It needs to not do this thing"?  Even the most amoral, capitalistic approach to demographics should understand that if you can add something to appeal to a certain demographic without losing appeal to another demographic, you probably should. 

Of course not all choices are that win-win.  If someone put a bit in the script when Sonic says "Alright; time for this hog to do what Nintendon't", then it would be a sensible concern whether this was catering too much to old fans at the expense of newcomers who would have no idea what he was talking about.  If they stuck the line "Where's that damn fourth chaos emerald" in, it would be a sensible concern whether it was being too inappropriate for children just for the sake of amusing adults.  But the vast majority of the source material doesn't present that sort of cost-benefit dilemma.  You can't use "It's for kids" to justify Tails not being in the movie when Tails himself is designed as a kid-appeal character.  You can't use children's preferences in movies to explain why this film is mostly live-action, and probably not to justify why it's a buddy-cop film, either. 

You might draw on other things to explain it, like Detective Pikachu being a buddy-cop movie, but if this film is just trying to follow that act without as much dedication, then it's operating on the faulty logic Mark Twain described in cats that avoid all stoves if burnt by hot ones.  Understanding that something worked a certain way isn't the same as understanding why it worked that way.  Still, it shouldn't take a literary expert to understand that Pokemon: Detective Pikachu's high regard isn't due mainly to the "Detective" part of the title.  The "Pikachu" part could probably sell it but even it isn't the whole source of its appeal.  Children would go see a movie with Pikachu transferred by plot device to the human world, teaming up to solve cases that had no relation to anything in the source material, but everyone who had any familiarity with Pokemon, even children, would wonder why there weren't more of them in the movie, and even children who had no prior familiarity might still be bored by all of the non-Pikachu characters.  However, that's a hypothetical worse scenario; in reality that movie actually understands the benefits of including lots of elements from the Pokemon series.  Being a buddy-cop movie isn't the reason children will flock to see Detective Pikachu; anymore than it was the reason they flocked to see Zootopia.  The worlds the movies are set in, and the sort of characters that inhabit those worlds, are what draw children in; the buddy-cop plot is just something they'll tolerate on the side.

In this film, though...Sonic himself is the only thing we know of that really sounds appealing to children, and if he's well-written, well-animated, and features heavily in it, then maybe he'll be enough.  But that won't change that there have been other buddy-cop movies starring animals that gave people more bang for their buck; children included.

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Well assuming the final film is going to be PG-13, the reason why Is obvious. It's not just aimed at kids but at nostalgic adults-- mainly of whom grew up with all of the old, OLD Sonic stuff. I'm talking Sonic 1/Sonic Bible 1991

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45 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

It's not just aimed at kids but at nostalgic adults-- mainly of whom grew up with all of the old, OLD Sonic stuff. I'm talking Sonic 1/Sonic Bible 1991

I wonder if people who were say 10 years old when Sonic 1 came out, and thus are now getting close to 40 (38 years old) are only getting nostalgic NOW instead of like I dunno...10-15 years ago.

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You know, I’m kinda worried, if the movie bombs, this could scared Sega to thinking not making another movie ever again. Well, I don’t know, but it’s hard to predict if the movie will be a box office success or a bomb. 

I hope this movie is at least fun and does well. I guess we should see about this, when the movie comes out.

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Yeah, if they were aiming for adults who grew up with the Genesis era Sonic shit, then that window of opportunity has passed years ago. But what makes that bizarre is the San Francisco setting and human world makes it feel closer to something like Sonic Adventure 2 than anything Classic Sonic.

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50 minutes ago, DreamSaturn said:

Yeah, if they were aiming for adults who grew up with the Genesis era Sonic shit, then that window of opportunity has passed years ago. But what makes that bizarre is the San Francisco setting and human world makes it feel closer to something like Sonic Adventure 2 than anything Classic Sonic.

With the widespread of the Internet, social media and all that crap, I wouldn't be surprised if most people from that generation already ran into their childhood things on the Internet and had their fix of nostalgia already in one form or another. Dug it out from their parents' house, rebought the games, emulated them on PC, bought it on their phones etc.

Plus, I wonder how many casuals are interested in new things losely based on something from their childhood vs reliving exactly the same thing (in this case, the old Sonic games) from their childhood.

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1 hour ago, CaptainRobo said:

this could scared Sega to thinking not making another movie ever again

I doubt it, since it's not like SEGA is making this movie this time to begin with. I'm sure if someone with enough money to burn in their pockets asked SEGA for a lincense for a movie, SEGA would just say "sure, whatever". The way this movie is shaping up, and all the crappy AtGames clone consoles SEGA happily gave their name to, my impression is SEGA will partner with almost anyone if said anyone is willing to pay the bills.

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1 hour ago, PeterPancake said:

Well assuming the final film is going to be PG-13, the reason why Is obvious. It's not just aimed at kids but at nostalgic adults-- mainly of whom grew up with all of the old, OLD Sonic stuff. I'm talking Sonic 1/Sonic Bible 1991

1) You can't "grow up" with things that occured within one or two years; that's a contradiction in terms.

2) I doubt it.  Because...

1 hour ago, Tarnish said:

I wonder if people who were say 10 years old when Sonic 1 came out, and thus are now getting close to 40 (38 years old) are only getting nostalgic NOW instead of like I dunno...10-15 years ago.

 

1 hour ago, DreamSaturn said:

Yeah, if they were aiming for adults who grew up with the Genesis era Sonic shit, then that window of opportunity has passed years ago. But what makes that bizarre is the San Francisco setting and human world makes it feel closer to something like Sonic Adventure 2 than anything Classic Sonic.

 

1 hour ago, Tarnish said:

With the widespread of the Internet, social media and all that crap, I wouldn't be surprised if most people from that generation already ran into their childhood things on the Internet and had their fix of nostalgia already in one form or another. Dug it out from their parents' house, rebought the games, emulated them on PC, bought it on their phones etc.

Plus, I wonder how many casuals are interested in new things losely based on something from their childhood vs reliving exactly the same thing (in this case, the old Sonic games) from their childhood.

Yeah; those are all good points, but I still need to add my own rebuttal to PeterPancake: Almost nothing about this film's setting or plot mirrors Sonic 1's, and many gamers had never even heard of most of the Sonic Bible stuff until it got posted online.  We didn't need a backstory where Sonic knew Robotnik and they were friends until tragedy struck, given that in-game his damage to the environment was a sufficient to give Sonic a motive to go up against him.  Arguably, that isn't a complex enough scenario for a movie plot and it needs something else, but the "something else" they're putting in this movie doesn't bare any apparent resemblance to that Sonic Bible stuff either.  No; its use of the name "Robotnik" doesn't count, since that actually made it into the games.  And speaking of games, how many people are there who are only nostalgic for Sonic 1?  If that's the only Sonic game a person ever played, it's probably because that person didn't like it enough to play any sequels, so that person also isn't likely to have any nostalgia towards it. 

If such people as PeterPancake described even exist; they're a huge minority compared to fans who have played more Sonic media, so even on the off-chance that he correctly identified the motivation of this film's creators, it's still a really dumb motivation that can be held against them.

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24 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

And speaking of games, how many people are there who are only nostalgic for Sonic 1?  If that's the only Sonic game a person ever played, it's probably because that person didn't like it enough to play any sequels, so that person also isn't likely to have any nostalgia towards it.

Yeah, that's something I also brought up a while back. If you only played Sonic 1 for 28 years and never, ever bothered with the franchise again, chances are a Sonic movie won't interest you in the slightest because an interest was never established in the first place.

I dunno about others, but one of the first things I ever did when my family got proper Internet back in 2003-2004 was look up a ton of my fave things from my childhood. I didn't wait another 15 years to do that. Now of couse that's all very subjective, but I don't think people are gonna wait until their 40s to start getting nostalgic, especially in this day and age when it's so easy to look things up on the Internet so you don't actually have to hunt for it in the wild.

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4 hours ago, PeterPancake said:

Well assuming the final film is going to be PG-13, the reason why Is obvious. It's not just aimed at kids but at nostalgic adults-- mainly of whom grew up with all of the old, OLD Sonic stuff. I'm talking Sonic 1/Sonic Bible 1991

 

7 hours ago, PeterPancake said:

The Sonic fanbase alone is not going to push this movie over 5 million dollars let alone 100 million. 

I've re-read both of these posts for like 10 minutes and I'm still struggling to understand how they're not supposed to blatantly contradict one another. Is targetting the fanbase itself supposed to be a good idea or not?

2 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

And speaking of games, how many people are there who are only nostalgic for Sonic 1?

If I were to bank on the highest likelihood of tugging at people's nostalgic heartstrings, I'd have looked to Sonic 2 instead personally. Okay yes, it's definitely flawed compared to S3&K, but it was the Sonic title that came bundled with a lot of Genesis sales, and it's one of the few Sonic titles out there that can boast in complete honesty that it challenged Mario at the height of his popularity and came out on top. If there's any reason the movie is taking cues from Sonic 1 specifically, it's definitely not because of its popularity - more likely something much more simple, as in "this is the first movie so it only makes sense to swipe the first game's plot" simple.

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45 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

I've re-read both of these posts for like 10 minutes and I'm still struggling to understand how they're not supposed to blatantly contradict one another. Is targetting the fanbase itself supposed to be a good idea or not?

I guess the only way those statements could work is by suggesting there are a lot more people who played Sonic 1-2 back in the day then never bothered with the franchise ever again (thus they are casuals) than people who played the original games and became fans of the franchise, plus the people who might have become fans of the franchise in the following 20+ years.

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It's still more likely going to be Sonic 2, and I seriously doubt casual fans have even HEARD of the Sonic 1 Bible. I've been a fan since the 90's, and I never heard of it until I started using the internet.

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I think any similarities to the old Sonic Bible are merely coincidence.  I doubt they'd dig that deep in the "Sonic lore" for inspiration for this film's plot, much less already have been aware of it.

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I dunno if the Sonic Bible is the best thing to target casual fans with. Especially considering it was pretty much ignored in both the US and Japan.

At least, I sure never remember anything about Nebraska or Burger Shops coming up in the Genesis games.

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Sonic ate burgers a few times in fleetway and all the UK spin-offs were based on the Kintobor origin but I'd put those burgers down more to Sonic being cool and eating junk food.

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I know what PeterPancake means. I didn't know the exact details of the Sonic Bible, but I knew the general premise of Kintobor, Sonic's weird origin with the shoes etc. So I knew the Sonic bible even though I didn't know it literally existed as a media guidebook.The upcoming film does have parallels with that and it could be intentional, but then origin stories are really popular in films right now.

I wouldn't think it would be a good idea to market it around the Sonic bible though, it was pretty quirky to the UK and Europe in the 90s and was completely irrelevant after Adventure. I only knew about it because I'm British and was born in 1991.

Also, I'll be honest, the Sonic Bible fucking sucked and the series was way better when the US/EU marketing realigned with the Japanese canon.

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18 hours ago, Plasme said:

How many kids even know what Sonic is?

 

Kids definitely know Sonic. I have 2 kids ( one is 6 years old and the oter is 3 years old ) and they both know Sonic thanks to youtube. Trust me, a ton of kids know Sonic.

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I don't really see how this film's plot (based on what we've been told, and the reveal via merchandise that at some point in the movie Sonic will be a baby) bares any resemblance to things in any version of the Sonic Bible, save for it telling an origin story of some sort.  

I'm not opposed to a Sonic origin story, incidentally.  But it should be done by Sega and focus more on Sonic's world; not ours.

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30 minutes ago, Sonic Warrior said:

I have 2 kids ( one is 6 years old and the oter is 3 years old ) and they both know Sonic thanks to youtube.

And do they know of Sonic from the "Sonic is good" or the "Sonic sucks" camp? Because simply knowing about Sonic doesn't really help sell this movie if what you know about Sonic is "don't touch it with even a 10 foot pole".

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3 hours ago, Plasme said:

Also, I'll be honest, the Sonic Bible fucking sucked and the series was way better when the US/EU marketing realigned with the Japanese canon.

If they never used it what did it matter?

Outside Eggman's name change, nothing stuck.

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