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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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1 hour ago, Tarnish said:

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".

To be fair, even many of Sonic's detractors don't have that attitude; they want to touch Sonic at its very lowest since those low points are irresistible snark bait.  That's one reason I expect this film to do okay financially even if the overall attitude towards it is negative.  

However, that isn't necessarily a good thing, and I think people who go see this looking for a fountain of memes at its expense might actually be the most disappointed.  This movie could very well be bad, but I don't expect it to be be bad in a ridiculous way; rather a lame way.  There just isn't enough to it to invest much time in mocking.

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1 hour ago, Tarnish said:

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".

Movie aside, for the franchise's sake, I think we should hope that kids do know about Sonic considering they're the target audience. 

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I don't actually disagree with the logic that the film should be made for a broader audience than the core fanbase, but perhaps for different reasons.  No matter what medium you choose, any installment can and will be someone's first exposure to the series.  So making something that is accessible to newcomers, particularly if you're trying to reach a large audience, is extremely important.

In addition, I think looking at films under the scope of "would someone who knows nothing about the characters understand what's going on?" is a good way to analyze the story and keep it in on a consistent track.  One thing I both (faintly) praise and criticize Batman v. Superman for (among many, many other things) is that it simultaneously assumes that the audience knows who the characters are, but in doing so creates a disjointed plot.  Superman's inability to see through lead, for example, is something that most people who read the comics probably know well, but despite being an important plot point it's not something that comes up until it's absolutely necessary and so the writers compensate for this by info-dumping it on us after the fact rather than letting the audience naturally come to that conclusion on their own.  That's clumsy writing, and not the kind of traps I would want the Sonic movie to fall into.

But that doesn't mean the two goals have to be mutually exclusive.  Into the Spiderverse is one that has been cited numerous times as being accessible to both, though I've yet to watch that.  TMNT 2007 had some pacing issues, but I don't feel like someone who had never watched TMNT in their life would be lost, even though it also assumes that anyone who watched it was probably a fan.  It's not a matter of appealing to one or the other, or even MOSTLY to one over the other.  In general, I think to a certain extent, doing one will inherently lend its way to the other.  There are exceptions, of course, but the Sonic games that fans dislike tend to be bad games outside of the core fanbase, too, albeit for different reasons.  Sonic Unleashed is the only example I can think of where certain sects of the fanbase love it even though the general reception for the game is mixed to awful.  And even then, most fans generally agree that it's not a strong game on its standalone merits.

Basically, I don't think the two goals are inherently contradictory.  Just that the cynical mindset surrounding the development of this movie seems to be trying to make it that way.

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7 hours ago, Mega said:

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.

Wait, Was this officially made by Sega? I never heard of this before. I didn’t know this was a thing.

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2 hours ago, Tarnish said:

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".

 

They love playing the old games ( Sonic 1,2,3 and Knuckles ). My 3 old daughter also plays Sonic Dash. The other also plays Sonic Boom. 

I couldn't believe when my youngest kid managed to beat Robotnik alone in the firsy stage of Sonic 2. 

 

They love anything Sonic related. They also love the Sonic Boom cartoon.

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12 minutes ago, Sonic Warrior said:

They love anything Sonic related.

They'll grow out of that phase. =P

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3 minutes ago, Tarnish said:

They'll grow out of that phase. =P

Unless they're like me. In which case they'll still be in that phase in their mid-30's.

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8 minutes ago, Tarnish said:

They'll grow out of that phase. =P

Kids may grow out of Sonic, but that doesn't mean they never liked Sonic at all. They don't have to like Sonic in the future, they just have to in the present. 

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No offence, but the same kind of logic that the series should be altered for mainstream audiences and changed to fit what focus groups wants sounds like the same kind of boneheaded logic that led to Batman murdering and gunning people down, and Superman being an angst-ridden hero in BvS.

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1 hour ago, Tara said:

it simultaneously assumes that the audience knows who the characters are, but in doing so creates a disjointed plot.  Superman's inability to see through lead, for example, is something that most people who read the comics probably know well, but despite being an important plot point it's not something that comes up until it's absolutely necessary

Or watched Superman: the animated series. But I will say that's why movies based on long running comics/cartoons/games aimed at the casual mainstream is a harder sell for longtime fans: a lot of the movie has to be a super condensed summary of what the fans already know.

10 minutes ago, Dr Ryan said:

Unless they're like me. In which case they'll still be in that phase in their mid-30's.

Sadly I can't be fascinated by things like a toaster with a Sonic logo on the side of it that makes impractical toast anymore.

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45 minutes ago, Tarnish said:

Or watched Superman: the animated series. But I will say that's why movies based on long running comics/cartoons/games aimed at the casual mainstream is a harder sell for longtime fans: a lot of the movie has to be a super condensed summary of what the fans already know. 

That is generally how it is done, but I don't feel it necessarily needs to be the case, especially as these characters rapidly become more and more mainstream.  At the core of these characters is a central status quo that is contextualized by a hefty amount of backstory and lore, but theoretically shouldn't be restricted by it.  At its core, Batman is a story about a rich man dressed as a bat who takes down various super villains with the aid of his butler.  There are details that contextualize this status quo, but they need not be mentioned or brought up just for the sake of being brought up, as the death of Bruce's parents often times is.

But all that said, I don't think the condensed summary as you put it is necessarily a problem, or at least not the biggest problem that plagues a lot of superhero movies and particularly the DC cinematic universe.  There are many reasons that as a fan of DC comics I'm not big on DC's live action movies, including tonality, aesthetics, acting, and editing.  Basically, when people in this thread defend Sonic's redesign on the basis of DC and Marvel making alterations in their own live action movies, it does nothing for me, because I'm often not a big fan of those changes, either.

The example I gave isn't really a definitive reason as to why BvS is bad, just a piece of clumsy writing that stood out to me, which could have been avoided if they had looked at the film with a wider lens.  At the very least, even assuming it's what Zack Snyder intended all along, Superman not detecting Jesse Eisenberg's bomb because it was encased in lead, as a result of its haphazard exposition, feels like a retroactive justification for a plot contrivance, rather than natural narrative progression.  It's the extent to which I agree with the notion that a film should be aimed at an audience wider than the core fanbase, and why I think the stance holds water, even if the particulars of it (such as "because it will make the studio money") do not.

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1 hour ago, Tara said:

I don't actually disagree with the logic that the film should be made for a broader audience than the core fanbase, but perhaps for different reasons.  No matter what medium you choose, any installment can and will be someone's first exposure to the series.  So making something that is accessible to newcomers, particularly if you're trying to reach a large audience, is extremely important.

In addition, I think looking at films under the scope of "would someone who knows nothing about the characters understand what's going on?" is a good way to analyze the story and keep it in on a consistent track.  One thing I both (faintly) praise and criticize Batman v. Superman for (among many, many other things) is that it simultaneously assumes that the audience knows who the characters are, but in doing so creates a disjointed plot.  Superman's inability to see through lead, for example, is something that most people who read the comics probably know well, but despite being an important plot point it's not something that comes up until it's absolutely necessary and so the writers compensate for this by info-dumping it on us after the fact rather than letting the audience naturally come to that conclusion on their own.  That's clumsy writing, and not the kind of traps I would want the Sonic movie to fall into.

But that doesn't mean the two goals have to be mutually exclusive.  Into the Spiderverse is one that has been cited numerous times as being accessible to both, though I've yet to watch that.  TMNT 2007 had some pacing issues, but I don't feel like someone who had never watched TMNT in their life would be lost, even though it also assumes that anyone who watched it was probably a fan.  It's not a matter of appealing to one or the other, or even MOSTLY to one over the other.  In general, I think to a certain extent, doing one will inherently lend its way to the other.  There are exceptions, of course, but the Sonic games that fans dislike tend to be bad games outside of the core fanbase, too, albeit for different reasons.  Sonic Unleashed is the only example I can think of where certain sects of the fanbase love it even though the general reception for the game is mixed to awful.  And even then, most fans generally agree that it's not a strong game on its standalone merits.

Basically, I don't think the two goals are inherently contradictory.  Just that the cynical mindset surrounding the development of this movie seems to be trying to make it that way.

I think the best way to juggle fanservice and accessibility to newcomers is by including things whose appeal still works the way it did in the past, rather than being tied to experiencing it in the past.  The primary example I have of doing this right is the scene in The Avengers where Captain America is flown over to a ship in the ocean; then huge propellers started spinning, the ship rose into the air, and surprise; it was the SHIELD Helicarrier!  The theater I saw that film in was packed, probably mostly with existing fans, and that bit got a lot of them erupting in applause.  However, people not having any familiarity with the lore aren't left out of the joy, since it's a cool scene regardless.

Then, if a work also wants to pitch jokes squarely at old fans, there are both intrusive and unintrusive ways to do it.  The Sonic Boom show provides examples of both.  Sonic and friends expressing their opinions of Tomatopottamus, in the form of references to how people feel about the Sonic series, only works as a joke if people have a history with the Sonic series.  However, Tails making a machine called the "Dreamcaster" and saying a machine has "Blast-Processing" isn't disruptive to the flow of a plot; simple terms can be said and then moved on from quickly.  It's probably not funny to people who don't remember the source of those terms, but they won't be haunted by thoughts of "that's not funny".

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4 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

I think the best way to juggle fanservice and accessibility to newcomers is by including things whose appeal still works the way it did in the past, rather than being tied to experiencing it in the past.  The primary example I have of doing this right is the scene in The Avengers where Captain America is flown over to a ship in the ocean; then huge propellers started spinning, the ship rose into the air, and surprise; it was the SHIELD Helicarrier!  The theater I saw that film in was packed, probably mostly with existing fans, and that bit got a lot of them erupting in applause.  However, people not having any familiarity with the lore aren't left out of the joy, since it's a cool scene regardless.

Then, if a work also wants to pitch jokes squarely at old fans, there are both intrusive and unintrusive ways to do it.  The Sonic Boom show provides examples of both.  Sonic and friends expressing their opinions of Tomatopottamus, in the form of references to how people feel about the Sonic series, only works as a joke if people have a history with the Sonic series.  However, Tails making a machine called the "Dreamcaster" and saying a machine has "Blast-Processing" isn't disruptive to the flow of a plot; simple terms can be said and then moved on from quickly.  It's probably not funny to people who don't remember the source of those terms, but they won't be haunted by thoughts of "that's not funny".

While I generally agree with the approach, I don't feel like those are necessarily compatible examples, where the Sonic Boom examples are both throwaway gags, but the Captain America one (presumably; I don't know I've never seen the movie) is a pivotal plot point and as a result I don't really feel is so much fanservice as it is an actual element within the plot.

I don't really feel like accessibility and appealing to existing fans need to be intrinsically separate things.  Even movies which adhere to strict continuity need to be somewhat self-contained, particularly since these movies aren't written with the intent that audiences will watch them one right after the other, but one, and then the other a year or more later.  So going back to the BvS example, I know that Superman can't see through lead.  I knew that before I watched the movie, because I've read enough comics and, as Tarnish reminded me, watched the animated series, and I've seen the Christopher Reeve movie.  And yet, when it was brought up in BvS, it still felt absolutely out of place because prior to that point, it was never explored within the movie.  It might have been explored in Man of Steel; I don't recall because I try to forget about that movie whenever possible, but it's irrelevant because its seemingly random inclusion in BvS creates an inherent incongruity in terms of progression.

If this part of the movie was examined before it became important, like say, have a moment where Clark is attempting to peak under Lois Lane's clothes only to find that her lingerie is made of lead*, then it would be an informative scene that clues both the audience and long-time fans on this facet of Superman's powers, so it's not some random fact that comes up later.  If you handle basic film premises like exposition and setup/pay off right, the audience should naturally come to understand its narrative significance regardless of how acquainted they are with the source material.  It's not so much an act of balancing one with the other, so much as it is a matter of good writing will inevitably lead to both.

That's not to say that the paratext surrounding how much previous knowledge you have of the characters won't invariably shape your perception of various elements of the film, but that it doesn't have to be a hindrance to its overall quality.

* I'm just kidding; please do not make Clark Kent a creepy pervert, DC.

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There are so many things I could respond to right now based on all of the conversation since I was last on, but there really isn't a point at all at this point because right now the I'm finding that this movie has such a perception problem that nobody really knows what purpose it is supposed to have at all beyond make money. It seems confused who it's audience is and the production crew seems to have faith only in the brand name and not the contents of the IP. Then there is the Sonic fanbase not including the casual fans who likely make up most of Sonic Dash's 300million downloads being a targetable audience because they don't matter except being a casual fan or not still makes you a fan. And also of course children must be mindless dolls that must be thoroughly programmed for twenty years before they can think for themselves and can tell the difference between anything. I must have been an absolute freak then since I didn't like AotS and SatAM because it did not match Sonic 1, 2, and CD in the least from character design to the world the story took place in when I was 6-10 years old when apparently that type of ability to discern differences could only be experienced by adults.

Anyway, my bitter ranting aside (come on people pay kids at least a modicum of respect here or be able to explain how a kid can't discern differences yet knows when you swap out there favorite food for an imitation) let me ask a really simple question. Is an anthropomorphic globetrotting adventurer who clashes with a consequences be damned robotics genius who wants to rule the world an inherently unsellable plot today? Reason I ask is because as far as we know the movie is ignoring that and all of the movie's defenders claim Sonic can't work as he is on the big screen. Of course I argue that the above conflict works even if you include an audience surrogate like Tom (who is he an surrogate for anyway?) if you just use the Indiana Jones formula and plug Sonic in for Indy and Eggman for the Nazis and then use your audience surrogate to ease the entire audience into the world and story (you know, the job the audience surrogate is supposed to fulfil in the first place). Of course though while I use Indiana Jones as my fall back example of how Sonic can work as is I don't even know if Indiana Jones can sell today (no not the fourth movie exclusively but the franchise on a whole) so perhaps Sonic can't work if even Indy can't in today's market. But of course that brings me back again to the question of if Sonic can't work anyway, why use him at all?

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13 minutes ago, Sonic Fan J said:

There are so many things I could respond to right now based on all of the conversation since I was last on, but there really isn't a point at all at this point because right now the I'm finding that this movie has such a perception problem that nobody really knows what purpose it is supposed to have at all beyond make money. It seems confused who it's audience is and the production crew seems to have faith only in the brand name and not the contents of the IP. Then there is the Sonic fanbase not including the casual fans who likely make up most of Sonic Dash's 300million downloads being a targetable audience because they don't matter except being a casual fan or not still makes you a fan. And also of course children must be mindless dolls that must be thoroughly programmed for twenty years before they can think for themselves and can tell the difference between anything. I must have been an absolute freak then since I didn't like AotS and SatAM because it did not match Sonic 1, 2, and CD in the least from character design to the world the story took place in when I was 6-10 years old when apparently that type of ability to discern differences could only be experienced by adults.

Anyway, my bitter ranting aside (come on people pay kids at least a modicum of respect here or be able to explain how a kid can't discern differences yet knows when you swap out there favorite food for an imitation) let me ask a really simple question. Is an anthropomorphic globetrotting adventurer who clashes with a consequences be damned robotics genius who wants to rule the world an inherently unsellable plot today? Reason I ask is because as far as we know the movie is ignoring that and all of the movie's defenders claim Sonic can't work as he is on the big screen. Of course I argue that the above conflict works even if you include an audience surrogate like Tom (who is he an surrogate for anyway?) if you just use the Indiana Jones formula and plug Sonic in for Indy and Eggman for the Nazis and then use your audience surrogate to ease the entire audience into the world and story (you know, the job the audience surrogate is supposed to fulfil in the first place). Of course though while I use Indiana Jones as my fall back example of how Sonic can work as is I don't even know if Indiana Jones can sell today (no not the fourth movie exclusively but the franchise on a whole) so perhaps Sonic can't work if even Indy can't in today's market. But of course that brings me back again to the question of if Sonic can't work anyway, why use him at all?

The best explanation I can think of for that is Paramount isn't sure whether Sonic can work or not, so is doing a very limited test of the concept with a low budget.  If the film fails, it won't fail epicly because there wasn't much money lost on it and the film's premise is too simple to become a notable flop.  If Sonic himself can save it and make it money, then they'll feel more comfortable putting him in a second movie with a higher budget and a more adventurous premise.  That said, it wouldn't have costed them anything to make Carrey look more like Robotnik and boast of his involvement more.  That's one human character fans care about that they haven't promoted vs several fans don't care about that they have promoted, so the economics don't add up to me; sure Carrey likely demands a bigger paycheck, but promoting his involvement in the film would also garner it far more publicity and in turn, money.

As to whether a plot about environmentalism and the threat of robots can work in today's world: Yes.  It's very relevant.  However it would need to be smartly written.  Robotnik in a modern take on that probably shouldn't have a totalitarian dictator persona, which was relevant back in the days communism was on its last legs and people still made an association between totalitarianism and pollution but isn't the case now.  Instead, the modern Robotnik would be more the whimsical manchild on most display in Sonic Colors; heading a company that manufactures things that are fun for modern society--so fun that society ignores the environmental cost.  Until Sonic comes to blow the whistle on it.

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You know what? I’m just going to wait for the trailer to drop, before expressing my own opinions on the movie. There isn’t much to talk about it at this point.

I just hope the trailer prove me wrong and surprised me. 

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2 hours ago, CaptainRobo said:

You know what? I’m just going to wait for the trailer to drop, before expressing my own opinions on the movie. There isn’t much to talk about it at this point.

I just hope the trailer prove me wrong and surprised me. 

Even an official still from the film would be great. 

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1 hour ago, Alexios31 said:

Even an official still from the film would be great. 

Yea, it would be nice to get one, just to hype things up.

1 hour ago, Myst said:

 

So, this guy, who used to voiced Silver, get to chat with the voice actor of Sonic for the movie. That’s nice.

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Found this video of the old Sonic voice actor, Jaleel White talking about the film.:

On on an unrelated note, the official Detective Pikachu movie Twitter account posted this.:

 

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Most likely we'll get some descriptions of what was shown then we'll see how it lines up with the previous descriptions.

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