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

[MadmanRB]

17 hours ago, Myst said:

Judging a movie by its trailer is the same thing as judging a book by its cover.

The room would like to have a word with you:

 

[ShadowSJG]

Why is this movie repeating every bad adaption cliche? Why do we need Tom at all?

[SaturnWolf]

4 minutes ago, ShadowSJG said:

Why is this movie repeating every bad adaption cliche? Why do we need Tom at all?

Don't you know? We need an annoying human side kick to take up most of the plot. Don't you find a middle-aged cop with a tranquilizer so relatable?

[Lord-Dreamerz]

15 minutes ago, ShadowSJG said:

Why do we need Tom at all?

Because nobody can relate to a cool unique character like Sonic. Clearly everybody needs a extremely lame forgettable character in order to relate to them. =P

[Tarnish]

13 minutes ago, DreamSaturn said:

Don't you know? We need an annoying human side kick to take up most of the plot. Don't you find a middle-aged cop with a tranquilizer so relatable?

I imagine the board meetings went sort of like in this animation:

(I also wish a few rockets would have hit the building during said meeting.)

[PeterPancake]

I saw the trailer at my showing for Detective Pikachu and the kids seem to enjoy it quite a bit. I was in a packed theater 

[Sonic Fan J]

Glad to hear some kids are. I just had to hear my cousin's 5th grade daughter bemoan it and got pulled into a conversation explaining to my aunt why she didn't like it but liked Detective Pikachu. I didn't even want to bring it up and hoped she hadn't seen the trailer as a result. I was not so fortunate. Curiously though, I have yet to meet a person offline who likes it. I've seen one person (my aunt) who didn't comprehend, but otherwise it's been naught but disdain, making fun of it, and generally hating on it. You may have wanted Sonic to back in the public eye @PeterPancake, but with all of this negativity around my favorite entertainment property everywhere I go to the point that it is inescapable I could have done with Sonic staying obscure. Still, no matter how things go, I hope those of you who like what we are getting can find a way to enjoy it in peace.

[Myst]

24 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

I saw the trailer at my showing for Detective Pikachu and the kids seem to enjoy it quite a bit. I was in a packed theater 

That's nice to hear.

This is who the movie is for, anyway. Kids. They are the ones who will decide whether this movie is a success or a bomb. Not us old folks who grew up with our version of Sonic. This is a new Sonic for a new generation of fans. 

[PeterPancake]

34 minutes ago, Sonic Fan J said:

Glad to hear some kids are. I just had to hear my cousin's 5th grade daughter bemoan it and got pulled into a conversation explaining to my aunt why she didn't like it but liked Detective Pikachu. I didn't even want to bring it up and hoped she hadn't seen the trailer as a result. I was not so fortunate. Curiously though, I have yet to meet a person offline who likes it. I've seen one person (my aunt) who didn't comprehend, but otherwise it's been naught but disdain, making fun of it, and generally hating on it. You may have wanted Sonic to back in the public eye @PeterPancake, but with all of this negativity around my favorite entertainment property everywhere I go to the point that it is inescapable I could have done with Sonic staying obscure. Still, no matter how things go, I hope those of you who like what we are getting can find a way to enjoy it in peace.

 

13 minutes ago, Myst said:

That's nice to hear.

This is who the movie is for, anyway. Kids. They are the ones who will decide whether this movie is a success or a bomb. Not us old folks who grew up with our version of Sonic. This is a new Sonic for a new generation of fans. 

Well, as long as most kids enjoy, that's what ultimately counts I guess. Like Myst said, the movie is for a new generation of fans so if they succeed in bringing kids who dont know Sonic in, I guess Paramount will be happy. 

[CaptainRobo]

 

[Lord-Dreamerz]

2 hours ago, Myst said:

That's nice to hear.

This is who the movie is for, anyway. Kids. They are the ones who will decide whether this movie is a success or a bomb. Not us old folks who grew up with our version of Sonic. This is a new Sonic for a new generation of fans. 

Except many people have also reported tons of kids calling the new Sonic movie awful in theaters too when watching the ad during Detective Pikachu. There has been both reports of kids who think it looks fun and many reports of kids who hate the looks if it. it isn't just one way or the other currently. Also the argument that "This is only for kids! Not smelly old adults!" is among the worse weak arguments made by people when defending a old franchise getting ruined by new misguided developers. Today's media doesn't exist in separated small voids. Very often when something upsets old fan-bases the opinions and feelings overflows into the new fans too. For example years ago there was old PR talk for Sonic Boom that also said it was trying to target a new fan base and they slightly hoped the old fans would leave it alone... and that did not work out for them... because well you guessed it... Sonic Boom was only really interesting to Sonic fans. It is delusional for anybody to truly assume & believe that old fan-bases don't matter and that a product can survive off of new fans only... often that kinda arrogant attitude bites developers in the keister before long. Sonic isn't a new franchise no matter how much they try to change/corrupt it... and as such it never can appeal to new audiences in the same way as a fully new franchise can. Trying to sweep all old fans under the rug is suicide for almost any long term franchise.

PS: If they truly wanted to aim this movie at kids... then they should had dropped the PG13 rating, and more importantly they should had made it a CGI cartoon too...  A cartoon would had both made it more appealing for kids and the old fans too, which would had been hitting two birds with one stone.

[Meta77]

If anything we may get good reviews for sonic regardless maybe. Ive been reading and watching a lot of reviews of D.Pika and most are still praising the movie just on the fact it has pokemon in it and barely anyone is praising the story or saying that its medicore but POKEMON are in it so that makes it good. Same could happen to sonic. COULD. It may not but could.

[Razule]

7 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

If anything we may get good reviews for sonic regardless maybe. Ive been reading and watching a lot of reviews of D.Pika and most are still praising the movie just on the fact it has pokemon in it and barely anyone is praising the story or saying that its medicore but POKEMON are in it so that makes it good. Same could happen to sonic. COULD. It may not but could.

Will the appeal of live-action Sonic have the same effect though?

[Sega DogTagz]

42 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

If anything we may get good reviews for sonic regardless maybe. Ive been reading and watching a lot of reviews of D.Pika and most are still praising the movie just on the fact it has pokemon in it and barely anyone is praising the story or saying that its medicore but POKEMON are in it so that makes it good. Same could happen to sonic. COULD. It may not but could.

But even the designs of the most uggo pokemon in that movie are at least somewhat faithful to the original source material. Its easy to give bonus points for oh-look-a-pokemon when the mark they were aiming for is at least consistent with the games.

Sonic doens't even have that going for him right now. Barring a drastic redesign - anyone looking to feed bonus points to the Sonic movie for just being Sonic on the big screen has to immediately grapple with the mental gymnastics that come with accepting THAT character model. Oddly enough, Eggman has that problem too. If he doesn't look like Eggman until the end credit stinger... then you can't even give the movie bonus points for that.

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, CaptainRobo said:

 

Sonic’s more “his nephew” at this point... 

 

His niece is doing fine for herself, and his own child seems to be MIA...

[Indigo Rush]

The next generation of children deserves better than this.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

23 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

The next generation of children deserves better than this.

Ah, but there's the age old argument. "It's just for kids!!!" 

Except that plenty of other creators actually treat kids like they have half a brain, and don't need pandered down to with total crap. Not to mention that the first defence was "It isn't just for kids, it's for those who remember Sonic from years ago and have nostalgia for him!". 

Like, the idea that Movie!Sonic is more marketable to kids is downright laughable, especially when the majority of kids likely know what Sonic is, and what he looks like, given many of them still shit on the movie, from what we've heard from tons of movie theatres, that even has video proof. 

But good god I swear there's no other argument that infuriates me more than "It's just for kids", because the next generation of children, kids, and whatever actually deserves something of quality that isn't trying to pander or talk down to them. It's not a good argument. Better yet, you wanna know where else the "It's just for kids" argument pops up? When people defend Alvin & the Chipmunks, the Smurfs, or any other bad live-action hybrid film based on an old property. 

[StaticMania]

14 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

...you wanna know where else the "It's just for kids" argument pops up?

Every bad animated children's movie?

[Scritch the Cat]

"It's for kids" translates to "I think kids are useful idiots", it seems every time I read or hear it.  Plus even if they were playing on the idea that kids are ignorant, shouldn't that have implied they could have used the game design and not had any issue with it seeming unrealistic?

As for the conspiracy theory about them intentionally debuting with a bad design, while I won't say 100% that it is true, to the people who are skeptical because they think these people aren't clever enough [Note: I originally had a double negative; sorry.], I argue that these days they don't have to be.  This campaign was not launched in a vacuum.  In the past several years, plenty of people have observed the following:

1) Nostalgic fandoms tend to get vocally irate at new iterations of their favorite media that they think deviate too much.  From Ninja Turtles to Ghostbusters to Star Wars to JEM to Disney animated movies, just about every new twist on an old property can be guaranteed to attract at least some scorn.  This is well-known enough that in a few cases, creators have already trolled the objectors.

2) Sonic's fandom has a reputation for being extremely irate and overprotective of some ideal, even by fandom standards.  Maybe that's mostly based on Chris Chan and that kid who screamed like a distressed piglet, but its the reputation Sonic's fandom has, nonetheless.  And then there's also the vocal Sonic hatedom, and the hatedom of Sonic's fandom.  The lines between the three were already starting to blur as a result of this series trying so many different things, and then Sega's meme-happy marketing exacerbated that further.

3) The Sonic Boom spinoff first got teased using silhouettes of the characters, and predictably, got slammed and mocked.  In particular, Knuckles' unbalanced physique got a lot of mockery.

Now consider the first things we saw of this movie were a poster of Sonic's new design in a likewise silhouetted athletic pose, showing off the muscle tone in his legs.  Shortly after, another poster with those legs hanging over the Golden Gate bridge and not much else.  Finally, when the official Twitter account for the movie opened, the pivotal post was a picture of Sonic's blue legs, buffer than ever, little else again, and text calling attention to focus-training his lower body.  Also consider the different levels of musculature we've seen so far, the rather extreme differences in how the mouth is handled even between scenes in that trailer, plus concept art that gave him a side mouth and a white patch of fur to kind of hoax the illusion of a mono-eye.

The reason I believe the conspiracy is that I don't think having to rush out a new model, different from the merchandise ordered so far, is actually a worry for them, because they already have that model ready and were testing how people reacted to a different one.  I think these people were clever enough to conspire, but not clever enough to conspire well.  If they'd done it well, they'd have covered their tracks better, by not letting multiple versions of their Sonic design leak into the public.  As it stands, I think at the very least, there is reason to believe we will get something in the final product that looks less horrific than Sonic's mouth in that shed scene--but that actually means very little to me. 

Really, whether or not they conspired to get to this point, right now what they're doing amounts to handing us a barren bucket so they can spit in it.  No matter how elaborate or simple their plan is, their current intent is to get people to applaud them for listening to criticisms and making some design changes, and likewise no matter how radical their design changes are, that still isn't going to make the movie itself enjoyable.  Indeed, I suspect that if the trailer was the first thing we ever saw of this movie, Sonic had his game design or something close, but everything else was as it is now, the buzz about this movie would be negligible.  It would be seen as generically bad, rather than spectacularly bad, and it would likely come and go with little uproar.  I expect badness from this film; the only thing ambiguous to me at this point is how mad people will get at it.

[Myst]

1 hour ago, Indigo Rush said:

The next generation of children deserves better than this.

I thought the same thing back in the day when characters like Silver, Blaze, and the Chaotix became series regulars. Now they are fan favorites.

Sonic X had some pretty shoddy animation, and a horrible english dub, but many young people these days grew up with that show and look back on it nostalgically now.

[SaturnWolf]

If it can be better, shouldn't it be better? Shouldn't kids get as much quality content as we demand for ourselves? Isn't making something bad just to say "Well it's for kids so it's okay for it to be bad" incredibly lazy and disrespectful towards kids?

 

[Myst]

3 minutes ago, DreamSaturn said:

If it can be better, shouldn't it be better? Shouldn't kids get as much quality content as we demand for ourselves? Isn't making something bad just to say "Well it's for kids so it's okay for it to be bad" incredibly lazy and disrespectful towards kids?

 

Who's to say the movie WON'T be a quality product? We won't know until November 8th whether or not this movie is good or garbage.

[SaturnWolf]

Just now, Myst said:

Who's to say the movie WON'T be a quality product? We won't know until November 8th whether or not this movie is good or garbage.

There are some tell-tale signs that a movie will be bad. Usually when people attached to the project have to share an article telling people to be positive about their movie, that's not a good sign.

[ShadowSJG]

7 hours ago, Tarnish said:

I imagine the board meetings went sort of like in this animation:

(I also wish a few rockets would have hit the building during said meeting.)

OFC it went like this

Any reason why this movie is repeating every bad cliche despite experience showing that they don't work

[Tarnish]

3 hours ago, Myst said:

Who's to say the movie WON'T be a quality product? We won't know until November 8th whether or not this movie is good or garbage.

Quality is pretty subjective when it comes to movies. To me, quality would mean this movie was made respecting the source material. Which this movie fails horribly at. So in my book, there's no way this movie could be quality at this point.

While for others, hiring a big name actor like Jim Carrey and fast paced CGI crap might be quality. So yeah. One man's trash is another man's treasure as they say.