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

[Ryannumber1gamer]

16 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

Just because the changes were done in an entirely profit-driven sense doesn’t mean we shouldn’t support the film. 

I'm not arguing for you supporting the movie or not, because I personally believe there are far deeper issues with this film that should be making support of the movie spotty at best. If you want to support it, by all means - do so, I'm not gonna give you shit for it, even if I think this film doesn't deserve it. 

But pretending that Paramount and the filmmakers of this film should be given points for A. listening to feedback, and B. Looking out for fans is downright ludicrous. They were more than happy to shit talk detractors of the design, and constantly go on about how good it was and it was the internet's fault for not giving it a chance. Then when they were proven wrong, and it was in fact - a shit design, they backpedalled, tried to act like they were in on the joke and "oh yeah it was a bad design all along lel" and are now changing the design. 

They don't deserve praise for doing that, because they were more than fine with shoving out everyone else's opinions until they were given undeniable proof that their design was shit when it became an internet meme, and was being laughed at everywhere. This is a purely business decision from Paramount, executives, and whoever else when they realised that this was not going to end well for them in terms of profits, and I think the idea that they do deserve this praise is a load of shit. Just because something is beneficial to us, does not mean that the decision was made because of them thinking about us. 

As I said, the same way that EA shouldn't deserve praise because of them fixing their own obvious mistakes with Battlefront 2, Paramount doesn't deserve praise for their own misgivings with this film and their desperate attempts to fix them before release now, especially after how many times they were told time and again long before the point that the movie released. Better yet - not even from fans - from SEGA themselves, and they still went through with it. 

But to answer your point at hand - just because it was done entirely in profit driven sense is not a reason why you shouldn't support this film. It is in fact a reason why you should know full well that these people were not listening to fan feedback, and were not caring for the fanbase and their opinions - they cared about the fact it was going to cost them money. The reason why people aren't supporting this film, from my perspective is because it's a shoddy generic film with bad writing, a cliched story, boring cast, and for the many, many, many reasons that have been explained in this topic over and over and over again in gigantic detail.

If you want to support the film, more power to you, but I think it's long since been proven time and time again where these "people should be supporting this movie because it's sonic" arguments have led in the past.

[CaptainRobo]

So, I found this. Someone made an trailer with the Normal Sonic. It’s looks cool. This is what could have been, if they put the Normal one in instead of the one that they made for the movie.

 

[StaticMania]

Why do people wanna see regular Sonic saying those boring/negative lines?

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I'm not arguing for you supporting the movie or not, because I personally believe there are far deeper issues with this film that should be making support of the movie spotty at best. If you want to support it, by all means - do so, I'm not gonna give you shit for it, even if I think this film doesn't deserve it. 

But pretending that Paramount and the filmmakers of this film should be given points for A. listening to feedback, and B. Looking out for fans is downright ludicrous. They were more than happy to shit talk detractors of the design, and constantly go on about how good it was and it was the internet's fault for not giving it a chance. Then when they were proven wrong, and it was in fact - a shit design, they backpedalled, tried to act like they were in on the joke and "oh yeah it was a bad design all along lel" and are now changing the design. 

They don't deserve praise for doing that, because they were more than fine with shoving out everyone else's opinions until they were given undeniable proof that their design was shit when it became an internet meme, and was being laughed at everywhere. This is a purely business decision from Paramount, executives, and whoever else when they realised that this was not going to end well for them in terms of profits, and I think the idea that they do deserve this praise is a load of shit. Just because something is beneficial to us, does not mean that the decision was made because of them thinking about us. 

As I said, the same way that EA shouldn't deserve praise because of them fixing their own obvious mistakes with Battlefront 2, Paramount doesn't deserve praise for their own misgivings with this film and their desperate attempts to fix them before release now, especially after how many times they were told time and again long before the point that the movie released. Better yet - not even from fans - from SEGA themselves, and they still went through with it. 

But to answer your point at hand - just because it was done entirely in profit driven sense is not a reason why you shouldn't support this film. It is in fact a reason why you should know full well that these people were not listening to fan feedback, and were not caring for the fanbase and their opinions - they cared about the fact it was going to cost them money. The reason why people aren't supporting this film, from my perspective is because it's a shoddy generic film with bad writing, a cliched story, boring cast, and for the many, many, many reasons that have been explained in this topic over and over and over again in gigantic detail.

If you want to support the film, more power to you, but I think it's long since been proven time and time again where these "people should be supporting this movie because it's sonic" arguments have led in the past.

There's still the question of the poor animators forced to work for hours and hours. Oh, and tell me, why does Disney get a pass when they do the same thing with Dumbo? It’s not like this decision will hurt anybody, either. 

[AdventChild]

1 hour ago, StaticMania said:

Why do people wanna see regular Sonic saying those boring/negative lines?

Yeah, just because Sonic is improved, doesn't make the crappy writing/jokes and the hammy or bland acting and underwhelming action set pieces any better.

It's just basically Hop fused with Bayformers.

[Tarnish]

2 hours ago, CaptainRobo said:

So, I found this. Someone made an trailer with the Normal Sonic. It’s looks cool. This is what could have been, if they put the Normal one in instead of the one that they made for the movie.

 

Now he just looks like a talking stuffed plush toy if I'm perfectly honest.

[Scritch the Cat]

12 hours ago, AdventChild said:

Yeah, just because Sonic is improved, doesn't make the crappy writing/jokes and the hammy or bland acting and underwhelming action set pieces any better.

It's just basically Hop fused with Bayformers.

Truly.  Except at least some of the Bayformers robots resemble their counterparts in other Transformers universes.

This movie can get a pretty paint job, but ultimately that isn't going to do much more on its own besides put it on the same level of respectability as so many other live-action films starring CGI characters, and that it took longer to get there will remain a point against it compared to them.  Worse still, many consider Detective Pikachu to have finally gotten the formula correct, and when you combine that with how we've already gotten a good taste of the joke quality the film will feature, this film is going to feel dead on arrival.

As for merchandise, I must say that they're between a rock and a hard place there.  Sonic toys won't sell if they're too ugly, but if they're fixing his design by making him more like his game counterpart, going too far in that direction is also a risk, since he'll resemble a toy many people already own.  That is of course before we remember that a lack of game elements limits the potential for toys.

[BaronGrackle]

54 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Truly.  Except at least some of the Bayformers robots resemble their counterparts in other Transformers universes.

This movie can get a pretty paint job, but ultimately that isn't going to do much more on its own besides put it on the same level of respectability as so many other live-action films starring CGI characters, and that it took longer to get there will remain a point against them.  Worse still, many consider Detective Pikachu to have finally gotten the formula correct, and when you combine that with how we've already gotten a good taste of the joke quality the film will feature, this film is going to feel dead on arrival.

As for merchandise, I must say that they're between a rock and a hard place there.  Sonic toys won't sell if they're too ugly, but if they're fixing his design by making him more like his game counterpart, going too far in that direction is also a risk, since he'll resemble a toy many people already own.  That is of course before we remember that a lack of game elements limits the potential for toys.

I will say that Sonic toys are pretty rare in the brick and mortar world. Toys R Us is dead now; the only other place I saw them was at Target when Sonic Generations was coming out. If Sonic can get on Walmart's shelf space, it'd be an achievement.

(EDIT: This comment excluded the LEGO Dimensions pack.)

[Meta77]

4 hours ago, CaptainRobo said:

So, I found this. Someone made an trailer with the Normal Sonic. It’s looks cool. This is what could have been, if they put the Normal one in instead of the one that they made for the movie.

 

That just looks bad. Its like fans can not come to terms they WERE trying to go with a more realistic animal take on sonic. As if something if i woke up in a mutated world and I would expect to see at my doorstep. Sure again I agree with the statment his face was bad. Just horrible but otherwise it was ok. The whole cartoon sonic is not something i would expect to see. NOW if this movie had been ready player one verse where sonic is an established game character in it then maybe but even then that "cartoon model" just looks bad imo. Paramount was chasing the money and it backfired on them. I do wonder how they plan to save the film though.

[PeterPancake]

2 hours ago, Tarnish said:

Now he just looks like a talking stuffed plush toy if I'm perfectly honest.

I mean, that's the game design. Is that not what everyone wants?

[Diogenes]

50 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

Its like fans can not come to terms they WERE trying to go with a more realistic animal take on sonic.

Everyone has come to terms with the fact that that's what they tried to do.

Most people have now come to terms with the fact that that was a bad idea.

[Meta77]

But why was it a bad idea. If they gave sonic a more unison eye would it have been better. Cause honestly has anyone actually looked at a real hedgehog. Movie or past movie verse sonic looked like one. Regardless of whatever he ends up looking like be it glooves, pants, durag, etc if the story does not hold up I am doubtful we will see anything else sonic wise in the form of a movie for a long time. Im looking at you mario movie.  BUT then again as I have said in the past. D.pikas story was bad and boring yet fans ate up the :look: rather than anything dealing with the story and praised it. Well besides metacritic. last i looked it had a 54

[Diogenes]

Just now, Meta77 said:

But why was it a bad idea.

Because it results in terrible gremlin Sonics rather than something likeable and visually pleasing.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

21 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

But why was it a bad idea. If they gave sonic a more unison eye would it have been better. Cause honestly has anyone actually looked at a real hedgehog. Movie or past movie verse sonic looked like one. Regardless of whatever he ends up looking like be it glooves, pants, durag, etc if the story does not hold up I am doubtful we will see anything else sonic wise in the form of a movie for a long time. Im looking at you mario movie.  BUT then again as I have said in the past. D.pikas story was bad and boring yet fans ate up the :look: rather than anything dealing with the story and praised it. Well besides metacritic. last i looked it had a 54

Because taking a cartoon character designed to be heavily stylised and on top of that - stuck in a imaginative/creative world as the literal designer of Sonic himself said when this design came out and trying to force it into a realistic shell makes something out of the uncanny valley. To be absolutely frank, given they're trying to sell this product to me, and others - I don't give half a shit about what they intended, I care about what the final result looks like, and the final result looks like a horrific mutant. 

It was a bad idea because it wasn't supposed to happen, and their attempt to do it looked awful, there isn't any further explanation needed than that. 

[SaturnWolf]

14 hours ago, Rabid-Coot said:

Even with some non fans in the mix the hate for the pre-trailer materials is going to look like all the other cases of we hate x change it that productions have to deal with. They took the gamble that they would find an audience and lost now we get to say told you so.

The problem with that is it wasn't just some vocal minority making fun of it, from the moment the first poster dropped, everybody hated it.

The fact that the writer had to condescendingly tell people to calm down is indicative of a much larger issue.

[Polkadi~☆]

17 minutes ago, DreamSaturn said:

The problem with that is it wasn't just some vocal minority making fun of it, from the moment the first poster dropped, everybody hated it.

The fact that the writer had to condescendingly tell people to calm down is indicative of a much larger issue.

Movies should learn something that even shops have come to understand in their marketing: the customer/consumer is always right. And what does that mean? If the customer thinks your product is crap and they won't buy it, you can't convince them otherwise, because you failed to appeal to the customer. And if it happens on a scale as wide as this, then guess what, your product sucks, and the customer is completely right to say it is.

It's fun to knock Hollywood executives off their pedestal, because they are so far detached from reality, that they need something to pull them back in. Condescending attitudes can't save you from losing profits.

[Diogenes]

5 minutes ago, Polkadi~♪ said:

Movies should learn something that even shops have come to understand in their marketing: the customer/consumer is always right.

Ehhh I wouldn't go that far. Because, the customer is often an idiot. Obviously you want your product/art/whatever to appeal to people, but people are often poor judges of what will actually satisfy them, especially when it comes to abstract things like entertainment, even when they're the type to try to understand how things work and what they want to see.

Obviously though the Sonic design is still fuuuuucking horrible and there's really no excuse for it regardless of how much weight you put on the customer's opinions.

[Polkadi~☆]

Just now, Diogenes said:

Ehhh I wouldn't go that far. Because, the customer is often an idiot. Obviously you want your product/art/whatever to appeal to people, but people are often poor judges of what will actually satisfy them, especially when it comes to abstract things like entertainment, even when they're the type to try to understand how things work and what they want to see.

Obviously though the Sonic design is still fuuuuucking horrible and there's really no excuse for it regardless of how much weight you put on the customer's opinions.

Okay, so I went a little too far. Obviously, you don't listen to every little complaint, that's draining and doesn't help, and will always appear regardless of what you do. Basically, if there's a wide negative reaction against your film, you've already lost most of your audience, and no amount of goalpost shifting and "respect our vision" quotes will change that. By that point, I'd just say to go through with the movie and never speak of it again, but they intend to make something good out of it, whatever that's like.

It just boggles the mind when the writing was on the wall about how bad the design was from silhouette alone, yet the producers and filmmakers didn't care until the last minute.

[Meta77]

I mean with how much sonic is made fun of and constantly in todays world makes fun of itself constantly compared to the sonic of the 90s and early 00s, today you can rarely make it a day without the twitter or people making jokes about the franchise as a whole and with Ruby and the rest bringing in aaron to promote the game at times when nearly every sonic video they play they do noting but make fun of the franchise.  can you blame them. They probably thought it would sell on name alone but it did not work

 

Honestly what they needed was john ceena

[Razule]

2 hours ago, Meta77 said:

. Movie or past movie verse sonic looked like one.

He barely looks anything more like a regular hedgehog than normal Sonic.

[PeterPancake]

At the end of the day, they failed when designing Sonic. Hopefully they will make something aesthetically pleasing 

[Tarnish]

6 hours ago, PeterPancake said:

I mean, that's the game design. Is that not what everyone wants?

I'm struggling to recall in which game he was portrayed with fur like that, besides the werehog.

[Sega DogTagz]

4 hours ago, Polkadi~♪ said:

It just boggles the mind when the writing was on the wall about how bad the design was from silhouette alone, yet the producers and filmmakers didn't care until the last minute.

How so? Movies in general, and Paramount themselves have been down the road before. They have taken cherished IPs, changed them to the point of a vocal backlash from fans and onlookers and have found success waiting out the most vocal of the group and cashing in on the apathy to follow. If anything, its more surprising that they chose to relent at all, considering the handful of movies that came before this that proved to be financial successes in spite of spitting in the faces of the original designs to the dismay of many.

TMNT is the perfect example. NOBODY thought those turtles look good, and they were the butt of many jokes - but after the fervor died down a bit, they released the first movie and made bank. I'm sure that's what they were banking on with Sonic too, after it became clear that the model wasn't as appealing as they wanted it to be.

[Tarnish]

52 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

TMNT is the perfect example. NOBODY thought those turtles look good, and they were the butt of many jokes - but after the fervor died down a bit, they released the first movie and made bank.

Yeah, they made bank...with the first film. The sequel was pretty much a box office bomb. So in the long run, it doesn't seem to have worked out for them (now obviously the horrible designs weren't the only reason for that, but I doubt it actually helped the movie). And since obviously they're planning sequels for this Sawnik movie too, I wonder how that'll turn out for them once people use up their pity/nostalgia/curiosity tokens on this first movie.

[Rabid-Coot]

6 hours ago, DreamSaturn said:

The problem with that is it wasn't just some vocal minority making fun of it, from the moment the first poster dropped, everybody hated it.

The fact that the writer had to condescendingly tell people to calm down is indicative of a much larger issue.

From the perspective of the film studio how is that early hate any different from all the other times some aspect of a film gets similar crap thrown at it. Sometimes fans are right and sometimes they're wrong but any course correction is going to come late because that early hate can always be written off as people not seeing a more complete version yet.