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

[Rabid-Coot]

We're already 21/2 months into the 31/4 months delay getting close to that 6 months away time frame of the first trailer again. Of course it might not follow the same timing as the first but if they do have something finished they could want to get it in font of Dora or Angry Birds 2 maybe Playmobil.

[Multikaris]

7 hours ago, Polkadi~☆ said:

Why do you think that once the design is fixed, everything is fixed? This movie purely lacks any Sonic soul, anything that can even remotely ground it in a sense that it is not out of place with the rest of the franchise. That’s like getting someone into Half-Life by telling them to play Portal, they are not the same thing at all. No amount of making Sonic look pleasing to the eye will change the fact that the movie is boring, and disconnected from it’s source material. It lacks a Sonic soul, let alone any soul.

Do not assume a design change will fix all of our problems. Everything that makes this film bad runs to it’s very core.

At least there’s no Zavok, Wisps, nostalgia pandering, Sola Sonica (Tom looks like he’ll be useful), Classic Sonic, Pontaff, etc.

 

Live-Action Sonic, What a wonderful phrase

Live-Action Sonic, There's no Pontaff to see

It means no Classic

Sonic in this film

It's Our Zavok-free, philosophy..

Hakuna No-Wisp-a!

 

[MetalSkulkBane]

18 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

At least there’s no Zavok, Wisps, nostalgia pandering, Sola Sonica (Tom looks like he’ll be useful), Classic Sonic, Pontaff, etc.

 

Live-Action Sonic, What a wonderful phrase

Live-Action Sonic, There's no Pontaff to see

It mean's no Classic

Sonic in this film

It's Our Zavok-free, philosophy..

Hakuna No-Wisp-a!

 

I would kinda prefer if they  ADDED something in place of removed elements.

You know, other than Tom the Cop.

[SaturnWolf]

38 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

Live-Action Sonic, What a wonderful phrase

 

Live-Action Sonic, There's no Pontaff to see

It mean's no Classic

Sonic in this film

It's Our Zavok-free, philosophy..

Hakuna No-Wisp-a!

 

At least those are familiar elements (for better or for worse) that would make it feel more like a Sonic thing. This has none of those things. There's a reason none of the games with G.U.N ever focused on individual troops and had them team up with Sonic. Because nobody cares about characters like Tom the Cop or Jerry the Used Car Salesman

[Red Hot Jack]

What ticks me off about the movie is that "everything" sets up for a sequel with Eggman looking like himself, set in Sonic's world with more of Sonic's friends. 

...And why couldn't we have this immediately? Budget reasons? Again, I'm intrigued by the idea of an origin story for both Sonic and Robotnik, but if the sequel is a lot more Sonic-y and with just Tom looking out of place (by the way), I don't see the point of the first movie at all, if there is this big difference with the sequel. I think that with enough success they will return to the Human world when Shadow debuts?

I'm not sure about this, from the trailer it seems funny and it knows what it is, unlike DP, it seems a lot fresher and for kids, with a better cast. The one thing I would do to make the "movie franchise" (if Sonic has enough luck to get there) is to unify the 2 worlds bullshit.

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, DreamSaturn said:

At least those are familiar elements (for better or for worse) that would make it feel more like a Sonic thing. This has none of those things. There's a reason none of the games with G.U.N ever focused on individual troops and had them team up with Sonic. Because nobody cares about characters like Tom the Cop or Jerry the Used Car Salesman

Nor Zavok or the Wisps or Cubot or so on and so forth, so I don’t see too much of a difference. And it’s up to the writers to make people care about characters like Jerry the Used Car Salesman.

[Shadowlax]

2 hours ago, DreamSaturn said:

At least those are familiar elements (for better or for worse) that would make it feel more like a Sonic thing. This has none of those things. There's a reason none of the games with G.U.N ever focused on individual troops and had them team up with Sonic. Because nobody cares about characters like Tom the Cop or Jerry the Used Car Salesman

To be fair sonic X did it and people thought topaz was ok.

Though the comics tried to do it and it was ...a mess to say the least.

But generally I agree with your assessment.

[SaturnWolf]

1 hour ago, Miragnarok said:

Nor Zavok or the Wisps or Cubot or so on and so forth, so I don’t see too much of a difference. And it’s up to the writers to make people care about characters like Jerry the Used Car Salesman.

The difference is those are now established elements of the franchise. You can argue they're poorly established, sure. But they're established all the same and at least were kind of worked in to fit into Sonic's world.

What's Tom the Cop and *flips through IMDb* Minivan Kid's excuse?

[thumbs13]

4 hours ago, Miragnarok said:

At least there’s no Zavok, Wisps, nostalgia pandering, Sola Sonica (Tom looks like he’ll be useful), Classic Sonic, Pontaff, etc.

 

Live-Action Sonic, What a wonderful phrase

Live-Action Sonic, There's no Pontaff to see

It means no Classic

Sonic in this film

It's Our Zavok-free, philosophy..

Hakuna No-Wisp-a!

 

Those are gameplay things. This a movie. Note how we don't have any of those things in the cartoons or comics either 

[Multikaris]

Just now, thumbs13 said:

Those are gameplay things. This a movie. Note how we don't have any of those things in the cartoons or comics either 

No. We do. Wisps in IDW, Pontaff in the late Boom, etc.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

9 hours ago, Polkadi~☆ said:

Why do you think that once the design is fixed, everything is fixed? This movie purely lacks any Sonic soul, anything that can even remotely ground it in a sense that it is not out of place with the rest of the franchise. That’s like getting someone into Half-Life by telling them to play Portal, they are not the same thing at all. No amount of making Sonic look pleasing to the eye will change the fact that the movie is boring, and disconnected from it’s source material. It lacks a Sonic soul, let alone any soul.

Do not assume a design change will fix all of our problems. Everything that makes this film bad runs to it’s very core.

I think the old saying of "you can polish a turd" comes so very much into play here. You can paint it gold and polish it, but it won't change what it is. It's the same for this, you can redesign Sonic all you want, but when the problems of the film stem literally into the core of the movie on a foundation and conceptual level, you can't fix it without scrapping and starting over.

When the very concept of the movie started as "Sonic is a real creature in the real world fighting against Jim Carrey Robotnik with his new human best buddy who is a recognisable actor who also has a generic love interest", it was doomed from the start. The trailer only confirmed the initial belief it would be bad. Yeah, the design was atrocious, but Eggman's design was also pretty generic and bad, the jokes fell flat, the special effects are downright atrocious (especially the effect for Tom and his girlfriend being thrown into the warp ring, which is very clearly just a green screen), and the story is the most contrived cliched nonsense. A design change won't fix any of that, and I most certainly do not intend to support it either so we can get more films like this just because the filmmakers decided to fix their own incredibly glaring and obvious fuck up. 

[Myst]

Hey, for those of you who are actually excited for this movie like me, I'd like to let you know, I just recently picked up a Sonic movie poster on eBay for around $17.00. A seller named cgcposter-6 is selling posters of the film (using an industrial-grade printer, so the quality is really nice!)

This is the poster I got:



I'd post a photo of it but the camera on my phone is broken so I'll have to find another device to post it with. I have it framed on my wall and it looks fantastic!

There are some minor imperfections (The text at the bottom of the poster is a little garbled, but those are in a tiny font, so its a minor gripe) overall, it looks great, with lots of vibrant colors that really pop. Highly reccommended. Looks best when framed (you can usually find a cheap 24x36 frame for around $20 in department stores)

[Myst]

12 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

When the very concept of the movie started as "Sonic is a real creature in the real world fighting against Jim Carrey Robotnik with his new human best buddy who is a recognisable actor who also has a generic love interest", it was doomed from the start.

Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic X, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 06 Sonic Unleashed & the Archie comic book all say hi.

So, when do you guys think we'll get the next trailer for the film? Paramount's other big family movie, Dora, releases August 6th. Could be a possibility. Or do you think that is too soon, given the redesign?

[Rabid-Coot]

11 minutes ago, Myst said:

So, when do you guys think we'll get the next trailer for the film? Paramount's other big family movie, Dora, releases August 6th. Could be a possibility. Or do you think that is too soon, given the redesign?

August is right back on to the 6 months before release timing of the first and there's ample kids films to be in front of in that month. They might have had enough time to get a minute of presentable Sonic footage done and would probably fill the rest with some Jim footage.

[KHCast]

55 minutes ago, Myst said:

Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic X, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 06 Sonic Unleashed & the Archie comic book all say hi.

Sonic X and 06 are rightly shit on what the hell is your point with those, also the other examples don’t counter Ryan one bit. Being in a human world was not his point of contention. Being Hollywoodized, generic and predictable, cynical, live action, garble that isn’t bringing anything new, cool, or interesting to the video game movie (or movie in general) scene is.

[Myst]

58 minutes ago, KHCast said:

Sonic X and 06 are rightly shit on what the hell is your point with those, also the other examples don’t counter Ryan one bit. Being in a human world was not his point of contention. Being Hollywoodized, generic and predictable, cynical, live action, garble that isn’t bringing anything new, cool, or interesting to the video game movie (or movie in general) scene is.

06's quality aside, Ryan was acting as if Sonic being in the human world has never been done before, when in reality, Sonic's hung around with humans for close to a decade. So it's not some insult to the franchise to have Sonic running around human cities fighting off drones and robot cars. 

Sonic had a rivalry with a human cop (Sam Speed) in Sonic X, so why is Tom such a big deal.

Also, characters like Major Bennington is pretty faithful to the series if you ask me, (The G.U.N Commander, Abraham Tower, was used as an antagonist in Shadow the Hedgehog and was also featured in the Archie comic book series. Neal McDonough's character in the movie looks to basically be the G.U.N Commander with a different name)

[Ryannumber1gamer]

4 hours ago, Myst said:

06's quality aside, Ryan was acting as if Sonic being in the human world has never been done before, when in reality, Sonic's hung around with humans for close to a decade. So it's not some insult to the franchise to have Sonic running around human cities fighting off drones and robot cars. 

Sonic had a rivalry with a human cop (Sam Speed) in Sonic X, so why is Tom such a big deal.

Also, characters like Major Bennington is pretty faithful to the series if you ask me, (The G.U.N Commander, Abraham Tower, was used as an antagonist in Shadow the Hedgehog and was also featured in the Archie comic book series. Neal McDonough's character in the movie looks to basically be the G.U.N Commander with a different name)

There is such a massive flaw in this that I'm just going to go one by one, because you're generalising it.

Firstly - Adventure, Adventure 2, and I suppose you could lump Shadow in as well - the key difference is that the humans and the world were never the focus, and due to limited hardware - weren't able to achieve full human proportions. They had a weird styling that still at least kind of made them fit in within Sonic's style because they couldn't get to full blown human quality, the tech held them back. But more importantly than that - they never played an important role in the series, and didn't steal spotlight from the main cast. The main cast was always there, in the forefront. Tails, Knuckles, Amy, etc were still present, and still the ones exploring with Sonic, personality in-tact.

4 hours ago, Myst said:

Also, characters like Major Bennington is pretty faithful to the series if you ask me, (The G.U.N Commander, Abraham Tower, was used as an antagonist in Shadow the Hedgehog and was also featured in the Archie comic book series. Neal McDonough's character in the movie looks to basically be the G.U.N Commander with a different name)

And Tower was a shit villain to begin with. Not only does he come out of nowhere, not only does he literally self-insert into Shadow's already established backstory with Maria, but he just exists to make the whole thing confusing as hell. Tower becomes the G.U.N commander and wants revenge on Shadow because...a G.U.N agent killed Maria in cold blood and somehow it's Shadow's fault for existing, and not G.U.N's fault for having no problems killing a little girl for no particular reason.

The reason they barely get away with it is because the humans are never spotlighted, bar Shadow's backstory, the locales, despite being more "realistic" still follow the typical Sonic design and still bring in imaginative elements, making them so fun that you don't notice either way.

Archie - Because Ken Penders introduced it and Ken Penders is fucking dumb. The overlanders were a frankly idiotic concept in the Archie comics, and didn't add anything to the mix, bar an explanation of where Eggman and Snively come from. They contributed to a massive war that let Eggman lay siege and that's about it. The overlanders added shit all to the story, and case and point - were phased out when Ian began his run, and were replaced with the game cast's humans, namely - G.U.N. The only member off the top of my head who remained prominent was Hope, who's last big appearance was in Scrambled. 

But again, they were also stylised, and didn't have a ton of focus placed on them in later years, with the most being having Tower commanding Shadow and Team Dark's operations. When they did get the focus placed on them, it was pretty shit all around, especially in the early years of the comic, where in my opinion - it gave some of the most boring stories of the lot. 

Unleashed - Unleashed's the one example of humans working right in this series, specifically because of how they were designed. They were designed to be cartoon characters, they all have a stylised design that fits into Sonic's world perfectly and feels like you could have them and Mobians walking around together. More importantly - they have a proper important purpose without stealing focus away from the characters we actually care about - they add cultures and character to the different locales that Sonic has to explore, they add world-building to Sonic's world and flesh it out. They give it a sense of purpose to saving, instead of something like Adventure where they were all bland, weirdly designed, and just had flavour text at best.

Leaving us with...Sonic X and 06. Which is where I'd fairly argue the movie slots into. Because all three have one key defining trait - Sonic isn't the focus of them. It's a human, and not only at that - a bland, boring human at that. Sonic X has Chris, an entitled, rich asshole who nearly destroyed two universes because his parents didn't have time for him, despite the fact they constantly make every attempt to be with him.

4 hours ago, Myst said:

Sonic had a rivalry with a human cop (Sam Speed) in Sonic X, so why is Tom such a big deal.

For one - no one was defending Sam Speed either, and you'll find a lot of people who complain about X just as much as this movie, with a lot of people wishing it remained in Sonic's world like in Season 3. But if you really want me to take that point on - Sam Speed is the only one of the humans off the top of my head that feels like they were designed to be a Sonic character. He's literally an over the top egotist that has rocket cars modelled and created so he can keep up a petty rivalry with Sonic. It's so over the top and out there that you work past the fact that he's a human, and focus on him on sole personality.

Plus, y'know, it also helps that he isn't actively stealing the spotlight from Sonic, fulfilling a role that other characters have done in the past, and isn't generic as hell. Tom is a generic cop that stumbles upon Sonic. Sam is a completely lunatic that has an ego the size of the moon and makes rocket cars to keep up with fast blue hedgehogs so he can prove he's better than him. If Sam was also stealing the rival slot from Knuckles, Metal Sonic or Shadow, I'd say there'd be a fair amount of people shitting on X even more for replacing them, but given Knuckles and Shadow are still rivals in Sonic X, Sam also doesn't steal a role, or spotlight from anyone, while being a fun side character, that's the major difference.

06 has Elise, an annoying useless character who constantly gets kidnapped and basically forces Sonic away from the story at large to focus on her. Not only is she a human love interest, but she also takes up the companion role that could've been filled by other characters. Tails and Knuckles appear for a bit in the story, and it's only to focus down on Elise and her kidnapping.

Elise is the one in danger all the time, Elise is the one who gets "moments" with Sonic, Elise is the one who can unleash the ultimate world-ending terror, for all intents and purposes - Elise is more important than Sonic in the game he's meant to be starring in, because Sonic is only there to save her, throw off a few lines at Eggman, and ultimately create a bond with her. Not only does she steal spotlight from him and his cast, but she's also like Chris that she's a bad character in of itself. But better yet - one of the reasons 06 is cited as awful - is because it feels like Sonic and his cast has just been plopped into a human world that is nothing like the previous games, and could've plausibly taken place in the same world. It's the point they jumped the shark and made the humans so realistic that they stood out like a sore thumb, not helped by having Elise as a main character.

I fully believe Tom is following the same route. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the movie comes out and it's different, but from what I've seen, it has all the telltale signs of one of these human characters who become the main character because god forbid we relate with the actual star of the movie. He's the one who manages to revoke Sonic's speed and capture him, he's the one who gets the love interest, he's the one who replaces Sonic's actual cast by becoming his companion during the movie, it's his hometown that ultimately helps Sonic in some way, form, or manner.

You ask me what's stopping Tom from being the exception, and I ask the obvious counter question - what exactly stops Tom from being the rule? Because to me, there's a hell of a lot more here that suggests that Tom is going to steal the spotlight than be a good character counterpart to Sonic. But more importantly - KHCast is quite correct when he said this:

5 hours ago, KHCast said:

Sonic X and 06 are rightly shit on what the hell is your point with those, also the other examples don’t counter Ryan one bit. Being in a human world was not his point of contention. Being Hollywoodized, generic and predictable, cynical, live action, garble that isn’t bringing anything new, cool, or interesting to the video game movie (or movie in general) scene is.

Being in the human world is not my problem, if done right. You'll find that the majority of my favourite games stick fairly into the Dreamcast to Modern era, and I grew up watching and loving Sonic X as a kid, but that doesn't change the fact that this movie severely looks like it's going to be hollywoodized cynical nonsense, based off of executives following what focus groups want who thought they knew best instead of actually having faith in the product they're trying to represent. 

But better yet, it's not even just the idea of Tom, or humans, it's the fact that the story is literally forcing the human cast to be a massive prominent feature of the film. I've said it once, I'll say it again - The human cast are billed as helping Sonic in a major way, there's a far, far, far greater number of new human characters in the movie as opposed to literally only Sonic and Eggman being the only Sonic characters. The story is generic "the military want to capture *cartoon/game character*, humans must keep him safe!", which for a Sonic movie is kind of ridiculous. Being in the human world forces all of the creative level design and locales from the games to fall apart because it's all reduced to desert, country, city, basically generic human locales for set-pieces.

The human aspect limits the movie and it's creativity, and forces out a massive chunk of Sonic's supporting cast so they can be replaced with boring human characters that no one could give a shit about. That's the stance I've had since the plot synopsis was released, it was the stance I had when we found out Tom would be getting a girlfriend to go along with it all, it was the stance I took as we found out that Sonic and Eggman are literally the only Sonic characters in the whole film, and it's the stance I took when I saw that shit trailer that basically confirmed all of the concerns I've had. 

[StaticMania]

32 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

...and not G.U.N's fault for having no problems killing a little girl for no particular reason.

I mean...she did press a button, that's a serious offense.

[Shadowlax]

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

.

I agree with what you are saying , the human's work best when they are complimentary characters not stealing the focus or having more focus than then. Every instance of this is generally bad, and I would even argue that a lot of the good humans are kind of stilted in weird. They have gotten better as years gone by, but this film making the decision odd. But I guess what's even odder is peoples continued desire to feel like they need a supporting human cast in the first place. Even Ian flynn has messed this up , worlds unite was uh...yeah.

Its this human's not named eggman getting forefront attention is this weird idea that never works out but just keeps popping up in sonic media. From sonic's concept art to now. Just can't escape

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I fully believe Tom is following the same route. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the movie comes out and it's different, but from what I've seen, it has all the telltale signs of one of these human characters who become the main character because god forbid we relate with the actual star of the movie. He's the one who manages to revoke Sonic's speed and capture him, he's the one who gets the love interest, he's the one who replaces Sonic's actual cast by becoming his companion during the movie, it's his hometown that ultimately helps Sonic in some way, form, or manner.

You ask me what's stopping Tom from being the exception, and I ask the obvious counter question - what exactly stops Tom from being the rule? Because to me, there's a hell of a lot more here that suggests that Tom is going to steal the spotlight than be a good character counterpart to Sonic. But more importantly - KHCast is quite correct when he said this:

 

Tom seems like to me a character who is supposed to relate to adults seeing this film and sonic is supposed to relate to the children. Which seems backwards. One because sonic and casts's entire appeal especially now is the " radical teen characters who seem older and cool who are supposed to relate to children " so to have him be a weird grimlin baby with some surrogate human " father " figure welcoming him into the world seems strange. This is what I have gathered from the trailers though.  But two, it seems like a very strange lack of faith in anything an adult male human appealing to adults where there are films being sold right now on nostalgia to adults that do not have that. Not only does it seem contradictory to what sonic's appeal is for some of his demographics, it seems to be ignorant of the film industry at large. Yet trying to get a piece of the pie

[CaptainRobo]

So, found this clear description of the plot synopsis. This seem to be coming from an Israeli theater site.

It’s seem that the runtime for this film will be 2 hours long which is 120 minutes. 

Source: https://www.yesplanet.co.il/films/sonic-the-hedgehog/3350s2r  (Text in Hebrew) 

[Rabid-Coot]

We're 7 months out it won't have a runtime yet.

[ShadowSJG]

Yeah, what everyone else said why the human cast focus is awful is spot on

[AxshenPotential]

I think Unleashed handled humans well. They should be there as background/supporting characters to add context and flavor to the world, not in the limelight.

[KHCast]

Yknow, regarding the recent talk of regarding Sonic’s design and how the team “hears the fans” I gotta say, I’m still not that convinced or moved...Given the video game movie scene(and movie scene in general in many ways) is filled with so many mistakes for people to learn from and know what people don’t like to see, “learning from your mistakes” isn’t gonna do it for me Sonic Movie team, since this shouldn’t have been something you needed to “learn” in the first place, when it’s been shown in the past, even if not from you, where certain choices can easily land you. It shouldn’t have taken a huge outcry for you to THEN care about getting it “right.” And even then, that’s just the design, I’m not convinced the rest of the film will be anything but “generic Hollywood live action reboot of a beloved franchise”, so I don’t see that “we wanna show we care and wanna please fans” attitude going any further then the design of Sonic.

[SaturnWolf]

Yeah, I'm not buying the whole "We were with you!" thing. Sure, Sonic looking less like something I'd see at the foot of my bed during an episode of sleep paralysis is nice, but that still leaves a cavalcade of unfunny jokes, dated CG, annoying, bland and dumb human characters that take center stage...the design is only the most obvious and most horrific problem that we can see from the one, single, bad trailer they put out.

The problem with the movie is the very concept. Just as a band-aid won't heal a broken arm, a simply design fix won't fix a movie that's doomed to fail. The only way to truly "fix" this movie now is to scrap everything and start over from scratch. Maybe get better writers this time.