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

[Rabid-Coot]

If we are insisting on dragging the recent turtles into this we should probably acknowledge the sequel that made about half of what the first did.

[Marcello]

Man, every time I think of Into the Spider-Verse, I get sad. Just imagine if we'd gotten a Sonic move as stylish as this:

 

[PeterPancake]

1 minute ago, Rabid-Coot said:

If we are insisting on dragging the recent turtles into this we should probably acknowledge the sequel that made about half of what the first did.

And that movie just so happened to be recieved better by both critics and fans yet made less than the first.. Interesting. 

 

TMNt 2014 was the perfect storm and the fan backlash around the movie which is basically a repeat of what's happening with this movie

https://www.slashfilm.com/ninja-turtles-fan-fix/

 

Helped the movie in the end. So what I'm going to say is that this movie WILL be a box-office success and it will spawn a sequel. Whether it goes past that, I'm no sure. But that will really depend on how strong the reviews are for the tirst movie. 

[Alexios31]

41 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Nobody thinks this.

Actually, I do. 

[StaticMania]

What? Are you saying you think it'll fail because fans are angry?

[Rabid-Coot]

2 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

And that movie just so happened to be recieved better by both critics and fans yet made less than the first.. Interesting.  

Cleary improvements only get you so far, if the public end up not liking the first they won't be back for the second.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Considering The Last Knight ended up being the final Transformers right around the same time as Out of the Shadows, and on top of that, Bumblebee was forced through major retooling in order to try win back fans, I’m relatively sure it’s because general audiences got wise and had more than enough of Michael Bay’s overproduced bullshit, and not to mention the fact that he also decided to mock fans and cockily boast he could make a Transformers movie as bad as he wants and people would still see it probably didn’t do him any favours.

Out of the Shadows is a better movie, but given the subpar quality of the original, that isn’t exactly saying much. OOTS is better received but it’s still a really bad and boring film, and that’s coming from a hardcore turtle fan who found the original BayTMNT just alright, if not bland. There isn’t any jokes that land, the Raph/Leo conflict isn’t handled very well compared to other versions, and it’s a general retread of the first movie, Shredder isn’t intimidating, Krang is boring, and Bebop/Rocksteady are basically just dude jokes. Megan Fox is still shit as April, Casey Jones’ entire personality, conflict and motivations are altered beyond recognition, and the Turtles aren’t very fun.

Trying to show OOTS as an example of “OH THAT STUCK TRUER AND DID WORSE” is not a good example because Out of the Shadows doesn’t contain good fan service at all bar surface level. Sure, Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady make their first movie appearance, but Krang isn’t anywhere near as memorable as the show, and Bebop and Rocksteady are just here for bad jokes and bro humour. Then you compare it to what the other versions of the Turtles were doing at the time - where TMNT 2012 had an army of Krang working under a hivemind, and reviving the 80s show in a unique way, as well as their creative ideas for Rocksteady and Bebop being two random mercs with vastly different backstories and personalities being forced to be partners, as well as IDW Turtles with General Krang and their brutal versions of Rocksteady and Bebop, they actually brought back these characters and made them unique to new settings. 

The point this all falls apart is you’re trying to use fan-service as replacement for appealing to fans, which is a different thing altogether. Fan appeal is simply taking something fans love, and providing a unique new spin on it. It’s keeping what made them love the original and using it as the basis of a new interesting portrayal. Fan service is where you just use characters or references in bad ways with no clue about why they were appealing to begin with in order to just have a fan say “Oh hey! I remember that!” With no further substance towards it. Changing Sonic’s design, story, universe or whatever else isn’t appealing to fans because it’s lacking what appealed to them in the first place, and having Green Hill as the name of the town or whatever might be some nice reference but it’s not doing anything interesting bar just being something a fan knows of.

Besides all that, Out of the Shadows failed for a lot more reasons than “it tried to appeal to fans”, because their attempt to do that was bare bones and lazy. Perhaps it failed because the CG was still atrocious, the characters were still boring and didn’t have any of the fun of their previous counterparts, the movie’s story is pretty messy, it throws in new and bad original characters with mixed motivations who are there for no reason but to be a obstacle to the Turtles and has no personality outside of that, the fact half the actors still aren’t very good, Megan Fox especially, and several characters are bastardised to the point they’re unrecognisable.

[DaddlerTheDalek]

On 12/13/2018 at 8:28 AM, Dejimon11 said:

So um Idk what to believe at this point 

 

I do like this one to be honest.

[PeterPancake]

8 minutes ago, Ryannumber1Santa said:

Considering The Last Knight ended up being the final Transformers right around the same time as Out of the Shadows, and on top of that, Bumblebee was forced through major retooling in order to try win back fans, I’m relatively sure it’s because general audiences got wise and had more than enough of Michael Bay’s overproduced bullshit, and not to mention the fact that he also decided to mock fans and cockily boast he could make a Transformers movie as bad as he wants and people would still see it probably didn’t do him any favours.

Out of the Shadows is a better movie, but given the subpar quality of the original, that isn’t exactly saying much. OOTS is better received but it’s still a really bad and boring film, and that’s coming from a hardcore turtle fan who found the original BayTMNT just alright, if not bland. There isn’t any jokes that land, the Raph/Leo conflict isn’t handled very well compared to other versions, and it’s a general retread of the first movie, Shredder isn’t intimidating, Krang is boring, and Bebop/Rocksteady are basically just dude jokes. Megan Fox is still shit as April, Casey Jones’ entire personality, conflict and motivations are altered beyond recognition, and the Turtles aren’t very fun.

Trying to show OOTS as an example of “OH THAT STUCK TRUER AND DID WORSE” is not a good example because Out of the Shadows doesn’t contain good fan service at all bar surface level. Sure, Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady make their first movie appearance, but Krang isn’t anywhere near as memorable as the show, and Bebop and Rocksteady are just here for bad jokes and bro humour. Then you compare it to what the other versions of the Turtles were doing at the time - where TMNT 2012 had an army of Krang working under a hivemind, and reviving the 80s show in a unique way, as well as their creative ideas for Rocksteady and Bebop being two random mercs with vastly different backstories and personalities being forced to be partners, as well as IDW Turtles with General Krang and their brutal versions of Rocksteady and Bebop, they actually brought back these characters and made them unique to new settings. 

The point this all falls apart is you’re trying to use fan-service as replacement for appealing to fans, which is a different thing altogether. Fan appeal is simply taking something fans love, and providing a unique new spin on it. It’s keeping what made them love the original and using it as the basis of a new interesting portrayal. Fan service is where you just use characters or references in bad ways with no clue about why they were appealing to begin with in order to just have a fan say “Oh hey! I remember that!” With no further substance towards it. Changing Sonic’s design, story, universe or whatever else isn’t appealing to fans because it’s lacking what appealed to them in the first place, and having Green Hill as the name of the town or whatever might be some nice reference but it’s not doing anything interesting bar just being something a fan knows of.

Besides all that, Out of the Shadows failed for a lot more reasons than “it tried to appeal to fans”, because their attempt to do that was bare bones and lazy. Perhaps it failed because the CG was still atrocious, the characters were still boring and didn’t have any of the fun of their previous counterparts, the movie’s story is pretty messy, it throws in new and bad original characters with mixed motivations who are there for no reason but to be a obstacle to the Turtles and has no personality outside of that, the fact half the actors still aren’t very good, Megan Fox especially, and several characters are bastardised to the point they’re unrecognisable.

That still doesn't change the fact that they TRIED. The Turtle faces were visible toned down, especially Miley's. The fans liked OOTS more than the first one and that one appealed more to the general audience.  What it showed was that catering to Fred Wolf fans is not going to work for anybody outside of the fandom. The problem of OOTS is that the interest and buzz from the first movie, (the Mikey mask became one of the biggest memes of 2014) was absent from the sequel. And the reviews/quality of the first one undoubtedly waned on the sequel. So in order for Sonic to have a healthy franchise, the first movie is going to have to be a decent movie at minimum and if the people behind the movie are any indication, that should not be hard for them. Getting a RT score over 50% should be the goal here. 

 

Bebop and Rocksteady were ALWAYS dumb and there for bad jokes. If anything, the movie improved on their characters by actually making them useful instead of bumbling buffoons who can't get anything done.  They tried to superficially cater to fans and it didn't work, barring some fans still hated the movie. Casey Jones was bastardized and miscast but that's another story altogether. I'm a pretty big TMNT fan but I prefer the first movie to OOTS and thats probably because I grew up with the 2003 cartoon instead of the 80s FW stuff. And I prefer the Mirage comics 

[Danj86]

I think perhaps it's a little too soon to compare what appears to be happening with this movie over what had happened with others. If anything, the current situation with the movie kinda reminds me of when the character designs were revealed for the new cartoon, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

That also had designs not like any other. I can't say if the show is good or not, I still haven't seen it, but the animation looked stunning during the intro.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a pessimist when it comes to this movie. I hate realism. I've always found the Fast and the Furious franchise as boring and while I like Deadpool, I wouldn't put a person that worked on that movie into working on a movie with an iconic character that needs to appeal to all ages. I don't expect they'd have him jumping about with swords, cutting people up and shooting them while saying silly things, mind you.

I'm aware that I'm a pessimistic and I don't mind being wrong. In fact, I often prefer it.

[The Deleter]

OOTS failed because it was a sequel to a blockbuster action movie that had no substance. These movies do well with how much they grab the audience's attention, and whether they would go waste a Friday with friends to watch it as "this week's movie" or not. If they already know the series has nothing going for it from the first one, they're probably not going to follow up for a sequel, either.

Transformers was the exact opposite case. Despite the writing and designs that most fans weren't happy about, the movie absolutely nailed the appeal of giant alien transforming robots with Spielberg's inspiration, and back in 2007, the Cgi on display was absolutely mind-blowing. Michael Bay made the right call with style over substance, and the general audience went to see it in droves.

People wanted to see it. People wanted more. And as time went on, they got and watched more... Until they got bored with them, and started seeing through how useless the movies ended up with this direction.

For a blockbuster movie to succeed, the trailers and movie itself have to hook the audience with something impressive/engaging. And even in the best case scenario in my head for a Sonic-centric movie, with a budget at least high enough to create a few key CGI scenes and action sequences... Sonic is facing a reeeeaaally steep uphill battle on this one.

And that's best case scenario. If it's a small-scale action movie with "a heart of gold", I guarentee it'll be DoA.

 

 

Now if it were marketed as a kids movie like Alvin and the Chipmunks, on the other hand...

[Tornado]

6 hours ago, Myst said:

Lots of people liked Forces. Heck, even Arin Hanson liked it.

Certainly sounds like grounds to call it execrable garbage.

 

2 hours ago, PeterPancake said:

Do you have a problem with the Sonic In the real world premise? I don't understand why when we have Archie, Sonic X, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic 06 and Sonic Unleashed all taking place in the real world.

One of these things is not like the other one.

 

 

 

And you could do much better for making an argument for "why do you people say that this premise is bad" and then using Sonic X and STH '06 as examples where it was done before.

 

1 hour ago, PeterPancake said:

 

 

 

 

I'm sure you think you have a point with this, at least.

[CaptainRobo]

Writer’s warning.:

He also joked about the Mega Man Movie.:

 

[Rowl]

3 hours ago, Sonic Fan J said:

I've always wondered why not go with the Bill Hatcher designs since they follow the same design philosophy as Eggman.

Yes. The Billy Hatcher characters have technically the same design as the Sonic characters. I also wonder, why they never used Billy Hatcher's or even Night's design as a template for the humans of Sonic's world. 

[Wittymations]

3 hours ago, PeterPancake said:

Sigh... Because having a cartoon in a LIVE ACTION movie with real people - would take people out of the movie.

Would it, though?

Who Framed Roger Rabbit has 2D animated cartoon characters mixed with live action and is historic among films. On the other end, Blues Clues entertained children for years. 

These 2D characters stand out more than cartoony 3D characters when paired with live action. 

I feel this "take the audience out of the action" claims is an untested belief. Children are going to accept it whatever way presented. Adults aren't going to care one way or the other because it's for their kids.

Only Sonic fans who are adult will care and they're distracted by how bad it is. Since that's the party offended while the other two are accepting of any design, you'd hope they would cater to them. 

[PeterPancake]

What they wanna do is basically ET as an action movie. There is recipe for success there, if they really play on Nostalgia and brand recognition. They have to have some great popcorn fun action scenes like Transformers. Keep in mind, Tim Miller directed this:

 

He was able to pull a scene off like that with a 58 million dollar budget. Now Sonic may be able to go bigger than this with a 90 million dollar. We know they filmed scenes on a Highway with cars being thrown off the freeway. So this could be one of the most important factors in it's success. 

[Penny]

I'd argue that putting normal Modern Sonic in live action wouldn't take people out of it nearly as much as you're thinking it would. Honestly, I bet a majority of people at least know what Sonic looks like. Kids who get the games, parents of those kids, people who played it in the 90s, Sonic fans, literally anyone who has some sort of internet presence-- they should at least know what he looks like. So when they go to see this movie (if they even would, which is debatable at this point) and see Movie Sonic, they'll be taken out of it just as much as if it were his normal design, if not more so, because even if they don't react as viscerally as most of us have, they'll still at least have sense of confusion. Sort of like, "why does sonic look so weird?". I mean, at the end of the day, Sonic's going to be a CG animated character, and he's going to look out of place regardless. Making him look realistic doesn't necessarily make him more real does it? Why not just make him look normal? At the very least, he'd be familiar and wouldn't run the risk of weirding anyone out. People aren't gonna take a weird-looking man-rat any more seriously than a cartoon hedgehog, especially if it's Sonic we're talking about.

[Zaysho]

2 hours ago, I Love Sticks said:

That's a bad excuse to jump on pessimism, comparing it to other bad stuff and using the "history of the series" as an example, when we can't use the actual fact that the people behind this are really talented and made some successful movies. If you want to destroy that comparison, it's only fair that comparing it to bad movies doesn't work either. The fact that you don't like anything Sonic also makes this pessmism even less valid, I'm not saying I like PeterPancake's attitude, but neither yours. When things suck it's normal to complain, but obviously it's not all bleak, it's just a shitty way of seeing things.

Seems more like a pattern than "not liking anything Sonic." This film, whether by leak or official reveal, hasn't yet done anything to leave a positive impression on anyone who was already fed up with how badly this series has been managed on a nearly consistent basis. Maybe a trailer could change that, but they're certainly not off to a great start if that's their plan.

20 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

Bebop and Rocksteady were ALWAYS dumb and there for bad jokes. If anything, the movie improved on their characters by actually making them useful instead of bumbling buffoons who can't get anything done.  They tried to superficially cater to fans and it didn't work, barring some fans still hated the movie. Casey Jones was bastardized and miscast but that's another story altogether. I'm a pretty big TMNT fan but I prefer the first movie to OOTS and thats probably because I grew up with the 2003 cartoon instead of the 80s FW stuff. And I prefer the Mirage comics 

The problem isn't trying to appeal to fans and that not working, the problem is the execution. From everything I've gathered (because I have better things to do with my time than watch things I already knew were garbage), Out of the Shadows was just low-effort pandering from a studio that obviously didn't care in the first place, and decided to do what every other toy company has done with the Turtles and exploit one group's nostalgia to try to earn some brownie points in a fandom that already didn't like what they had on offer. And then it bombed and Paramount is looking at a retool/reboot. That's not the fault of the fans. That's the studio being incompetent.

[Celestia]

7 hours ago, PeterPancake said:

If you look at the credits for the movie on IMDB, you can see a lot of the people who worked on Fast & Furious, Deadpool as well as MCU films are working on this movie. Some of them did work on Planet of the Apes reboot and Cloverfield movies. So the crew for their movie are a very talented group with a lot of experience. So why does everybody keep saying the movie will be garbage? What indication of the QUALITY of the movie has anybody gotten? Oh, Sonic doesn't have noodles for arms so I guess that automatically means the movie will be an abomination. Thank God the critics and film journalists are not going to judge this movie based solely on whether Sonic looked like the games or not. 

Movies aren't made in a vacuum. There are so so so many movies that had an all-star crew that just didn't work out. It happens with games too, and every medium really. Talent on a project can inspire confidence but it doesn't guarantee anything, especially if what people are seeing of the actual film does not appeal to them.

[Blueknight V2.0]

4 hours ago, PeterPancake said:

I don't understand why when we have Archie, Sonic X, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic 06 and Sonic Unleashed all taking place in the real world. The movie it taking inspiration from those works, obviously.

Why does everyone keep leaving Shadow's game out of that group of Sonic media?

1 hour ago, Zaysho said:

I'm a pretty big TMNT fan but I prefer the first movie to OOTS and thats probably because I grew up with the 2003 cartoon instead of the 80s FW stuff.

Well I never seen the 2nd film, but I think the 1st film was all that was needed. And it was one of the only 2 TMNT films I'll watch. Plus I really like what they did with Shredder. Yeah and I liked the 2003 series up until the end of Fast Forward. But neither one having an affect on the other, other than it being the same franchise.

Now it took me a little while to get used to their more realistic designs, but I still like the film though.

[Unidus]

1 hour ago, CaptainRobo said:

Writer’s warning.:

He also joked about the Mega Man Movie.:

 

He's kinda made himself out to be a jerk. At the same time though, he's probably under attack from all fronts. And, to be perfectly fair, should he be the one who's getting all this hate? He is one of the writers after all. I doubt he really had that* much influence in Sonic's design...

That being said though, he certainly seems to be okay with feeding the trolls.

[molul]

9 hours ago, Myst said:

I swear the Sonic fanbase can really get on my nerves sometimes.

Look, I'm not going to defend this as some 'great revival' for Sonic. It very well could be 90 minutes of trash, but the hyperbolic reactions from the fans is dooming this project before it even gets off the ground.

For goodness sake, wait for a trailer before breaking out into a raging mob. I understand the concerns guys. I am concerned too, but a little optimism? Is that too much to ask? Do we have to complain EVERY TIME a new Sonic project is unveiled?

Can we take a moment and look at the POSITIVES from what we've seen?

I really liked the electricity crackling off of Sonic's feet in the first teaser. It was just a neat little detail that I admired. And the second poster.. Yeah those are some gnarly calves, but you guys are missing the focal point of the picture: SONIC'S GONNA ZIP DOWN THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE.. RADICAL HIGHWAY STYLE! That is gonna be an amazing sequence to behold.

Don't get me wrong, the memes ARE hilarious, but the negative backlash is unjustified until ACTUAL film footage is shown. This movie, for all we know at this point, COULD BE a really good movie, but the fanbase constantly complaining could destroy any chances it has. And that's a darn shame.

 

Nobody likes a whiner.

You realize you complain that the fanbase can get on your nerves because the fanbase is complaining that this new design (and how Sega has allowed it) is getting on their nerves, right? XD

It's fine if you don't like that people don't like this abomination and show it so passionately. But it doesn't make much sense asking people not to give it too much importance when you're maybe giving too much importance to a lot of unknown people opinions.

Honestly, I'm not dying for this, of course. It's not like my country is at war and I'm starving. It's not THAT bad. But I don't think I should feel bad for just saying I think this is one of the lowest moments in Sonic's history, and this movie looks like one of the worst videogame movies ever. I might be wrong about the latter, but in my experience, that's very likely the case.

I can only advice not to take Sonic fanbase opinions that seriously, if they actually affect you that much. Not worth it!

[Dejimon11]

4 hours ago, Marcello said:

Man, every time I think of Into the Spider-Verse, I get sad. Just imagine if we'd gotten a Sonic move as stylish as this:

 

It's even worse when you remember that Sony were the ones who were originally making it which makes me wonder why they didn't just used their animation studio instead. And if the leaked emails from the 2014 hack are to be believed an animated Mario movie by Genndy Tartakovsky before Illumination got their hands on it. God I hate this reality 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

16 hours ago, DreamSaturn said:

That's not exactly inspiring any confidence either when everything they've shown and said about the movie is varying levels of terrible.

It also doesn't hold any weight. Unless we have confirmed evidence of the regular team giving any more to this movie than a "sure whatever I don't care" I have zero reason to believe any official statements. I mean, they already lied about this "not being like the smurfs", which it definitely is. Why the hell should I trust a "oh they definitely did lots on the movie" from either the people producing the thing who obviously don't care about it or the person blindly defending it and trying to paint anyone who disagrees with him as an unreasonable moron? Especially with how many co-workers of the Sonic group were shocked and terrified (justifiably so) and obviously had nothing to do with it. Unless we get Iizuka being like "haha yeah I definitely made everything about this POS happen" there's no reason to assume it's anything more involved than it happening in the first place, especially with how inconsistent it is with how they've handled other attempts at spin offs and adaptations.

[CaptainRobo]

After, I saw the Golden Gate Bridge poster, I decided to made this picture of Sonic smashing through traffic at the Golden Gate Bridge. Hope you like it. Enjoy!