So has anyone seen the Sonic movie?
- Thread starter Drathnoxis
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Would you have seen it in theaters if Chris Chan was in it? I still think the movie would have been better with creepy Sonic.Marik2 said:
I saw the movie, and I sorta liked it.
It has a very tongue-in-cheek tone about itself most of the time yet tries to set up a very basic, yet genuine story, the floss I could have done without, then again, contemporary trends have always been his angle starting from his very inception, he was as 90's as the 90's got back then, it only makes sense he follows the same pattern almost 30 years later.
On the flipside, it has a striking awareness about it's own absurd lore history and memes, kinda like the Sonic Boom cartoon, there's a SANIC drawing on screen for a few seconds supposedly rendered by the town's crazy that claims to have seen Sonic, likewise, they include chilidogs in one scene in such an absurd and hamfisted way that you can only really go "I can't believe that they actually did that."
I called it when that scene started, and part of me is actually happy that they did.
And this goes for a lot of the movie, the Olive Garden bit is so obviously plugged it becomes satirical, conversation always remains light and never takes itself too seriously, nor does it bog itself down, part of me is actually curious about the original cut and if there was more changed to it than JUST the CGI.
It took my cynical expectations and made me unironically have a good time, I'm sorta looking forward to a sequel to see where they take it, maybe they'll subvert my expectations of eventually steering it into the surreal train wreck that the adventure games ended up being. ^^
It has a very tongue-in-cheek tone about itself most of the time yet tries to set up a very basic, yet genuine story, the floss I could have done without, then again, contemporary trends have always been his angle starting from his very inception, he was as 90's as the 90's got back then, it only makes sense he follows the same pattern almost 30 years later.
On the flipside, it has a striking awareness about it's own absurd lore history and memes, kinda like the Sonic Boom cartoon, there's a SANIC drawing on screen for a few seconds supposedly rendered by the town's crazy that claims to have seen Sonic, likewise, they include chilidogs in one scene in such an absurd and hamfisted way that you can only really go "I can't believe that they actually did that."
I called it when that scene started, and part of me is actually happy that they did.
And this goes for a lot of the movie, the Olive Garden bit is so obviously plugged it becomes satirical, conversation always remains light and never takes itself too seriously, nor does it bog itself down, part of me is actually curious about the original cut and if there was more changed to it than JUST the CGI.
It took my cynical expectations and made me unironically have a good time, I'm sorta looking forward to a sequel to see where they take it, maybe they'll subvert my expectations of eventually steering it into the surreal train wreck that the adventure games ended up being. ^^
Perhaps I misspoke, it's more what the adventure games inspired and what came after, rather than them in itself.Hawki said:
Obnoxious characters, misguided edge and angst, a plot that is all over the place, an integration of human characters far more obtrusive than this movie did.
Because they were awful. Sonic Adventure ends with an entire city being hit by a tidal wave out of nowhere caused by an ancient god. Tens of thousands of people are no doubt dead, with property damage in the billions. Tails, while observing the wreckage: "All's well that ends well, right?"Hawki said:
I have to agree with Hawki. That is a silly argument. The games played well, were fun and were very popular at the time, lest we forget. Yes, the story was convoluted and silly, but this alone does not make for a terrible game. I, for one, have never played sonic games for the story. The series has a unique and fun style of platforming you don't get many other places. That I can think of, Freedom Planet is the only game that plays remotely similar in 2D (and that's quite more modern) and I can't think of anything in 3D tbh (not counting Lost World which seemed to be copying Mario, Sonic Boom which was a spin-off and generic platformer, or some of the other spinoff games - especially the handheld ones which took cues from various genres).Drathnoxis said:
Look, I can agree to disagree with the second point, but I can't call the stories of SA1 or 2 convoluted. I mean, to each their own, but I found both very easy to follow. Yeah, you're seeing the same story from multiple perspectives, but it's easy to see what happens what and when, especially since the stories overlap.dscross said:
Say "convoluted Sonic story" and I'm probably going to think of Shadow the Hedgehog first - story's so damn convoluted, you have to work out what the canonical route actually is. 0_0
Dunno why you are arguing with me when I agreed with you that the games were good in general. There are much worse stories in the Sonic series, and I liked the adventure game plots to be honest (just because they were silly and had some problems doesn't mean they weren't charming) but I still think would have been simpler to keep it vague or simple like in the 2D games and it wouldn't have got as much criticism at a later date when the series took a turn.Hawki said:
They were easy to follow, they were made for younger people after all, but they had plot problems. Probably convoluted was the wrong term to use. Plot holes or overly elaborate would have been a better phrase to use than convoluted. I suppose I meant it wasn't simple enough for a Sonic game.
I completed the adventure games multiple times on multiple platforms so I definitely like them. I even got every A rank in Sonic Adventure 2 so I could get green hill.
Not arguing, just discussing.dscross said:
Disagree there.
Plenty of criticism levelled against the Adventure games has to do with their gameplay. Whether I agree with those criticisms or not aside, if the Adventure games were stripped of any story, that wouldn't change the gameplay aspects of it. Off the top of my head, Sonic Heroes. That was a game where Sonic Team did strip out story from it. That doesn't make the game better than the Adventure games (though I'm sure some people put Heroes above SA1/2, even if I'm definitely not among them).
In case you can't tell, I'm really not a fan of this idea that story shouldn't be in games, Sonic or otherwise. Not saying that story has to be overly complicated, but SA1/2, for me, hit the sweet spot for the games. It's a sweet spot that the games have never hit since IMO (least the ones I've played), outside maybe Secret Rings and Black Knight.
I personally don't play sonic for the story. It's all a bit nonsense given the premise. I liked it when I was young with the 2d games because a lot was left up to your imagination but I was older when the adventure series arrived. Most other mascots had simple stories at the time.Hawki said:
Heroes isn't as good as the adventure games, in my opinion, because of the unnecessary team gameplay, long levels, and crappy pinball mechanics as well as the more repetitive nature of it. Nothing to do with story. Not saying I didn't like that game but it wasn't as good as SA 1/2.
I can't say I play Sonic games for the story per se, but story's been a component of my consideration (ugh, that sounded clunky) since at least SA1. In part due to me reading the comics and watching the cartoons. And also in part due to other considerations, such as getting older, where narrative became more important to me. Obviously the era of the mascot platformer was light on story, but not only has story generally become more important to games over time, but come the turn of the millennium, even platformers were getting in on the action - Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Banjo, etc. None of these stories were in-depth per se, but they were still a cut above what we'd previously had. And while I can't comment too much, there's nothing to say that you can't tell an engaging story in the platformer genre - Legend of Spyro, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, etc. Yet I have to hand it to SA1 beating them to the punch on the story front.dscross said:
I didn't mind the team play in Heroes, but long levels and pinball mechanics? Yeah, sure. That, and of the four campaigns, three are basically the same, just on different levels of difficulty, and then there's Team Chaotix. Fuck their gameplay.
But even that aside, that I rank Heroes much lower than the SA games (SA 1/2 are in my top 10, Heroes is somewhere between 10 and 20), the downgrade in story is still part of why I don't like Heroes as much as SA1/2. Those games told reasonably competent stories. Heroes barely has a story, and what it does have is lacklustre. Doesn't help that the dialogue is absolutely rancid at times, and that you're basically playing the same story four times with only minor differences, that doesn't even make sense unless you believe that we see four Eggman duplicates at a time, that's fought by each team separately, out of sight of each other (compare this to SA 1/2, where each story remains congruent with its counterparts for the most part). You could argue that I'm expecting too much from the series, but when Heroes is such a downgrade from its predecessors, then it's a downgrade that becomes noticable.
I can have fun in Heroes, but in both gameplay and story, it's a step down. Course, things only got worse with Shadow, but that's another story. Or...however many stories I had to play through to beat that bloody game.
I saw the Sonic movie in its first week, and going in with low expectations I emerged pleasantly surprised. Not by how "good" the movie was (it was never going to be) by the comparative skill with which they sidestepped the many, many pitfalls. They didn't attempt to make this a furry-tastic, canonically accurate retelling of the games, comics or cartoons: phew, bullet dodged. They set it on Earth but didn't attempt to tie the setting to any particular political or social zeitgeist: again, phew. Yes, the story is driven by the cookie cutter human characters but Sonic himself never becomes a mere macguffin. Even Jim Carrey's Robotnik isn't the unbridled cringefest and shitshow he could so easily have been. Too much screen time is given to Robotnik's silly homoerotic sub-dom relationship with his henchman; yes, the expanded Sonic universe has often given Robotnik henchmen or an Igor to play off, but this seemed like one of the more unnecessary and flabby parts of the film. Love him or hate him, Carrey is a good enough actor to play the role alone.
What I liked about this movie is that although they dispense with any attempt at accuracy to the source material (although arguably the games have been retconning and bastardising their own canon since the late 90s), what is faithfully brought to the screen is the character of Sonic and the carefree, silly, self-referential joie de vivre the games and cartoons have always channeled. Speed, colour, friendships, exploding robots, bad guys having their underwear wedgied and their moustaches tweaked, and a cosy resolution at the end. It's camp and undemanding but in its own way it's perhaps as good a Sonic movie as we could have asked for.
And lest we forget, this isn't a movie for us jaded old geeks, or at least not JUST us. I'm happy to report that the 5 year old I accompanied to the cinema enjoyed it too and has been "Sonic running", Naruto style, around the place ever since.
What I liked about this movie is that although they dispense with any attempt at accuracy to the source material (although arguably the games have been retconning and bastardising their own canon since the late 90s), what is faithfully brought to the screen is the character of Sonic and the carefree, silly, self-referential joie de vivre the games and cartoons have always channeled. Speed, colour, friendships, exploding robots, bad guys having their underwear wedgied and their moustaches tweaked, and a cosy resolution at the end. It's camp and undemanding but in its own way it's perhaps as good a Sonic movie as we could have asked for.
And lest we forget, this isn't a movie for us jaded old geeks, or at least not JUST us. I'm happy to report that the 5 year old I accompanied to the cinema enjoyed it too and has been "Sonic running", Naruto style, around the place ever since.