warum ich über

knoblauch schreibe frag' ich mich

I had an incredibly low general opinion of the Sonic movie prior to movie 2 coming out. You can find some of my old posts about it if you want more specifics, but the short version is that so little of that first movie actually feels like it’s about or related to the Sonic series in any way. The green hill scene at the start is great! Sonic’s motions are full of personality and the environment feels alive. And oh shit echidnas are here? That’s a different take on Sonic canon but it’s cool and has implications for this continuity specifically like that’s something to be excited for! And then it all just stops completely. Generic live action setting with a milquetoast police officer human for parents in the audience to relate to while their kids think about Sonic, a Sonic that’s basically himself in name only to begin with. Only thing he really shares with his game self is a tendency towards cracking jokes but even then said jokes have just been turned into pop culture references. Same deal for Eggman who, yeah, is just Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey, we all know this. First movie couldn’t even do the decency of trying to make him look like Eggman either so there’s that. The whole thing was just so lifeless, so afraid of actually being a movie about Sonic the Hedgehog, you know?

Needless to say I was extremely worried for movie 2 as well. Worried that it’d have the same exact problems but now with a Tails and Knuckles that don’t feel like themselves either. But you know what, credit where it’s due, they really did try a lot harder to make it feel like the games. Still don’t love its depiction of Sonic or his character arc here about learning to be a son? And yeah the human inclusions are still barely worth a shit at all. But they gave Eggman a redesign to make him somewhat feel more like his real self even if he’s still just Jim Carrey, Tails is here and they manage to do a decent job with him (plus he’s played by his actual game voice actress!) and they gave Knuckles an actually really great arc capitalising on traits he genuinely does have in the games that these movies are adapting! They expand on their own version of the echidna lore and shit too, bring in the Master Emerald even if it works mechanically different from the games. It’s not perfect but you can tell they’re actually trying to put their own spin on the story now instead of just doing by-the-books safe lame Hollywood shit. And then Super Sonic vs a Death Egg Robot too? Plus the Shadow tease? Like they’re a lot more confident that the Sonic aspects of the Sonic movie can pull people in now, and it’s great to see.

The problem, obviously, is that they’re still just not confident enough. The runtime is still dragged down with movie original human characters, and it’s arguably even worse for that than movie 1 given the wedding scene that, yeah, people can’t stand for a reason! Nobody cares to see this irrelevant side character that’s original to these movie have a “badass” moment where she just does kid-friendly action movie stuff because she’s mad at her fiance or whatever! Why am I watching this in a movie called Sonic the Hedgehog? Or the Uptown Funk dance sequence which like, do I even need to say anything? And the humour’s still just a bunch of lame pop culture references. None of it’s informed by the fact that it’s adapting Sonic the Hedgehog.

And the thing is like, yeah, they’ve kind of already dug their grave. We’re 2 movies in with a Knuckles spinoff show and a third movie on the way. At this point, they can’t ditch the setting. They can’t really ditch the human characters. They’re gonna remain these live action and CG hybrids where the setting is just regular normal United States of America. Maybe the jokes’ll get better! Maybe Sonic’ll start acting more like Sonic! Maybe they’ll make actual soundtracks that fit the series! Maybe we’ll have more game characters come in and be accurate to themselves and we’ll actually start having movies that feel like they’re trying to be Sonic the Hedgehog! But as it stands, the movies kinda just exist in a context so far removed from what I love about the series that it is hard to care.