#sega was so real for making the new sonic character a weird little girl

[sonknuxadow]

hi i like sage a lot

[thankskenpenders]

So, about the movie...

At long last, a week after it came out, I was finally able to see the Sonic movie. The Daytona 500 being held across the street from my favorite theater and conflicting work schedules had been keeping me away, but now I’ve finally seen it. And it was...

Decent!

Which is way, way, way, way, way better than a movie with this awful premise has any right being. That’s for damn sure. I enjoyed my time at the theater. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it. If you like Sonic and haven’t already seen it, you will probably get a kick out of this film. If you don’t like Sonic (or Jim Carrey), there is very little in this movie for you

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to break that whole movie down. This will contain full spoilers for the Sonic movie

This movie kinda gave me deja vu because it’s set up so similarly to the Bumblebee movie. Both open with a slavishly faithful CGI sequence on another planet to ensure long time fans that the creative team gives a shit, but a conflict sends the title character to Earth. There, they form an emotional bond with the human lead as they’re pursued by the bad guys, who are working with the US government and tracking the energy signature of the title character. This setup worked extremely well for Bumblebee, because it’s so similar to the usual plot of Transformers. For Sonic, it was... a mixed bag. But it worked better than I expected

(This shot does not happen in the movie.)

That opening though, huh? Green Hill Zone looked great, and I was pleasantly surprised to see they did, in fact, use the Hyper Potions track from Sonic Mania in the actual film. (The piano rendition of the Green Hill theme used later was also lovely.) Longclaw was also interesting. I’ve seen one person bring up all the bird-themed ruins in Sonic 1 and 2 as a possible source of inspiration for the character, and I think that’s a valid take. And man, the echidnas! I wasn’t expecting that AT ALL. I guess that was probably the Knuckles Clan or something? I would never, ever picture them being alive during Sonic’s lifetime, but like... I guess Knuckles had to come from somewhere, right? If they do another movie with Knuckles, will the rest of his kind have died out?

Sadly, though, this sequence felt like it was over in a heartbeat. We barely see Sonic’s life on his home planet, and we’re expected to feel emotional over Longclaw’s sacrifice when she only gets like three lines before Sonic is sent to Earth. This is a common theme with the film--it goes for these big emotional beats that it just does not earn with its rapid fire pacing

Anyway, then we fast forward and Sonic’s a teen. This is actually kind of an interesting one if you’re constantly neck deep in Sonic Character Analysis like me, because it’s a pretty different take on the character. It’s hard to give them credit for doing something somewhat fresh with the character, though, because like... how much of that was intentional, and how much was just Hollywood writers trying to squeeze a generic action-adventure movie out of Sonic? (Honestly, it’s probably mostly the latter.)

The closest other piece of Sonic media to the movie would probably be Sonic X, a story in which Sonic isn’t really the protagonist. The Sonic of the anime is fairly emotionally distant. He cares deeply about his friends, and does nice things for them, but he’s totally fine with running off on his own for extended lengths of time, and he doesn’t really talk about his feelings. He’s not the character the audience is meant to sympathize with, but is instead this cool older kid who Chris wants to impress. This is pretty much in line with how Sega likes to depict the character. He cares about his friends, but he’s also cool with being a loner. It feels like he only runs into them incidentally, usually when Eggman is causing trouble, and then when the crisis of the week is taken care of he’s back to going on his own adventures. There’s a reason why one of his catchphrases is “long time no see”

The Sonic of the movie is the polar opposite. His main conflict is that he’s lonely and desperately seeks friendship. He’s also an overly-eager, extremely earnest goober. He literally flosses twice. (Which I loved.) I’ve seen him compared to Silver, and honestly, that’s not a bad comparison. I did like it, though! I don’t mind Sonic being a more emotionally open character, like he was in a lot of older Western media. I mean, he cried in like the second or third episode of SatAM

It’s just that, like many things in the movie, it feels less like a deliberate creative choice and more like a logical string of decisions to make when writing a generic action-adventure film for general audiences. Sonic’s the only one of his kind on Earth, so of course he’d be lonely. He has to have some sort of arc for audiences to connect with him, and if he’s gotta be accompanied by James Marsden for the whole movie, well, his arc’s gotta be about them becoming friends

I’ve gotta say, though: Ben Schwartz is great as Sonic. As much as I like Roger Craig Smith, I wouldn’t complain if he became the new main voice of the character. And thanks to the redesign, he looked great. I can’t imagine how nightmarish this movie would’ve been if Sonic wasn’t cute

My main fear with this movie, though, was that Sonic wouldn’t really be the protagonist. As a fan of Transformers, I know all too well that the cost of doing a full CGI character usually means that said character can’t really be the star of the film. Optimus and Bumblebee aren’t the stars of the Transformers movies--they’re supporting characters who are primarily present for the sake of the action scenes. The humans are the real stars in those movies, and the robots are barely even characters. I was terrified that Sonic would be the same, with the actual character I paid to see taking a backseat to James Marsden The Cop

I’m not quite sure if they struck the right balance there, but they did better than I worried they would. Sonic is central enough to the film and gets enough screentime that you can easily say he’s the protagonist. BUT there is absolutely too much of Tom and his family. The human cast is fine, the performances are fine, and there were a few good jokes, but every time the movie tried to get me to care about Tom’s life I was bored out of my mind. It’s just so trite and passionless. The other characters barely felt fleshed out at all, including Tom’s girlfriend (wife?) and Agent Stone. The little girl who gives Sonic the shoes had some cute moments, though

I do, however, love the part in which James Marsden is walking around in a San Francisco t-shirt, to remind us that he’s planning on moving to San Francisco... which then becomes the excuse for Sonic to think about San Francisco and accidentally send his warp rings there, which becomes the excuse for the buddy road trip aspect of the film. And as much as that was a focus of the marketing, the actual road trip part is like... maybe 20 minutes of the movie? There’s like three scenes with Sonic and Tom on the road and then they’re in San Francisco for act 3. The movie tries to act like they’ve formed this deep bond and I just did not give a shit. I don’t care about the cop. All Cops Are Bastards, and that absolutely includes Tom, whose dream in life is to join the extremely corrupt San Francisco PD

The whole excuse for Sonic having to sit in the passenger seat of a car going the speed limit for a good chunk of the movie is also, just. Stupid. If he doesn’t know where San Francisco is and time is of the essence, just... give him a map?

And then there’s Jim Carrey. I was worried about this one. The previews tended to highlight his most Jim Carrey Being Wacky moments, and as fond as I am of movies like The Truman Show and Bruce Almighty, that’s just. That’s not Robotnik. I was pleasantly surprised by the actual movie, though! I thought he was pretty good. I’m not sure what incarnation of Eggman I’d most compare him to, but like... it was close enough, and he was entertaining enough. I’d pay to go see another movie with him as Robotnik. Sure. (Especially with how he was looking at the end of the film.)

There were some other little interesting tidbits here with Eggman, although again, a lot of that is less “let’s do a new take on Eggman” and more “let’s do a marketable movie with Eggman in it, which requires us to explain some stuff.” Like him straight up just being a normal human from Earth, with none of the confusion present in the current “two worlds” canon of the games. Or him apparently being an orphan who was bullied in school, and who trusts machines more than other humans. It’s a safe way to depict the character in a Hollywood movie, but I thought it worked

The way they got to his nickname was kind of funny, though. Like, obviously they didn’t put Jim Carrey in a fat suit, and thank god for that. So instead of mocking his weight, the nickname is derived from the egg-shaped robots he uses. Which made sense, I guess. It at least felt logical for this incarnation of Sonic, who had annoyingly been calling Tom “Donut Lord” the whole movie, to make up the nickname “Eggman.” (Said robots, by the way, were a weak point of the movie to me. They just didn’t have that Eggman whimsy and felt very safe and very Hollywood. Honestly, though, if they had just made Robotnik’s ship grey and slapped some hazard stripes on it, it’d probably be fine.)

As a whole, I thought the humor of the movie was... okay. Sonic had a lot of good moments thanks to Schwartz’s great performance, as did Robotnik. There were just so many weird lines, like James Marsden telling Robotnik that he was breast fed, or the agonizingly long child trafficking joke with Sonic in the duffel bag. Stuff like that

The action was great, though. They definitely owe a lot to the Quicksilver scene in that one X-men movie (I forget the one), but they had a lot of fun with Sonic’s powers and it felt extremely true to the character. Seeing him do one of his Smash poses during the San Francisco fight was great. The action scenes were an absolute delight

And then the ending. Oh, that ending

So, I had already heard that Tails shows up in the stinger before I saw the film. And when I heard that, I expected it to be like, the classic Tails origin story. Maybe Sonic would return to his planet, and run into this precocious kid who decides to follow him around... but no! Not at all! Tails is already the Tails we know and love. He’s already an inventor, he’s already tracking down Sonic. I’m shocked that Sonic actually stayed with Tom instead of running off to have new adventures, but hopefully this is a sign that more characters will be brought into the fray if they make a sequel

And boy, they better make that damn sequel. This movie had a great opening weekend and a positive reception. They have no excuse not to. GIVE US SONIC AND TAILS GOING ON AN ADVENTURE

Other stray thoughts

Holy shit they put Sanic in the movie

The Sega logo animation meant that Kiryu from Yakuza was in this movie for a few seconds

The pixel art credits sequence, which featured both the Sonic 2 special stage and Get Blue Spheres as well as the Eggman logo screens from the Studiopolis Zone boss, was cute

The Saturn logo could be seen on the diagram of the other habitable planets

Robotnik had a label for “Badniks” on his circuit breaker. I wonder if the drones in the movie are intended to be Badniks, or if we’ll see actual ones if a sequel gets made

Also, was it implied that Robotnik committed war crimes for the US government

One of the government guys who I think only got one line was played by Garry Chalk and as such sounded exactly like Optimus Primal

I can’t tell if Sonic getting a red race car bed was an intentional shout out to the Archie comics or if it’s just a coincidence, but I loved it

A dude about my age wearing a Sonic Mania t-shirt literally stood up and clutched his head in shock when Tails showed up

After the movie a very excited kid got his mom to take his photo with the Sonic display in the lobby. Afterwards he was so excited that he flossed

I can’t believe they talked about Olive Garden so much

[thegeminisage]

thots on what constitutes a Guy Game, or if that's too controversial, thots on the best first person games.

ok wait im doing this in reverse order because EASILY the best first person game is mirror’s edge. u can’t compete with perfection?? i didn’t really like first person games until i played it because i was so used to a third person camera but now i have no issue with them and i actually think that there are a lot of perks to not having to think so hard about camera position the way you do in third person games. i had a really hard time with the camera in the last guardian and that just really made me appreciate mirror’s edge a lot because i NEVER had a hard time with it. it was so fucking intuitive

RE: GUY GAMES

this is a little long sorry i am going to go into video game history, which i wish i could give a college lecture on, but i can’t, because no one cares. nobody is obligated to read this entire thing u can skip the next 3 paragraphs

anyway i think there is a very specific demographic that guy games are reaching out to that are like, firstly, men (duh), secondly, we are American!, we didn’t grow up playing nintendo games and watching anime and so we think all that weeb stuff is for nerds. in the 90s and early 00s video games werent for just Anybody they were for kids and for nerdy people (usually guy people, girls got sooo excluded it’s like v sad). like back in the 90s and early 00s games were released in america months or even years after they were in japan (and if you were in europe or australia, FORGET IT) and the translations were often kind of shoddy and slapped together, so you wound up missing stuff sometimes or getting something hilarious like “all your base are belong to us” (kudos to one of the internet’s very first memes...you memers out there better respect...video games MADE YOU...). anyway the point being japanese made games are not always appealing/accessible to the average american (who sees and anime and goes...why do they look like that thats weird) 

so that’s where a console like xbox comes from, it’s american-made, it’s the first of its kind, its gonna compete with nintendo (ostensibly for families/kids) and playstation (ostensibly for more grownup games) and americanize/westernize what is essentially a japanese medium at that point to make it accessible to americans/western men (because video games won’t be For Girls until like, very generously, the mid 2000s, and even now it’s a crapshoot), because it’s a huge untapped audience who aren’t experiencing or enjoying this medium, and if people wanna keep making games, games gotta keep making money, you know how it is w/ capitalism

as a side note i think it’s worth noting that before xbox came into the picture, sega was making its own consoles (genesis etc) that were VERY well-received by american audiences...sonic the hedgehog got like a FUCKTON of american-exclusive media such as shows and even a live action movie that came out as recently as THIS YEAR. but they didn’t have as much casual appeal and also had other difficulties, and so once they went under console-wise the market kind of opened up for something New. something with the american-friendly appeal of sonic, and something with the casual appeal of nintendo games, something with the more grownup appeal of playstation. so boom, you have xbox, you have halo, call of duty, etc. suddenly after almost two decades of japan exclusively cornering the home console market, americans can make games! wild!

(skip to here) and so i think that’s what a guy game is: a game made by american men specifically to appeal TO american men, or, at the very least, to not be a threat or turn-off to that demographic. guy games are exemplify american masculinity, and get their roots from what that meant in the early 00s (bearing in mind that as a rule Classic american masculinity is usually sexist/racist/homophobic lol). they have either male protags or female protags that are there to be eye candy. they’re often violent and lighter on the story content (or with a story specifically geared towards men, like halo, which was a huge rousing success) and feature limited women/romance plot lines. they’ve typically got that instant-reward action hack-em-up/shooting gameplay and not very many puzzles, because they’re by design meant to be easy to get into so as not to scare away the new audience they were trying to court 

happily that definition has expanded somewhat and we now have the phenomenon of the little girls from previous guy games (emily kaldwin from dishonored, ellie from tlou) becoming the protags of sequels in their own right. and it’s not like guy games are all bad because i, A Woman, have enjoyed many guy games myself. shooting is satisfying gameplay and sometimes im just not in the Mood for big heavy romance arcs like u find in rpgs. technically mirror’s edge borders on being a guy game but it’s got a TON of well-rounded women in it including a female protag who isn’t just there for sex appeal. games including guy games have more characters of color now (not to point to mirror’s edge twice but LIIIKE it’s one of the best games ever made, so). “””guy games””” made in the 2010s are just more inclusive generally bc american devs figured out women like games and they spend money too, and so gradually the classic “guy game” genre is sort of merging into the more broad thing of just “american games” which is probably a good thing but has also been fascinating to watch in real time. ok lecture over ty everyone for attending

[mobius-prime]

139. Sonic the Hedgehog #78

Though it's not really relevant to the plot, this just so happens to be the first issue released in the 21st century! You'll notice the little jokey announcement of this fact on the cover above. It's also worth noting that at this point, it's been just over a year since the first 3D Sonic game, Sonic Adventure, was released in Japan, and several months since its international release… I wonder if this will have any effect on the comic?

Changes

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: FRY Colors: Frank Gagliardo

We open with Sonic kneeling in front of the king, who is giving a speech in front of the entirety of Knothole about Sonic's bravery and heroic actions. He touches a sword to Sonic's shoulders, and knights him as Sir Sonic the Hedgehog! Sally gives him a medal and a kiss on the cheek, and amidst the celebration of Sonic's new title the king makes another announcement.

It's about time he officially recognized them! While this is going on, Robotnik seethes in his headquarters in Robotropolis. While he's finally managed to rid himself and his computer systems of the virus Nicole and Sally planted, he had to dump a lot of old corrupted files, including the hidden location of Knothole and start from scratch. This is kind of convenient for the larger plot, seeing as since this is a different Robotnik from the original, it might be too easy for him to concoct a winning strategy if he was able to simply access all the old Robotnik's info from the get go. He vows revenge on Sonic, as he still has millions of roboticized slaves, including Sonic's uncle. Speaking of, Sonic isn't as caught up in the celebratory mood as everyone else. He's quite depressed, actually, as he finds himself having to move all Uncle Chuck's old belongings out from his house for Nate to move in instead. His parents, entering the house, move to comfort him about the situation.

It's been so long since Sonic has had parents to look after him that this is a very sweet sight. Aside from Sonic Underground and an old obscure manga only ever released in Japan, I know of no other Sonic media that actually addresses the topic of Sonic's parents. When the series was rebooted in the future, one of Sega's weird new rules for the comic was that they couldn't include any references to family members that weren't already defined within the games, but I always found that to be restrictive and detrimental - considering Sonic's very independent, cocky, cool-guy persona, it's fascinating to me to see how he ends up interacting with parents who care about him. There's this clash between his rebellious teenager attitude, and the side of him that wants to be taken care of by the parents he was separated from for so long, and I find his attempts to strike that balance very interesting.

Speaking of family and parents, Sally and Elias have joined their father in the building which has been hastily retrofitted to serve as Queen Alicia's new "storeroom" of sorts, the temperature brought down to freezing levels to maintain her cryotube. Apparently Dr. Quack is still trying to work out why, if her past injuries have healed, she's still in her coma, and they all resolve to continue to hold onto hope as a family. They turn away to help Nate carry a Super Emerald (still no real word on what these are or how he came by them, but eh), which conveniently means they miss the queen's hand twitch within her tube…

And here, we have our second space interlude!

Hmmm… who could be in these strange spaceships? Clearly they know where Mobius is…

Back in Knothole, Mina is wandering around, depressed from losing her family during Robotnik's takeover. She actually considers letting herself be captured to be with her family again, but before her thoughts carry too far she finds herself approached by Rosie, who has a special request for her.

As Mina heads over to watch over the children, Bunnie and Antoine pass by, chatting together. Bunnie asks Antoine why he's seemed so distracted lately, and he responds that the knowledge of his father being the roboticized sub-boss of Robotnik in Mercia has been weighing heavily on his mind. As that moment Sonic, Sally and Tails show up, and when Bunnie and Antoine congratulate Sonic on his new title he suggests cheekily that they call him Sir Sonic from now on.

Now this is something I am very pleased to see. This is the moment where Geoffrey starts to become less of an asshole, and become a whole lot more likable. I really prefer his rivalry with Sonic to be more about their respective attitudes toward life, with Geoffrey being all about duty and serious discipline, while Sonic is more of a free spirit who leaps into things without thinking to be a hero. It's much more interesting than the whole love triangle thing Penders tried to push for so long in eras past. They begin to discuss how the king apparently wishes the Freedom Fighters and Secret Service to begin working together more closely, but they're unaware of Elias watching from afar, thinking quietly to himself. Turns out all of this - the reinstatement of the Freedom Fighters and their working together with the Secret Service - was all at the suggestion of Elias to the king, as he sees Sonic as a hero who deserves to be on the front lines after observing him during the mission to rescue Nate. He walks obliviously past a group of heart-eyed girls ogling him (and really, can we blame them? He is very attractive), wishing that he could be more involved in the adventures and dangerous missions the others go on, that he didn't have to be a prince in line for the throne. However, he finds himself shaken from his thoughts when he hears his father and Dr. Quack speaking through the window of the queen's storage building…

Well, that's not good… Perhaps even more concerning, Robotnik back in his HQ has once again turned his arm into a terrifying mass of robot tentacles and plugged it into his now-cleansed computer system, and discovered a tidbit of information that he believes could cement his ability to rule over the planet! What is this information you ask? Well, all we know so of it so far is what's displayed on his screen as he orders his troops to march out - the outline of a continent that looks very much like South America, and the word "Chaos" emblazoned across it…

So you remember how I pointed out how the Sonic Adventure game had just recently come out at the time of this issue? Yeah, I didn't bring that up for no reason - much like Sonic X did several years later, the comics did their own adaption of the game! Unlike Sonic X, however, which was able to follow the script of the game fairly closely with only minor modifications to be made for the setting and characters, the comic adaption differs significantly from the plot of the game due to this world's vast differences from the games' canon - for example, humans and Mobians aren't exactly friendly with one another, the Master Emerald didn't even exist until recently, and perhaps most notably, the history of the echidnas has already been explored in a very different context from how it's portrayed in the game. This was perhaps the thing I was most interested in to see how the writers decided to resolve the discrepancy when I first read the preboot. After all, it wasn't until the 3D games that the Sonic franchise began to expand its worldbuilding and create storylines and characters that had a rich backstory. Up until then, the characters and story were barely given any backstory beyond quick blurbs within game manuals, backstories which were so fluid and indeterminate that they differed greatly between localizations of the games in other countries. Sonic Adventure was the first real attempt to add some depth to the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, and suddenly the Archie comics found themselves having to contend with this new reality being explored in the games, a reality which is extremely different to the one they themselves already created with the limited base they had to go off from the Genesis era. Now, not only do they have to find new roles for all the characters which simply don't exist in the games such as Sally and Bunnie, but they have to find ways to fit even very simple concepts such as Station Square and Chaos into this universe. As we'll see, there were quite a few workarounds implemented in the plot to explain these things away… but it will be several more issues yet until we reach that point, as we have the final arc of Knuckles the Echidna to tackle first!

Tales of the Great War (Part 6): What Really Happened

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Chris Allan Colors: Frank Gagliardo

We're getting close to the end of this arc. We head back to the campfire around which Jules and Bernie are telling their story of the Great War. Jules was on life support due to the extent of his injuries, and Bernie and Uncle Chuck decided to hide this from the infant Sonic for the time being to avoid upsetting him with information he was too young to process. Chuck, with Bernie's blessing, took Jules to his prototype device within the palace lab, unaware that Julian had been making some, let's say, unauthorized modifications.

Chuck, unwilling to wait the time it would take to run preliminary tests on his device for fear of losing his brother, stuck Jules in and hit the button, and was promptly horrified when a mindless, fully-robotic Jules emerged, unresponsive to anything he said to him. He blamed himself and became severely depressed, not realizing that it wasn't his fault at all. Around this same time, the Great War was coming to a close. Julian had suggested something he figured would give him a potential leg up in conquering the world - that King Max should duel the Overlanders' overlord in a winner-takes-all fight to the death, his hope being that whoever won, he could easily take the place of to conquer the war-weary world for himself.

Despite his disappointment in the outcome, Julian was somewhat gratified that shortly thereafter, Chuck left all his equipment to him and resigned from being the kingdom's foremost scientist. Bernie attempted to convince him that it wasn't his fault, and that despite Jules' state she was grateful to him for trying, that Jules would be dead if he hadn't roboticized him. Chuck merely retorted that he might as well be dead with how the experiment went, and despite Bernie still trying to reason with him, he left, leaving her wondering how to explain everything to the young Sonic…