Thoughts on Sonic 2 (2022)

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Ivogoji
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Thoughts on Sonic 2 (2022)

Post by Ivogoji »

It's a very tonally confused movie.

Before the 2019 Sonic movie came out I expected it to be a garbage cash grab movie made by people who have no idea what to do with an ip like Sonic. The premise was full of contrived bs and questionable character decisions. On paper it was a terrible, cursed, bad movie.

Actually sitting down and watching it, it's... ok. It's not a perfect movie by any means but it's watchable and none of the creative choices I dislike end up ruining the experience. The story had genuine emotional weight behind it and all of the actors felt really sincere in what they were doing. The first Paramount Sonic movie is at least a 6 out of 10.

Now Sonic 2 is pretty much exactly the same as the previous film but on steroids. The stuff that works is still there and is done even better, but everything that's bad about the first movie is even more prominent and hard to ignore.

There was too much corny MCU-esque humor, and if you watch pretty much any other adaptation of Sonic that touches on the same material (like Sonic X or the OVA), the balance of comedy and drama is completely different. Sonic 2 is wacky; it's wackier than the first movie, like comparable to the AoStH cartoon.

This clashes a lot with what the film is trying to set up with Team Sonic's backstories. There's a huge dissonance between the tragic conflict over the Master Emerald that the film builds its plot around and the screwball antics that fill out the run time. We're supposed to feel for Sonic's angst over losing Longclaw and Knuckles losing the rest of his tribe but then we're also supposed be laughing at Wade eating a display bagel.

What's sad is that the writers of Sonic 2 clearly understood Tails and Knuckles really well and wanted them to be as true to character as possible, and wanted stuff like Tails being bullied because he's different and Knuckles being the last of his kind taken seriously. But we get like thirty seconds of exposition dedicated to each of those plot points sandwiched between continuous segments of over the top slapstick and dad jokes.

I also think Sonic himself is really out of character. Not in a "This completely betrays everything Sonic stands for!" kind of way, it's a more subtle thing.

Like if I had to summarize Sonic and Knuckles' relationship in the video games, and across most Sonic media, the core of Sonic's character is that he embodies freedom and will never be chained down to a life long burden the way Knuckles is as guardian of the Master Emerald. The two characters get into conflict so much because Knuckles yearns for the kind of freedom Sonic has and Sonic will never understand that feeling of being bound by responsibility.

The way Sonic 2 approaches Sonic's status as a self-styled hero completely undercuts those ideas, instead of being this carefree thrill seeker Sonic tries to literally fight crime like Batman, and he spends a good chunk of the movie moping about how he has to fulfill his heroic destiny.

Which isn't, like, awful or anything, I can see modern day Sonic depicted this way after his character has evolved so much from his roots as a more Chaotic Neutral type protagonist. But it loses a lot of the nuance that made the og Sonic and Knuckles rivalry so compelling.

It's funny how, before Sonic 2 came out, there was a lot of talk about how the sequel was going to improve on the first movie by focusing more on the Sonic characters and less on the humans. If anything the opposite happened, most of the returning human characters are fleshed out a lot more than they were in the previous movie.

Believe it or not, I actually don't mind that at all; Tom and Maddie are really charming characters, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to seeing more of Robotnik's interactions with Agent Stone. Maddie and Rachel were given a lot more to do than in the first movie, which I really appreciate. The Hawaii subplot is probably the best part of the movie.

Honestly all of my real hangups about the film are concentrated on how Team Sonic themselves are handled, which is where all of the contrived bs is evident.

For example Tails can watch Sonic from another planet with a magic computer and see all of the events of the first movie so he has a reason to look up to Sonic as a hero, which is the most ass pull nonsense I have ever seen. And the map Sonic had in the first movie conveniently doing a completely new thing to deliver a graceless exposition dump right when Tails talks to him about it. And the guys who show up when Robotnik leaves the Mushroom planet, whose presence is never explained in any way and are probably only going to be addressed in the Knuckles spin off series. That's bad writing.

All of those things stem from the first movie's decision to have Sonic travel to Earth from another planet, which screws up basic elements of the setting and creates ridiculous plot holes that can only be covered up in the cheapest way, just like in Sonic X.

I'm incredibly conflicted about this movie, it does so many things wrong yet the people making it clearly have so much love for the source material that their enthusiasm is tangible. I don't know how to rate it.
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Re: Thoughts on Sonic 2 (2022)

Post by Londi »

I thought it was good, for the most part. I agree with your arguments for and against the film, it's ******** most of the heartfelt moments were immediately followed by some slapstick nonsense.

But now I think it's most important to discuss that after credits...
Spoiler:
It will be interesting to see how they handle Shadow's backstory, considering GUN probably has nothing to do with it. I assume it'll follow the whole 'Sonic is a prophecy and Shadow is a copy' plot SA2 had, up to the point where Maria dies on the ARK. I expect that instead, Robotnik will rediscover his grandfather's plans for Shadow and the ARK, after which he'll work with Shadow until he's no longer needed, causing Shadow to switch sides, ending with a battle between Super Sonic/Super Shadow and Robotnik.
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Re: Thoughts on Sonic 2 (2022)

Post by Ivogoji »

It would be remarkable if they had Sonic be created on Earth and somehow got sent to the Planet With No F<cking Name as a baby.

I'm sure that they're going to try to come up with some sort of explanation for how a member of Sonic's species was artificially created on Earth decades before Sonic traveled there, I guess because of contact with the Owls when they were hiding the Macguffin.

It can't be worse than Sonic X, which never explained why Eggman was in Sonic's dimension at the start of the series or how anything relating to the Space Colony ARK is supposed to work.

My biggest fear would be the tone of Sonic 3 staying just as dense and wacky as the other two films when tackling the heavy subject matter in a certain character's backstory. If he is written at least as competently as Tails there's probably nothing to be worried about but they can't just juxtaposed stuff like Jim Carrey's Eggman beside little girls getting executed by the military without trivializing the latter. I'm cautiously optimistic that the filmmakers will find a way to strike the right balance because that seems like what they wanted to do with Team Sonic, but it's not impossible that they'll just turn Edgy Meme Character into a joke.
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Re: Thoughts on Sonic 2 (2022)

Post by AugustChao »

I think I liked this movie more than the first one, and I think overall it's pretty good and there are a lot of things I think it did pretty well, but there are a couple previously mentioned issues with it that I can't help but agree with.

The way they brought in Tails to me felt like it didn't have a whole lot of thought put into it, and I would have preferred it if maybe he grew up learning about the thing with the Owls and the Echidnas and found out about Sonic and Longclaw that way, and I also think it would have worked better if maybe Tails was the one originally given the map and it only began playing the message when Sonic first interacted with it rather than Sonic always having it and it only doing the thing it needed to at that very specific moment in time for seemingly no reason. I also agree that the movie's tone leans just a tad too much towards the wacky and humorous moments, but at the very least, I'd rather the movie be too wacky than too dark and gritty because it at least fits with every other aspect of the movie a bit better.

Outside of those points though, I mostly have positive things to say about the movie! I once again think the visuals and acting are really good, I like that it had a ton of references to the games as well as a couple nods to the first movie, and I also really like what they did with all the characters. I especially really like this movie's version of Knuckles, and I also think it did a good job making some of the characters from the first movie (namely Agent Stone and Rachel) a bit more likable than they were in the first movie. I also read the Pre-Quill comic by IDW the day it came out, and although it didn't really add a whole lot to the plot of the movie (I think the biggest takeaway is that it may or may not have confirmed what happened to Longclaw), it was still pretty good and was an alright preview for what came after.

Oh, and about that preview for the third movie... I'm not gonna lie, it gave me chills :3
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