Christ almighty. Look, I'm nostalgic for the 90's sometimes, like a lot of people. But this doesn't appeal to that nostalgia and even if it did, it would still be hard for me to have any confidence in this movie, because I'm not nostalgic one bit for the way movies were made/marketed back then and it's aggravating how little has changed in terms of the thinking (or lack thereof) that goes into movies like this. If it's a movie about Sonic, I don't give a fuck what exaggerated, blatantly pantomimed emotions the generic stock-photo brigade is experiencing as the camera zooms in on them all, like I'm supposed to be experiencing their story of "every awkward moment in every corporate setting of every movie like this ever" and not the potentially unique story of the alien hedgehog who has to save earth.... Fuck, I threw up in my mouth a bit when I wrote that. Because that wouldn't be unique either.
Unique would be setting the entire movie on Mobius, doing the entire thing in CG, and maybe having Jim Carrey voice Robotnik. And no, a movie like that wouldn't by itself be different from a slew of 3D animated movies. But it might be unique for taking a cast of characters that have fans for being unique, and keeping them unique, and telling their story in their unique little self-contained world that doesn't have to exist alongside earth or interact with it in any way. Again, it's a movie about Sonic, and I don't "relate to him better" when there's masses of generic human NPCs sharing (or crowding him out of) the stage. And I don't relate to his co-star (who I suspect is probably supposed to be the audience surrogate and real star of the movie) any more than I relate to anyone else who does whatever the fuck that kind of "acting" is. You know, where you just stiffen your back, roll your eyes and your heady lazily lulls about while you say things that are just downright wrong in the most deadpan fashion possible.
I dunno, maybe I'm too hard on that kind of acting. It's just, I kinda watch movies like this hoping for escapism from the way people act in real life, and this "aloof wrong-talking douchebag who still somehow keeps his job" schtick is "charming" when and pretty much only when it's someone like Hugh Laurie or Sacha Baron-Cohen. Maybe because when they do it, it's still acting like a specific character and not that co-worker you're one day going decide it's worth losing your job to kick square in the taint.
It's really bad when it makes me wonder for a moment if Ken Penders might've at least written a better script. Seriously, could you imagine say, trying to do a Legend of Zelda movie set somewhere other than Hyrule? Or how about a Zootopia sequel where there were humans all along and their "world" from the first movie had literally been a zoo the entire time? Okay, could that work? Maybe, if it was used to explore something deeper, like what it really means to be human, how sentient animals are, etc. But you know it wouldn't and you know that's not what this is about either. It's cynically deciding you need a Coolio song to sell "this is a 90's movie" but then not getting Coolio to do a new song, a cheesy ass Coolio song about spin-dashing badniks or something. Why the fuck not? Embracing the cheese is what's cool now.
And yeah, I haven't said a single thing about how bad on how many level's Sonic's character model here is or how poorly it blends with the live-action. Because I don't know where to even start.
Christ almighty. Look, I'm nostalgic for the 90's sometimes, like a lot of people. But this doesn't appeal to that nostalgia and even if it did, it would still be hard for me to have any confidence in this movie, because I'm not nostalgic one bit for the way movies were made/marketed back then and it's aggravating how little has changed in terms of the thinking (or lack thereof) that goes into movies like this. If it's a movie about Sonic, I don't give a fuck what exaggerated, blatantly pantomimed emotions the generic stock-photo brigade is experiencing as the camera zooms in on them all, like I'm supposed to be experiencing their story of "every awkward moment in every corporate setting of every movie like this ever" and not the potentially unique story of the alien hedgehog who has to save earth.... Fuck, I threw up in my mouth a bit when I wrote that. Because that wouldn't be unique either.
Unique would be setting the entire movie on Mobius, doing the entire thing in CG, and maybe having Jim Carrey voice Robotnik. And no, a movie like that wouldn't by itself be different from a slew of 3D animated movies. But it might be unique for taking a cast of characters that have fans for being unique, and keeping them unique, and telling their story in their unique little self-contained world that doesn't have to exist alongside earth or interact with it in any way. Again, it's a movie about Sonic, and I don't "relate to him better" when there's masses of generic human NPCs sharing (or crowding him out of) the stage. And I don't relate to his co-star (who I suspect is probably supposed to be the audience surrogate and real star of the movie) any more than I relate to anyone else who does whatever the fuck that kind of "acting" is. You know, where you just stiffen your back, roll your eyes and your heady lazily lulls about while you say things that are just downright wrong in the most deadpan fashion possible.
I dunno, maybe I'm too hard on that kind of acting. It's just, I kinda watch movies like this hoping for escapism from the way people act in real life, and this "aloof wrong-talking douchebag who still somehow keeps his job" schtick is "charming" when and pretty much only when it's someone like Hugh Laurie or Sacha Baron-Cohen. Maybe because when they do it, it's still acting like a specific character and not that co-worker you're one day going decide it's worth losing your job to kick square in the taint.
It's really bad when it makes me wonder for a moment if Ken Penders might've at least written a better script. Seriously, could you imagine say, trying to do a Legend of Zelda movie set somewhere other than Hyrule? Or how about a Zootopia sequel where there were humans all along and their "world" from the first movie had literally been a zoo the entire time? Okay, could that work? Maybe, if it was used to explore something deeper, like what it really means to be human, how sentient animals are, etc. But you know it wouldn't and you know that's not what this is about either. It's cynically deciding you need a Coolio song to sell "this is a 90's movie" but then not getting Coolio to do a new song, a cheesy ass Coolio song about spin-dashing badniks or something. Why the fuck not? Embracing the cheese is what's cool now.
And yeah, I haven't said a single thing about how bad on how many level's Sonic's character model here is or how poorly it blends with the live-action. Because I don't know where to even start.