The SEGA Generation
- Thread starter EternalMadness1997
- Start date
Nokia could also be the one to push indies, remember Xbox 360 doing the same IOTL. It, could even tie in with their phones. Have a Nokia gaming phone that lets you play your indie console purchases on the go.
Not only that, Halo second gold age started with 3 and finished with 4 in few words most of the seventh generation. Here both will come head to head, maybe Activision keep better plotline to compete against halo or double down in multiplayer to compete better in that front?
The Sonic Crisis of 06
GRAND THEFT AUTO: VICE CITY STORIES
November, 2006
"Rockstar's juggernaut Grand Theft Auto series debuted on the Sony Pluto ate last year in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, a side-story prequel to the events that took place in Grand Theft Auto III for the Sony Neptune. With Liberty City Stories, Rockstar successfully translated its open-ended world of crime to a handheld system, though not without a few missteps. Enter Vice City Stories, the newly released SP GTA game that follows a similar side-story formula. Vice City Stories improves upon some of the flaws found in the first game, not the least of which is improved length and direction, as well as a great deal more personality. The story's still pretty subpar, though, and as much as this is very much Grand Theft Auto, certain conventions of the series are starting to feel a bit antiquated. Still, if you want to roam around a large city, shooting up the place and driving like a crazy person, few games on the SP let you do that as well as this one does." - Gamespot, 2006, excerpt
KILLZONE: LIBERATION
November, 2006
"Though 2004's Killzone for the Neptune might not be the most fondly remembered of sci-fi first-person shooters, Killzone: Liberation for the S.P. is bound to make a more lasting impression. For one thing, Liberation has just about zero to do with its SN predecessor from a gameplay perspective. It's still a shooter, but the viewpoint has been switched to an isometric, top-down view and the action itself has improved exponentially. This is a game that provides a great deal of intense shooting action, with tough enemy opponents that don't lie down and die easily. Throw in an ad hoc competitive multiplayer component and co-op play for the whole campaign, and you've got a thoroughly excellent package." - IGN, 2006, excerpt
THE SONIC 06' HYPE TRAIN CHUGS ON
November, 2006
"So this is the last few weeks before the next Sonic the Hedgehog film gets released, and in the months and weeks ahead of the release it seems that Sony has spared little expense when it comes to the massive hype train surrounding the film. You got the trailers and televised commercial adverts, the McDonalds kids meal promotion, and of course just about every talk show at least having mentioned or discussed it once in these past few weeks. Just a trip to the local Target and Toys R' Us in my neighborhood and I saw entire walls of SONIC THE HEDGEHOG merchandise - that is to say Sonic toys related to the movie itself, from plush dolls to action figures of the film's characters, and apparently there's even a special edition Princess Elise Barbie doll too; Sony of America's CEO did once work for Mattel after all, probably got some of the ol' boys back together for a promotional deal. All of this has been going on roughly the whole year, and of course the goal in mind is to get butts in the seats when the film finally drops - with a release roughly coinciding with the Japanese launch of the Sony Solaris. And from what we can tell, while there has been a bit of a certain reaction online regarding the casting of Alan Rickman as Dr. Eggman, the hype train has been successful overall - Sonic has been spotted in commercials more so than ever before as this film gears up for it's release, and with the holiday season in full swing the toys and merch are expected to have their peak sales records too; it's clear Sony is expecting this film to be a smashing success." - Entertainment Weekly, 2006
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG IS A CINEMATIC DISASTER: A FILM RECAP & REVIEW
November, 2006
"So this past weekend the film 'SONIC THE HEDGEHOG' was unveiled to theaters across America as the third entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog based theatrical films, though it is mostly unrelated to the previous two - seeing as those were traditionally animated and this one incorporates live action humans with CGI. Whereas the first two challenged the critical consensus that video game film adaptations are all terrible, this film fully embraces that sentiment in the form of an overly long, overly complicate mess of a film.
First off, I have to mention the runtime of this god forsaken thing. This thing is 145 minutes long, which is to say it clocks in at roughly 2 hours and 41 minutes not counting the credits; this film is even longer by a few minutes than the original Superman film from '78, but where that movie justifies it's length by being a classic, this film makes it's runtime feel like a cruel and unusual punishment.
As for what's actually horrible about this film - it pretty much boils to three major things. The first being that the acting is incredibly hit or miss. The best actor in the entire movie is of course, Tony Jay - who voices Mephiles the Dark, the movie's main antagonist. Seeing as how Mephiles is unfortunately to be Jay's final performance (he died this past August), it's actually a tear-jerker hearing the man's legendary voice for the last time. Though this movie is a far cry from Notre Dame, his part in it is still one of it's redeeming qualities. The other characters leave much to be desired though; Lacey Chabert - Princess Elise of Soleanna - for instance, is woefully out of her element in this thing. Playing the role of a character who by the rules of the plot itself basically has to be devoid of most emotion in most of her scenes pretty much means her acting talents seen in Not Another Teen Movie & Mean Girls don't get put to use at all - doing this talented woman a great disservice. I would also like to comment that I do think simply casting the video game voice crew as all of their characters was a mistake or at least some of the voice direction they took with them was; some of the line deliveries are great while others are actually worse than the original Sonic Adventure's aged deliveries. Even Tia Carrere, voice of Blaze, has a bland performance that wishes it was Nani (Lilo & Stitch). The worst part is, we spend most of our time with these CGI generated animals, so these deliveries are what we hear most for the duration of the 2 hours & 41 minutes. We have to sit through Ryan Drummond, David Humphrey and Jessie McCartney for that long, people.
The worst performance in the entire film though, goes to the borderline comedic portrayal of Dr. Eggman - performed by Alan Rickman himself. I'm convinced the man was coerced into this project because I see no other explanation for why he's even here. While Eggman isn't supposed to be the most serious villain in history by any means, the humor in this performance comes from ways the makers surely didn't intend. It's hard to put it to words if you haven't seen it or the trailers, so just know that it's basically Professor Snape's voice trying to be a 'serious' approach to Dr. Eggman while the man is in a bald cap (or badly CGI'd baldness I can't tell), stomach padding to exaggerate his dad gut, and of course a fake mustache. It's honestly almost like this character stepped in from the set of the Scary Movie films.
Not helping is that since this is a film directed by Raja Gosnell (The recent Scooby Doo films & Big Momma's House), there is a certain sense of humor sprinkled throughout the dialogue which only furthers the tonal whiplash this film presents you with.
There's also David Carridine in this, but he plays a very minor character despite getting poster credit.
With the cast and their performances out of the way, let's get onto the plot. A real overly written mess, we basically have three stories going on at once that eventually converge into one for the last act. The problem with this is that we basically have three main characters not sharing screen time one after another, but haphazardly at the same time - constantly flipping between Sonic (Ryan Drummond), Shadow (David Humphrey) and Silver (Jessie McCartney). Also must say now that it's incredibly jarring meeting Shadow in the film, as this film barely gives you any context to his character and just throws him in - there was no Sonic Adventure 2 film, so if we do believe all these films are sequels to each other, who the hell is Shadow in the film canon exactly? At least Silver has the excuse of being a newly introduced character. Anyway, the plot of the film can be described as such: Sonic's story arc is him showing up right as Eggman (Alan Rickman) crashes the Soleanna festival of the sun, rescuing Princess Elise (Lacey Chabert) - only for her to get kidnapped literally minutes later. All the while, Silver (Jessie McCartney) is watching from a distance remarking he has found the so-called "Iblis Trigger". The following day, Sonic meets up with Tails (Tara Strong) and they head out on foot to chase after Eggman's flying battleship. Yes, on foot. What follows is....that's quite literally all Sonic does for the rest of his story arc. I mean, he goes to the desert, saves Elise, fights a robot, gets attacked by Silver, Elise gets kidnapped again, Amy saves him, then he goes meet with Knuckles (Scott Drier) where they receive word that Eggman is offering Elise up for ransom of a chaos emerald - the subsequent raid on the base results in the trio being sent through time where they meet Shadow (David Humphrey) and Rouge (Lani Minella) 200 years ahead in a post-apocalyptic future where they fight a giant lava monster and use the chaos emeralds to get back in time. After that, Sonic heads out to save Elise again, Silver interrupts again, Shadow intervenes, Sonic saves her again, Sonic fights a giant robot, then Eggman gets her to willingly be kidnapped again by just threatening the city with his flying battleship, then Tails tries to chase after her on foot, fails, and then Sonic has to go do it; this time joining forces with Silver only for them both to also fail to catch the flying now crashing aircraft on foot and thus watch as it crashes and explodes. But then it's okay because Silver and oh yeah Blaze (Tia Carrere) is just standing there, and they use chaos emeralds to time travel Sonic to before the crash so that he, Tails & Knuckles go ahead and after one final battle with the Doc on the crashing airship, save Elise for the long awaited final time.
But wait! There's more! Yes, seriously.
We also have Shadow and Silver's arcs, which are haphazardly spliced in with Sonic's to create the full narrative of the storyline. Silver is revealed to, along with Blaze, are from the 200 years in the future post-apocalyptic hellscape. There, they fend off the giant fire monster again - this time named Iblis (literally the Arabic name for Satan), and afterwards are manipulated by demonic hedgehog named Mephiles (Tony Jay), who will be our villain for this evening. He convinces them that Sonic is the reason for the future being so shit, and reveals he can time travel; he then proceeds to time travel them to the present. After that, Silver is in the forest, Blaze at the beach, and they do some random bumbling around until Silver watches the intro of the movie - gets intercepted by Amy, taken to the desert because she doesn't know they're looking for the same person, then cue that scene when Silver & Sonic fight but she interrupts it, then Silver goes emo on us for a bit before Blaze reunites with him - they have doubts but Mephiles pops back in to keep them on the path. Then Silver charges through a train terminal and catches Sonic right after he stops Eggman's train, only for Shadow to invervene - Shadow hilariously kicks Silver in the back of the head then they go to the past - 10 years ago, where they find out that Mephilies & Iblis were created in a lab accident. Silver chases after Iblis, where we learn that the Duke of Soleanna (David Carridine) literally entrapped the demon inside of his daughter, and it will be released solely by her crying (yes, you read that right). Anyway after returning to the present, Silver is reformed and now he and Blaze run to help Sonic rather than try to kill him - resulting in the previously mentioned final run-in with him. After that, Silver & Blaze return to the future where they go into Iblis' own volcanic domain for the final battle with him; which ends with Blaze sealing him within her herself and then disappearing into a cloud of golden fairy particles - it's unclear if she's dead or in another dimension. Silver seems a bit sad by it though, even though in classic Disney fashion the sun just shows up after Iblis is defeated.
And. There's. More. MORE.
Now I hope you see why I think this movie is over-complicated and over-written.
Anyway, we get Shadow's arc. He goes in to Eggman's secret tundra base to retrieve Rouge, who has stolen an item called the Scepter of Darkness. They are interrupted by one of Eggman's giant guard dog robots, but Shadow destroys it with ease. After that they head out to the old castle of Soleanna, only for Eggman himself to interrupt them - in the ensuing scuffle the scepter falls and is thereafter broken; releasing Mephiles, who after doing a creepy zombie walk sends the two of them (Eggman hauled ass out of there) into the post-apocalyptic future, where the whole run-in with Team Sonic happened. After that, Shadow stays behind to chase after Mephiles, resulting in Mephiles trying to tempt Shadow to turn against humanity - revealing that at some point he was overpowered and sealed away. However, Rouge in the present tracks down E-123 Omega (John St. John) and gives him a chaos emerald while telling him to help Shadow. How that is to be accomplished I don't know, but it explains how in the middle of the Mephiles showdown, Omega wakes up and otherwise randomly intervenes. Mephiles eventually retreats into the present, Shadow and Omega and end up meeting back up with Rouge in Soleanna. After that, Shadow takes off to confront Eggman - which results in a brief conversation between the two as well as the previously mentioned interruption at the train tracks/mine area (Soleanna's geography is laughably inconsistent). After that Shadow & Rouge see Omega's gone but instead focus on saving an archaeologist from some demons and then lighting up some candles around a fountain that have purple fire in order to magically generate a second scepter. Yes I'm serious that's what happens; and then they receive word from a G.U.N commander that Omega has headed out to confront Mephiles on his own at the beach.
And the thing about this part is that.....they leave a blooper in.
I'm not even joking, they leave a blooper IN. THE. MOVIE.
"Agent Shadow, E-123 Omega has engaged Mephiles, head to wave ocean...head to wave ocean?.... Agent Shadow, E-123 Omega has engaged Mephiles, head to wave ocean immediately."
That is the line. That is seriously the line in this THEATRICALLY RELEASED MAJOR HOLLYWOOD STUDIO FILM.
FAIL
Anyway, Shadow and Rouge head to the beach where Omega is fighting Mephiles - though it's revealed Mephiles only wanted to get Omega to reveal himself as the one used in the future to seal Shadow away as Mephiles exposed earlier, which temporarily causes a rift between Team Dark in a scene that could actually be compelling if it was A in a better film and B not used to justify one of this film's many beloved skips to the other story arcs for a bit before then cutting to Shadow, Rouge & Omega trusting each other again with literally no scene taking place between Shadow walking away & them heading out together that actually gave resolution to what would otherwise be this film's most compelling scene.
Anyway, the point is that Shadow, Rouge and Omega go into the Soleanna desert where they head into a temple like Indiana Jones and track down Mephiles, which results in the climactic final showdown with him and I will admit the scepter not actually working with Mephiles just flat out breaking it did get a chuckle out of me, and the scene where Shadow takes off his rings to charge at a literal army of Mephiles clones was rather exciting - but what ruins this scene is that it's not actually the climax. No, you didn't read that wrong. Even after finishing what felt like three other (albeit a little abridged) films, this movie is still not done with it's story yet. Epic final battle with Eggman after suffering through repeated kidnappings of the same princess? Nope. Epic final battle with literally the arabic devil at the cost of longtime best friend? Nope. Epic final battle with the actual antagonist including an obviously climactic final charge through his forces? Nope.
So what IS the actual climax of this god forsaken monstrosity?
Well....see Mephiles (who is apparently fine after the final battle with Shadow) uses the purple chaos emerald in order to blind Sonic & Elise while they are walking through a grassy field, at which point Mephiles stabs Sonic and literally kills him. Yeah. Sonic dies. He gets impaled through the back. On-screen. In a movie that parents probably took their kids to. Their kids who probably adore the hedgehog. Yeah. And I know they did because I still remember the crying I had to sit through.
With Sonic dead in front of her, Elise finally cries - releasing Iblis from her body and allow Mephiles to take the chaos emeralds and use them to reform himself into Solaris; the final boss for this video game inspired abomination of mankind. He also destroys literally all of reality and thus all of the characters are basically in the shadow realm - except for Blaze yet including Sonic's corpse. Oh and Eggman too. Who's just casually helping them now. Yeah. Solaris is literally an omnipotent being capable of "eating entire dimensions for lunch" but it's not explained why any of these characters are even still alive right now.
Anyway what happens now is a quest to find the chaos emeralds while avoiding Solaris' allegedly all-powerful time & space bending grasp (again how are they not dead?), so that they can then use the emeralds to bring Sonic back to life - using a prayer followed by a kiss.
A kiss.
Elise kisses Sonic.
While he's still technically a corpse.
Lacey Chabert truly did not get paid enough for this role.
I sincerely hope society remembers her for Mean Girls more than for this. For her sake.
Oh and it makes Sonic instantly go into his super form too - make of that what you will. He also makes Silver & Shadow go super too, and the three head out to finally end this movie by having the REAL climactic final battle against Solaris. Of course the movie doesn't just stop after both of Solaris' forms (yes they fight the thing twice because a film already over 2 hours long needs padding don'tcha know?) With Solaris defeated, Sonic and Elise have alone time where they look over a small flame which is apparently a final representation of Solaris - with Elise saying blowing it out will basically reset time and make it so that Solaris never existed, which in turn will mean her and Sonic never met. Needless to say, she hesitates as she is unwilling to forget Sonic and even says she doesn't care about the rest of the world (yes, really). But thankfully Sonic talks her into blowing out the flame, and with that the timeline is rebooted like one of DC or Marvel's comics - making us replay the opening scene of the film except the festival goes off without Eggman interrupting and with Sonic just happily watching it play out, ending with a shot of him smiling up at the night sky while in his hand is one of the white feathers from Elise's dress.
And finally, after an ending that means you literally wasted all of your time on a movie that's own story makes it meaningless, the end credits appear and you are freed from the torment.
Oh and do keep in mind the fact that this film does NOT tell you this plot in a one-by-one manner. It opens with Sonic and stays with him until right after he leaves the desert, at which point we cut to Silver, then after their fight we go back to Sonic until he gets sent into the future, at which point we get Shadow, and it's basically told like that. Not only is this plot overly complicated for what it is, but it also basically has ADD or DID, constantly switching focus characters whenever it thinks it's reached a good breaking point; and as I alluded to before, feeling as if it's three movies trying to show their tales at the same time. There are literally four endings to this damn thing. It'd be like if you edited The Little Mermaid, Beauty & The Beast and Alaadin to be one single movie. And then add time travel.
The funniest thing is the video game that is tied to this movie's release isn't even remotely like this storyline.
Last but not least, even the CGI is honestly bad. Sometimes, everything - even Rickman's fake baldness, looks honestly convincing. But at certain sections of the plot the quality just suddenly deteriorates and the 3D models of the anthro characters suddenly look horrendously unpolished compared to what we saw moments before. These scenes are mostly in the middle of the movie, the prime example being Silver & Shadow's run into the past - during that entire section of plot their CGI models are notably unpolished compared to before - the details of their fur seems to suddenly vanish and look like plastic with a flat fur texture slapped onto it; and it stays like that for the whole story sequence. Other parts of the film seem unfinished too, because there are a lot of moments where you'd think there'd be a score but instead it's just awkward silence - which is a shame because honestly the score is one of the only things in this film that truly are phenomenal. Indeed, the soundtrack to this movie is absolutely worth purchasing over any home media release of the film itself; and the good news is that most of the music is actually present in the game this film was intended to promote but is actually nothing like at all.
In conclusion, this movie is horrible.
- Blog Review, 2006
"Solaris is literally evil Alien X from Ben 10. Which means that Sonic characters would beat Ben in a death battle. Just let that sink in." - Anonymous, YouTube, c. 2008
"I actually went to see this movie in theaters with my wife myself, after all you could say it was practically my job to do it. And I can say that I was personally and professionally disappointed with what I saw. Disappointed enough that I actually told my wife to take herself home, I was the only one who had to see this to the end. She decided to stick by me but, I made sure she knew she didn't have to." - Tom Kalinske, 2011 interview with Sonic Retro.
"Despite the historically awful reception of the film, the film actually did well in it's opening weekend, though the cash flow of course stopped once word of mouth and the online reviews started spreading. Whereas the Super Mario Bros. Film has become something of a cult classic that is cherished for it's bad quality in an ironic fashion, there is no such enjoyment in the Sonic 2006 film, the fandom actually blames it for nearly killing the entire franchise. It's actually rumored that after hearing about the film, Shoichiro Irimajiri personally intervened to prevent the film from releasing to theaters in Japan, not wanting disrupt the hard work they were doing to get Sonic a good reputation there. Now, that may be a bit of a rumor - but nevertheless, Sonic '06 was only ever released in western theaters, and the home media release in the east was done so quietly without any serious announcements; as if Sony just flat out wanted to disown the thing. Though some sources claim that Sonic 06 was released in more limited theaters in China, South Korea & Japan. The fact it's unknown what is the truth is very telling. - TSSZ, 2009
Yes: The OTL Sonic 06 plot went into the movie, while the game released at the same time is entirely different. You'll be finding more about that in the next post though because I don't trust the size limit to cooperate with me.
November, 2006
"Rockstar's juggernaut Grand Theft Auto series debuted on the Sony Pluto ate last year in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, a side-story prequel to the events that took place in Grand Theft Auto III for the Sony Neptune. With Liberty City Stories, Rockstar successfully translated its open-ended world of crime to a handheld system, though not without a few missteps. Enter Vice City Stories, the newly released SP GTA game that follows a similar side-story formula. Vice City Stories improves upon some of the flaws found in the first game, not the least of which is improved length and direction, as well as a great deal more personality. The story's still pretty subpar, though, and as much as this is very much Grand Theft Auto, certain conventions of the series are starting to feel a bit antiquated. Still, if you want to roam around a large city, shooting up the place and driving like a crazy person, few games on the SP let you do that as well as this one does." - Gamespot, 2006, excerpt
KILLZONE: LIBERATION
November, 2006
"Though 2004's Killzone for the Neptune might not be the most fondly remembered of sci-fi first-person shooters, Killzone: Liberation for the S.P. is bound to make a more lasting impression. For one thing, Liberation has just about zero to do with its SN predecessor from a gameplay perspective. It's still a shooter, but the viewpoint has been switched to an isometric, top-down view and the action itself has improved exponentially. This is a game that provides a great deal of intense shooting action, with tough enemy opponents that don't lie down and die easily. Throw in an ad hoc competitive multiplayer component and co-op play for the whole campaign, and you've got a thoroughly excellent package." - IGN, 2006, excerpt
THE SONIC 06' HYPE TRAIN CHUGS ON
November, 2006
"So this is the last few weeks before the next Sonic the Hedgehog film gets released, and in the months and weeks ahead of the release it seems that Sony has spared little expense when it comes to the massive hype train surrounding the film. You got the trailers and televised commercial adverts, the McDonalds kids meal promotion, and of course just about every talk show at least having mentioned or discussed it once in these past few weeks. Just a trip to the local Target and Toys R' Us in my neighborhood and I saw entire walls of SONIC THE HEDGEHOG merchandise - that is to say Sonic toys related to the movie itself, from plush dolls to action figures of the film's characters, and apparently there's even a special edition Princess Elise Barbie doll too; Sony of America's CEO did once work for Mattel after all, probably got some of the ol' boys back together for a promotional deal. All of this has been going on roughly the whole year, and of course the goal in mind is to get butts in the seats when the film finally drops - with a release roughly coinciding with the Japanese launch of the Sony Solaris. And from what we can tell, while there has been a bit of a certain reaction online regarding the casting of Alan Rickman as Dr. Eggman, the hype train has been successful overall - Sonic has been spotted in commercials more so than ever before as this film gears up for it's release, and with the holiday season in full swing the toys and merch are expected to have their peak sales records too; it's clear Sony is expecting this film to be a smashing success." - Entertainment Weekly, 2006
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG IS A CINEMATIC DISASTER: A FILM RECAP & REVIEW
November, 2006
"So this past weekend the film 'SONIC THE HEDGEHOG' was unveiled to theaters across America as the third entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog based theatrical films, though it is mostly unrelated to the previous two - seeing as those were traditionally animated and this one incorporates live action humans with CGI. Whereas the first two challenged the critical consensus that video game film adaptations are all terrible, this film fully embraces that sentiment in the form of an overly long, overly complicate mess of a film.
First off, I have to mention the runtime of this god forsaken thing. This thing is 145 minutes long, which is to say it clocks in at roughly 2 hours and 41 minutes not counting the credits; this film is even longer by a few minutes than the original Superman film from '78, but where that movie justifies it's length by being a classic, this film makes it's runtime feel like a cruel and unusual punishment.
As for what's actually horrible about this film - it pretty much boils to three major things. The first being that the acting is incredibly hit or miss. The best actor in the entire movie is of course, Tony Jay - who voices Mephiles the Dark, the movie's main antagonist. Seeing as how Mephiles is unfortunately to be Jay's final performance (he died this past August), it's actually a tear-jerker hearing the man's legendary voice for the last time. Though this movie is a far cry from Notre Dame, his part in it is still one of it's redeeming qualities. The other characters leave much to be desired though; Lacey Chabert - Princess Elise of Soleanna - for instance, is woefully out of her element in this thing. Playing the role of a character who by the rules of the plot itself basically has to be devoid of most emotion in most of her scenes pretty much means her acting talents seen in Not Another Teen Movie & Mean Girls don't get put to use at all - doing this talented woman a great disservice. I would also like to comment that I do think simply casting the video game voice crew as all of their characters was a mistake or at least some of the voice direction they took with them was; some of the line deliveries are great while others are actually worse than the original Sonic Adventure's aged deliveries. Even Tia Carrere, voice of Blaze, has a bland performance that wishes it was Nani (Lilo & Stitch). The worst part is, we spend most of our time with these CGI generated animals, so these deliveries are what we hear most for the duration of the 2 hours & 41 minutes. We have to sit through Ryan Drummond, David Humphrey and Jessie McCartney for that long, people.
The worst performance in the entire film though, goes to the borderline comedic portrayal of Dr. Eggman - performed by Alan Rickman himself. I'm convinced the man was coerced into this project because I see no other explanation for why he's even here. While Eggman isn't supposed to be the most serious villain in history by any means, the humor in this performance comes from ways the makers surely didn't intend. It's hard to put it to words if you haven't seen it or the trailers, so just know that it's basically Professor Snape's voice trying to be a 'serious' approach to Dr. Eggman while the man is in a bald cap (or badly CGI'd baldness I can't tell), stomach padding to exaggerate his dad gut, and of course a fake mustache. It's honestly almost like this character stepped in from the set of the Scary Movie films.
Not helping is that since this is a film directed by Raja Gosnell (The recent Scooby Doo films & Big Momma's House), there is a certain sense of humor sprinkled throughout the dialogue which only furthers the tonal whiplash this film presents you with.
There's also David Carridine in this, but he plays a very minor character despite getting poster credit.
With the cast and their performances out of the way, let's get onto the plot. A real overly written mess, we basically have three stories going on at once that eventually converge into one for the last act. The problem with this is that we basically have three main characters not sharing screen time one after another, but haphazardly at the same time - constantly flipping between Sonic (Ryan Drummond), Shadow (David Humphrey) and Silver (Jessie McCartney). Also must say now that it's incredibly jarring meeting Shadow in the film, as this film barely gives you any context to his character and just throws him in - there was no Sonic Adventure 2 film, so if we do believe all these films are sequels to each other, who the hell is Shadow in the film canon exactly? At least Silver has the excuse of being a newly introduced character. Anyway, the plot of the film can be described as such: Sonic's story arc is him showing up right as Eggman (Alan Rickman) crashes the Soleanna festival of the sun, rescuing Princess Elise (Lacey Chabert) - only for her to get kidnapped literally minutes later. All the while, Silver (Jessie McCartney) is watching from a distance remarking he has found the so-called "Iblis Trigger". The following day, Sonic meets up with Tails (Tara Strong) and they head out on foot to chase after Eggman's flying battleship. Yes, on foot. What follows is....that's quite literally all Sonic does for the rest of his story arc. I mean, he goes to the desert, saves Elise, fights a robot, gets attacked by Silver, Elise gets kidnapped again, Amy saves him, then he goes meet with Knuckles (Scott Drier) where they receive word that Eggman is offering Elise up for ransom of a chaos emerald - the subsequent raid on the base results in the trio being sent through time where they meet Shadow (David Humphrey) and Rouge (Lani Minella) 200 years ahead in a post-apocalyptic future where they fight a giant lava monster and use the chaos emeralds to get back in time. After that, Sonic heads out to save Elise again, Silver interrupts again, Shadow intervenes, Sonic saves her again, Sonic fights a giant robot, then Eggman gets her to willingly be kidnapped again by just threatening the city with his flying battleship, then Tails tries to chase after her on foot, fails, and then Sonic has to go do it; this time joining forces with Silver only for them both to also fail to catch the flying now crashing aircraft on foot and thus watch as it crashes and explodes. But then it's okay because Silver and oh yeah Blaze (Tia Carrere) is just standing there, and they use chaos emeralds to time travel Sonic to before the crash so that he, Tails & Knuckles go ahead and after one final battle with the Doc on the crashing airship, save Elise for the long awaited final time.
But wait! There's more! Yes, seriously.
We also have Shadow and Silver's arcs, which are haphazardly spliced in with Sonic's to create the full narrative of the storyline. Silver is revealed to, along with Blaze, are from the 200 years in the future post-apocalyptic hellscape. There, they fend off the giant fire monster again - this time named Iblis (literally the Arabic name for Satan), and afterwards are manipulated by demonic hedgehog named Mephiles (Tony Jay), who will be our villain for this evening. He convinces them that Sonic is the reason for the future being so shit, and reveals he can time travel; he then proceeds to time travel them to the present. After that, Silver is in the forest, Blaze at the beach, and they do some random bumbling around until Silver watches the intro of the movie - gets intercepted by Amy, taken to the desert because she doesn't know they're looking for the same person, then cue that scene when Silver & Sonic fight but she interrupts it, then Silver goes emo on us for a bit before Blaze reunites with him - they have doubts but Mephiles pops back in to keep them on the path. Then Silver charges through a train terminal and catches Sonic right after he stops Eggman's train, only for Shadow to invervene - Shadow hilariously kicks Silver in the back of the head then they go to the past - 10 years ago, where they find out that Mephilies & Iblis were created in a lab accident. Silver chases after Iblis, where we learn that the Duke of Soleanna (David Carridine) literally entrapped the demon inside of his daughter, and it will be released solely by her crying (yes, you read that right). Anyway after returning to the present, Silver is reformed and now he and Blaze run to help Sonic rather than try to kill him - resulting in the previously mentioned final run-in with him. After that, Silver & Blaze return to the future where they go into Iblis' own volcanic domain for the final battle with him; which ends with Blaze sealing him within her herself and then disappearing into a cloud of golden fairy particles - it's unclear if she's dead or in another dimension. Silver seems a bit sad by it though, even though in classic Disney fashion the sun just shows up after Iblis is defeated.
And. There's. More. MORE.
Now I hope you see why I think this movie is over-complicated and over-written.
Anyway, we get Shadow's arc. He goes in to Eggman's secret tundra base to retrieve Rouge, who has stolen an item called the Scepter of Darkness. They are interrupted by one of Eggman's giant guard dog robots, but Shadow destroys it with ease. After that they head out to the old castle of Soleanna, only for Eggman himself to interrupt them - in the ensuing scuffle the scepter falls and is thereafter broken; releasing Mephiles, who after doing a creepy zombie walk sends the two of them (Eggman hauled ass out of there) into the post-apocalyptic future, where the whole run-in with Team Sonic happened. After that, Shadow stays behind to chase after Mephiles, resulting in Mephiles trying to tempt Shadow to turn against humanity - revealing that at some point he was overpowered and sealed away. However, Rouge in the present tracks down E-123 Omega (John St. John) and gives him a chaos emerald while telling him to help Shadow. How that is to be accomplished I don't know, but it explains how in the middle of the Mephiles showdown, Omega wakes up and otherwise randomly intervenes. Mephiles eventually retreats into the present, Shadow and Omega and end up meeting back up with Rouge in Soleanna. After that, Shadow takes off to confront Eggman - which results in a brief conversation between the two as well as the previously mentioned interruption at the train tracks/mine area (Soleanna's geography is laughably inconsistent). After that Shadow & Rouge see Omega's gone but instead focus on saving an archaeologist from some demons and then lighting up some candles around a fountain that have purple fire in order to magically generate a second scepter. Yes I'm serious that's what happens; and then they receive word from a G.U.N commander that Omega has headed out to confront Mephiles on his own at the beach.
And the thing about this part is that.....they leave a blooper in.
I'm not even joking, they leave a blooper IN. THE. MOVIE.
"Agent Shadow, E-123 Omega has engaged Mephiles, head to wave ocean...head to wave ocean?.... Agent Shadow, E-123 Omega has engaged Mephiles, head to wave ocean immediately."
That is the line. That is seriously the line in this THEATRICALLY RELEASED MAJOR HOLLYWOOD STUDIO FILM.
FAIL
Anyway, Shadow and Rouge head to the beach where Omega is fighting Mephiles - though it's revealed Mephiles only wanted to get Omega to reveal himself as the one used in the future to seal Shadow away as Mephiles exposed earlier, which temporarily causes a rift between Team Dark in a scene that could actually be compelling if it was A in a better film and B not used to justify one of this film's many beloved skips to the other story arcs for a bit before then cutting to Shadow, Rouge & Omega trusting each other again with literally no scene taking place between Shadow walking away & them heading out together that actually gave resolution to what would otherwise be this film's most compelling scene.
Anyway, the point is that Shadow, Rouge and Omega go into the Soleanna desert where they head into a temple like Indiana Jones and track down Mephiles, which results in the climactic final showdown with him and I will admit the scepter not actually working with Mephiles just flat out breaking it did get a chuckle out of me, and the scene where Shadow takes off his rings to charge at a literal army of Mephiles clones was rather exciting - but what ruins this scene is that it's not actually the climax. No, you didn't read that wrong. Even after finishing what felt like three other (albeit a little abridged) films, this movie is still not done with it's story yet. Epic final battle with Eggman after suffering through repeated kidnappings of the same princess? Nope. Epic final battle with literally the arabic devil at the cost of longtime best friend? Nope. Epic final battle with the actual antagonist including an obviously climactic final charge through his forces? Nope.
So what IS the actual climax of this god forsaken monstrosity?
Well....see Mephiles (who is apparently fine after the final battle with Shadow) uses the purple chaos emerald in order to blind Sonic & Elise while they are walking through a grassy field, at which point Mephiles stabs Sonic and literally kills him. Yeah. Sonic dies. He gets impaled through the back. On-screen. In a movie that parents probably took their kids to. Their kids who probably adore the hedgehog. Yeah. And I know they did because I still remember the crying I had to sit through.
With Sonic dead in front of her, Elise finally cries - releasing Iblis from her body and allow Mephiles to take the chaos emeralds and use them to reform himself into Solaris; the final boss for this video game inspired abomination of mankind. He also destroys literally all of reality and thus all of the characters are basically in the shadow realm - except for Blaze yet including Sonic's corpse. Oh and Eggman too. Who's just casually helping them now. Yeah. Solaris is literally an omnipotent being capable of "eating entire dimensions for lunch" but it's not explained why any of these characters are even still alive right now.
Anyway what happens now is a quest to find the chaos emeralds while avoiding Solaris' allegedly all-powerful time & space bending grasp (again how are they not dead?), so that they can then use the emeralds to bring Sonic back to life - using a prayer followed by a kiss.
A kiss.
Elise kisses Sonic.
While he's still technically a corpse.
Lacey Chabert truly did not get paid enough for this role.
I sincerely hope society remembers her for Mean Girls more than for this. For her sake.
Oh and it makes Sonic instantly go into his super form too - make of that what you will. He also makes Silver & Shadow go super too, and the three head out to finally end this movie by having the REAL climactic final battle against Solaris. Of course the movie doesn't just stop after both of Solaris' forms (yes they fight the thing twice because a film already over 2 hours long needs padding don'tcha know?) With Solaris defeated, Sonic and Elise have alone time where they look over a small flame which is apparently a final representation of Solaris - with Elise saying blowing it out will basically reset time and make it so that Solaris never existed, which in turn will mean her and Sonic never met. Needless to say, she hesitates as she is unwilling to forget Sonic and even says she doesn't care about the rest of the world (yes, really). But thankfully Sonic talks her into blowing out the flame, and with that the timeline is rebooted like one of DC or Marvel's comics - making us replay the opening scene of the film except the festival goes off without Eggman interrupting and with Sonic just happily watching it play out, ending with a shot of him smiling up at the night sky while in his hand is one of the white feathers from Elise's dress.
And finally, after an ending that means you literally wasted all of your time on a movie that's own story makes it meaningless, the end credits appear and you are freed from the torment.
Oh and do keep in mind the fact that this film does NOT tell you this plot in a one-by-one manner. It opens with Sonic and stays with him until right after he leaves the desert, at which point we cut to Silver, then after their fight we go back to Sonic until he gets sent into the future, at which point we get Shadow, and it's basically told like that. Not only is this plot overly complicated for what it is, but it also basically has ADD or DID, constantly switching focus characters whenever it thinks it's reached a good breaking point; and as I alluded to before, feeling as if it's three movies trying to show their tales at the same time. There are literally four endings to this damn thing. It'd be like if you edited The Little Mermaid, Beauty & The Beast and Alaadin to be one single movie. And then add time travel.
The funniest thing is the video game that is tied to this movie's release isn't even remotely like this storyline.
Last but not least, even the CGI is honestly bad. Sometimes, everything - even Rickman's fake baldness, looks honestly convincing. But at certain sections of the plot the quality just suddenly deteriorates and the 3D models of the anthro characters suddenly look horrendously unpolished compared to what we saw moments before. These scenes are mostly in the middle of the movie, the prime example being Silver & Shadow's run into the past - during that entire section of plot their CGI models are notably unpolished compared to before - the details of their fur seems to suddenly vanish and look like plastic with a flat fur texture slapped onto it; and it stays like that for the whole story sequence. Other parts of the film seem unfinished too, because there are a lot of moments where you'd think there'd be a score but instead it's just awkward silence - which is a shame because honestly the score is one of the only things in this film that truly are phenomenal. Indeed, the soundtrack to this movie is absolutely worth purchasing over any home media release of the film itself; and the good news is that most of the music is actually present in the game this film was intended to promote but is actually nothing like at all.
In conclusion, this movie is horrible.
- Blog Review, 2006
"Solaris is literally evil Alien X from Ben 10. Which means that Sonic characters would beat Ben in a death battle. Just let that sink in." - Anonymous, YouTube, c. 2008
"I actually went to see this movie in theaters with my wife myself, after all you could say it was practically my job to do it. And I can say that I was personally and professionally disappointed with what I saw. Disappointed enough that I actually told my wife to take herself home, I was the only one who had to see this to the end. She decided to stick by me but, I made sure she knew she didn't have to." - Tom Kalinske, 2011 interview with Sonic Retro.
"Despite the historically awful reception of the film, the film actually did well in it's opening weekend, though the cash flow of course stopped once word of mouth and the online reviews started spreading. Whereas the Super Mario Bros. Film has become something of a cult classic that is cherished for it's bad quality in an ironic fashion, there is no such enjoyment in the Sonic 2006 film, the fandom actually blames it for nearly killing the entire franchise. It's actually rumored that after hearing about the film, Shoichiro Irimajiri personally intervened to prevent the film from releasing to theaters in Japan, not wanting disrupt the hard work they were doing to get Sonic a good reputation there. Now, that may be a bit of a rumor - but nevertheless, Sonic '06 was only ever released in western theaters, and the home media release in the east was done so quietly without any serious announcements; as if Sony just flat out wanted to disown the thing. Though some sources claim that Sonic 06 was released in more limited theaters in China, South Korea & Japan. The fact it's unknown what is the truth is very telling. - TSSZ, 2009
Yes: The OTL Sonic 06 plot went into the movie, while the game released at the same time is entirely different. You'll be finding more about that in the next post though because I don't trust the size limit to cooperate with me.
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YeahAnd what a GLORIOUS train wreck it apparently was in TTL.
Raja Gosnell is probably never working on a major hollywood film again.....ever
I could see it becoming a cult classic. Not like "this movie was better than people thought" but "this is so terrible it goes all the way around into being a sort of masterpiece." Like Birdemic or the Room, but with a bigger budget. Without the horrific gameplay sucking any joy out of the madness the story of 06 is sort of awesomely bad.
I can definitely see some of the Sonic-Tubers I watch doing "Watching/Riffing on Sonic '06" Streams after the initial reaction dies down and it enters that status too.
I'm just imagining this on Red Letter Media's Best of the Worst and it's making me smile.
Not even Uwe Bowl would top thisAnd what a GLORIOUS train wreck it apparently was in TTL.
Something going to help a little is that is became Tony Jay final performance, so at least some people going to bother to at least watch Mephistes parts for it.
There's also gonna be tons of AMVs using clips from the movie with the song "Hellfire" from Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Ah when two fanbase intercept, the Disney and sonic One, plus hellfire is very fitting Mephistes and iblis/Solaris plotline
The really interesting takeaway here is it sounds like the Solaris is launching with a worthwhile Sonic game, which would be a much bigger killer app over the PS3 launch with Resistance and little else. Could even be enough for some to stomach the absurd price point ITTL or the quick price drop to make a bigger impact.
Much needed to, as they're going head to head with Nintendo and Nokia in the same holiday
I forget is Nintendo going in the same direction in TTL with the Wii console & what not like OTL? Or are they going in a different direction?
My guess is yes since the GameCube, while selling slightly better than OTL, still fell short of their projections and didn't beat the newbie (a tie but not a win) while getting thrashed by Sony. Couple that with Iwata still being in charge and the DS still beating the Pluto and everything is in place for Nintendo to take their new approach with the Wii.
Even them, Launching with the most expensive console at the same time all 3 are launching it is still a tall order you need to hedge all the possibilities, so any early Killer App is crucial to generated interest, especially among fans will either wait the price drop or bite the bullet.