Media Essays: Sonic the Hedgehog Running Forward

Written by The Wandering Fox

Oh my oh my, thirty four years and still running today huh Sonic? Nice job little hedgehog.

Hello everybody, it’s me, the Wandering Fox and I’m as surprised as you are that I’m here and thrown my lot in with celebrating Sonic the Hedgehog’s anniversary this month. I didn’t have anything planned for Sonic so I was thinking of sitting it out and letting the others do it. But then a thought came to my head and I realised that I could do something for Sonic.

First of all though before we begin, I’d like to introduce you guys to a couple of friends of mine. Freddy the Fox and Teddy the Cat.

Freddy: Hello everybody! Glad to be here!

Teddy: Yes, I was curious as to when Wanderer was gonna let us join him.

Freddy: Oh he’s been busy.

Teddy: I suppose, Freddy.

Teddy and Freddy are here to help break it apart for you guys in a few drawings regarding my points, so you guys be on your best behaviour. Now I will confess they won’t be in all of the essays going forward.

Teddy: Yeah, you got a few essays written in advance before we came along.

Freddy: Yes, I think you got a slashing summer film coming up for us haven’t ya?

That I do, but we digress. Going back to Sonic, the hedgehog has been going for thirty four years now, three decades about between it and Doctor Who and unlike the latter which is gasping for creative oxygen Sonic is still going strong despite the nasty bumps he’s taken along the way. While we can look back on anniversaries with love of what the good stuff was in the past, we should look forward to the future to see where the franchise can go. Because I think Sonic has only just started running out into a far bigger road where the ideas are endless. As we all know Sonic has begun a cinematic universe and that can lead to bigger things, but first of all let’s look at Sonic’s home and where he makes the most bucks and that is.

The Games

Sonic has been making some strides recently in the games with Sonic Frontiers, Murder of Sonic Sonic Superstars, and Shadow Generations becoming big hitters in terms of finance and criticism for SEGA. They aren’t without their faults with the clunky English dub of Sonic Frontiers, Sage’s inclusion being a matter of controversy in the fandom, Ian Flynn contradicting himself on the subject matters of the games, as well as what some feel is Mike Pollock needing to retire from the franchise, but it doesn’t change the fact SEGA have started to make some changes with the franchise and seem to be having another big hit on their hands with Sonic Racing Crossworlds which is looking to be simple and fun which I think is something the Sonic franchise should at least try and maintain a balance of going forward, and that’s the diversity in storytelling in each games. Sonic Frontiers was notably a lot darker compared to the 2010s games but was followed up by a light-hearted murder mystery game and then a fairly serious and fun adventure with Shadow and going all in on the fun with Sonic Racing Crossworlds. Sonic Superstars is also being helpful in keeping the Classic era alive with newer ideas and restoring classic characters like Fang back and introducing new ones like Trip. I think SEGA has got it just right with how diverse it is with the story and tone for a certain game, lighter and fluffier with a sense of darkness at the climax with the Classic games, while games like racing can be fun and the modern games need a bit of fresh ideas injected now and then. Sonic Frontiers in terms of story shouldn’t be the blueprint going forward as if you make Sonic stories dark you drain the pleasure out of the fans, but if you go too goofy, it can become a joke.

The next Sonic game should at least take certain things from Frontiers like the open world segments doing well at being grand and big and a lot of work needs to be done on Tails and Sage going forward, the former has to have utmost devotion to avoiding what Tails ended up as in the 2010s, and Sage and her relationship with the heroes and Eggman needs to be handled with care. There should still be some unique levels though and it’d be nice if we could come away from Green Hill Zone for that. Sonic Frontiers also made some steps in having us being able to play as Tails, Knuckles and Amy again so it’d be nice if we could get that in future Sonic games that isn’t a racing game.

The last thing I will bring up as well is that there needs to be some proper understanding between the English and Japanese teams, mostly on the English side as Flynn needs to be more clearer that he isn’t the guy who writes the games, he’s brought in to translate and he has some leeway like making references (cos he does that a lot), he needs to remember he isn’t the man who has all the facts about the Sonic games, he needs to respect what the Japanese team is doing and he needs somebody to help him translate the script and not bastardise it as some localisers seem to enjoy doing. If these are repaired and done with then you could get some consistency going forward with the games.

With that we now go to the:

Movies

I have a strange relationship with the Sonic movies. I thought the first film was okay, I like the second one a lot but think the wedding scene was trash, and my thoughts on the third movie are very split, only amplified when I got it on DVD. I think I love and hate the third movie. There’s lots of stuff in there I like whether it’s Tails jumping out of the Eclipse Canon to save Sonic, the flashbacks to Maria, but there’s stuff in there where the movie fails to get out of its own way be it Dr Robotnik watching Spanish drama or Tom playing with his doll for overly comedic effects or the magnetic floor scene was hard to take seriously with Krysten Ritter and Jim Carey trying to out cheese the other, to that horrible tonal whiplash of a final fight. It’s like Jeff Fowler couldn’t make up his mind and threw it all at the wall to see what stuck then gave himself a clap on the back. And going forward we are still Earthbound though they said we are going to go to other planets.

But I think the third movie should’ve been the end of the Earthbound era. It’s a trilogy, you end it with a chapter closing. it’s why I think it was a mistake that they didn’t kill Tom or at least have him crippled badly enough that it affects Sonic to go forward and return to his home. Earth restrains Sonic in a lot of ways, they managed to make it work with GUN and the Master Emerald, but now it’s time to go back to Sonic’s home planet where he can be free in terms of story and visuals. The thing is, the Sonic movies on their own haven’t gone to a billion. What video game movie did? Mario’s. That film just embraced everything about Mario from making it animated, the visuals, the tributes to its various media working in the plot. I’m not a Mario fan but it doesn’t stop me from respecting the fact he’s a video game Titan and Nintendo were determined to make it work. Even the Minecraft movie almost made to a billion and it embraced the fact it’s a Minecraft movie, it created a world that was cinematic but faithful to Minecraft. Could it be that the reason why the Sonic movies haven’t got there is that just maybe it’s cos the fans and audiences aren’t getting a true insight in Sonic’s universe? Look at when they did Green Hill, it looked great. The Death Egg Robot looked good as well, but those are merely breadcrumbs in a Earthbound era.

With Amy coming, and Metal Sonic, that’s a hard balancing act to do with the human characters, especially a couple of whom are annoying. We saw how they screwed up Knuckles’ spinoff by making it about Wade the man baby, if they want to branch the Sonic movies to a success, they have to leave Earth and with other characters to come, they have to otherwise the Sonic movies could be remembered as “Sonic and the humans shoving their faces in films”.

It’s like the Infinity Saga, while I’m not a fan of all those movies and they became pathetic parodies by following Deadpool’s self awareness, everybody went to watch those films to see Iron Man, to see Cap fight Hydra, to see Black Panther and Wakanda come to life, to see the Guardians of the Galaxy and everybody fighting to defeat Thanos. They didn’t go there to watch Captain America watch the Star Wars movies or have Happy Hogan go to the local idiot to look after the Iron Man suit. Their mythos and lore are grounded on Earth, at least the Earth heroes. Sonic isn’t bound to Earth, he’s from another planet with human characters populating some areas. Sonic has to go back and take us with him.

We now go to:

TV

Sonic’s TV stories have had a lot of hits and misses depending on who you ask. But Sonic Prime at first seemed to be a return to a more mature and fun sense of adventure with it going for the multiverse route. But that was given the death nail as soon as the Chaos Council was introduced, walking talking tonal whiplashes and stereotypical characters, and any sense of brains in this writing faded with no idea of wether these guys were Eggman split across his time stream or just some guys who look like him and got together, then gave us a laughable jungle story that was so bad it was funny, and a wasted pirate story, all culminating in whiplashes of the tone, rinse and repeat in the climax, and proving Nine right in the end and did what no film or show should do: make you feel you wasted your time.

Yes, both the recent series of Doctor Who and all of Sonic Prime was a waste.

Sonic to me can tell good stories on tv and what it needs now is not follow a gimmick or trying too hard to be silly or dark. It just needs to be fun with a good story thrown in, Eggman is the baddie, the heroes have to stop him. It doesn’t hurt to go back to basics. I think a Sonic anime is just right to do now since we haven’t had that since Sonic X, and with great animators, the voice cast doing their hardest, and writers giving us a crazy scheme by Eggman, it could work. With Sonic having a TV show it’d help as well to give his friends the devotion and character writing they need.

Lastly.

Fresh Blood

Ooookay. For those of you who know me, you know well I don’t like Ian Flynn. I think he’s overrated, doesn’t keep track of what he’s saying or doing in the comics, has made some big controversies with IDW Sonic and Archie, opened his mouth a bit too much which got him a cane to his hand, is incredibly rude towards SEGA in certain topics, is tone deaf, and he writes very predictably from throwing memes in his books, to referencing certain old trivia’s or trying to out Steve Buscemi with his “How do you do fellow kids?”, and follows certain gimmicks that age like milk, as well as how much of a gaslighting guy he’s turned Sonic into, and a lot of his newer characters are nasty people as well. With a guy like that, and a guy who has been on Sonic for too long, SEGA should start looking for new blood to continue Sonic. Especially blood who aren’t going to clash with SEGA and as we’ve seen there has been writers that have come along and done a good job with Sonic.

Daniel Barnes did a great job with this comic and he notably had no qualms with SEGA while writing the book. We need new writers that aren’t gonna create a fan character and write a fan-fiction in actual comics (looks at Scourge the Hedgehog), who actually understand the character, has good tracks of what they’ve been telling, is not at all rude to their bosses or their critics. We also need writers that aren’t going to bloat out the cast with too many team ups or original characters but instead trying to be faithful to the source of Sonic, which is him, Tails, Knuckles and Amy and others stopping the schemes of Eggman, Fang, Infinite, the Battle Birds, Sage, Erazor Djinn, or even Orbot and Cubot.

Flynn has clutched hold of the golden rings for far too many years. He’s done just as many bad things to the comic side of things as Penders has done and I hate to say it but I’m more weirded out by the cult like following he’s got, not helping how a fan called Ian “God”. Flynn’s bad habit of huge paragraph speech bubbles, overly long storytelling, reliance on meta humour or memes and references, his lack of understanding to characters like Sonic and Shadow tells me he’s VERY worn out and a bitter employee who hates being told what to do. It’s time he moved on to freshen himself up and let newer writers come aboard, and that blood will help Sonic continue up to a lot of decades.

Oh, on the subject of the comics, if you want Sonic to carry on in comic format, I think you need to trim the fat out and focus on the video game characters and try to do some fun stories and do all the characters right. And of you want to a crossover, don’t start too big like you had with Mega Man or DC.

The crossover with DC I think was a missed opportunity to tell a basic story but instead they went with the stereotypical route you can think of with a crossover between Sonic and superheroes like going way too big with a character like Darkseid, have Batman bond with the darkest character, and do fancy costumes for the animal themed characters. It’s boring and just a cash grab, when you could do a simple story of Sonic and Superman teaming up to stop Eggman and Brainiac from getting the Chaos Emeralds and Eggman getting newer resources for his robots. It wasn’t that hard uh?

Those are my thoughts. I don’t know if any will agree or not but I wanted to express my thoughts on what Sonic could be going forward, as I do love the franchise. Whether you agree or not do tell me your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you for reading everybody and thank you to my assistants for their efforts as well.

Freddy: Happy to help. Bye guys!

Teddy: Yeah, I’ll see you.

Goodbye to you guys.