Remove ads

Sonic The Hedgehog live action movie

I saw the trailer this morning, and I still think Jim Carrey as Robotnik is good.

The rest? I have no fucking idea. o_O
 
Jim Carrey is being funny, as Jim Carrey, because he's playing himself. Not really Eggman.
 
RoyalNoises said:
Jim Carrey is being funny, as Jim Carrey, because he's playing himself. Not really Eggman.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, it's just Jim Carrey as a mad scientist, not Eggman. When I think Eggman, I think Mike Pollock, or Deem Bristow, or Long John Baldry. Or Mike Pollock again.

...or Alfred Coleman.

Even though these actors each have a slightly different take on Eggman, he's always clearly the same character, just interpreted differently. He's petty, yes, but also sort of dignified and eloquent - though to varying degrees.

Except the last one, that one's there because it's funny.

And while all those are clearly the same character, Jim Carrey's version is...just himself. It's the character he's always played. He's too...Jim Carrey, and not pompous enough.

On a final note, I leave this Reddit thread discussing the version I see as the Ur-Eggman that all others must aspire to - Ian Flynn Archie Comics Eggman.
 
Last edited:
The Archie Eggman developed in a weird state of adversity between Archie, who wanted to write a dangerous, competent villain, and Sega, who mandated that Eggman could never really win when up against Sonic. This resulted in the weird implication that Eggman is deliberately handicapping himself because he likes Sonic, or at least likes hating him, and wants to keep on fighting him.

He's weirdly compelling for a character that started as a generic evil scientist.

And never forget that perhaps better than any other mad scientist in fiction, Eggman understands the incredible power of logistics. This is a guy who somehow built a whole navy of flying battleships without the government noticing, and then when it got blown up by a cosmic entity he just went and grabbed the other one he had already built just in case.

He casually throws away military hardware that would bankrupt small nations, having built it essentially by himself from scratch using only tools and robots he had also already built himself. Eggman is what Ayn Rand's dirty fantasies are made of.
 
Last edited:
I still maintain that the most impressive Eggman is the games' version from Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Colors, where he built a fully armed and functional spaceship navy for a decoy distraction and kidnapped several entire planets, not just the inhabitants the planets but also the superpowered inhabitants respectively.

He's basically omnipotent when it comes to anything done as setup for a game, it's only once the game itself starts that he goes from "omnipotent master of machines who can do the impossible in moments" to "comic relief".
 
Eggman knows that he could casually conquer the world in an afternoon if he wanted to, but he's self aware enough to know that he wouldn't enjoy ruling as much as he enjoys the contest of conquest. Sonic is a godsend for him. It lets him hit the reset button whenever he's about to get bored and makes sure he always has to be coming up with new, fresh ideas.
 
I'm not a Sonic fan. I've only played the first game. Once. In the mid-90's sometime. That and his cameo in Wreck-It Ralph are pretty much it for my exposure to the franchise.

This... this 'trailer' just has me going, "Why?" Also, I kinda wanted to punch the character Jim Carrey was playing several times during it. And not in a good way.
 
Sonic doesn't look like Sonic, he looks like a human who had himself horribly surgically altered in an effort to become Sonic.

We live in a world where this got to use Gangster's Paradise but Jojo part 5 didn't.
 
Last edited:
RoyalNoises said:
This resulted in the weird implication that Eggman is deliberately handicapping himself because he likes Sonic, or at least likes hating him, and wants to keep on fighting him.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's not a weird implication. It's outright stated fact - they permanently killed Robotnik in issue 50, which prompted a Robotnik from another dimension, one where he had utterly won but as a result was also utterly bored, to step in.

Thus, Eggman knows what victory feels like. And he hates it. As he says in those pages linked in that Reddit thread, it's all a game.
 
GilliamYaeger said:
It's not a weird implication. It's outright stated fact - they permanently killed Robotnik in issue 50, which prompted a Robotnik from another dimension, one where he had utterly won but as a result was also utterly bored, to step in.

Thus, Eggman knows what victory feels like. And he hates it. As he says in those pages linked in that Reddit thread, it's all a game.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I've never actually read that far back in the history; that's amazing.
 
They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.

And judging by the CGI, they didn't even realize that they in fact couldn't.
 
Last edited:
RoyalNoises said:
The Archie Eggman developed in a weird state of adversity between Archie, who wanted to write a dangerous, competent villain, and Sega, who mandated that Eggman could never really win when up against Sonic. This resulted in the weird implication that Eggman is deliberately handicapping himself because he likes Sonic, or at least likes hating him, and wants to keep on fighting him.

He's weirdly compelling for a character that started as a generic evil scientist.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This was a lot more explicit in the Boom show I think?
 
Honestly I think the biggest thing that bugs me about the trailer is the way it casts Robotnik as a villain because he, what, disrespects the army and he's an enormous nerd? Which, on the one hand given modern techbros the latter has some fertile ground for topical villains, but this feels more like villifying experts who dare to cast aspersions at the US' military boner.

It's not like Robotnik doesn't have plenty of villainous material at his roots; "mad scientist who wants to use everybody as living batteries for his army of robot slaves" is a rich seam of creepy.
 
Last edited:
First exposure to this thing's existence was the trailer, a few minutes ago.

One, skinny Robotnik is goddamn heresy.

Two, my disappointment this isn't set on Mobius is infinite. There was enough uncertainty in the initial bits of the trailer I was unsure, but then that went away, replaced by an unending sea of antipathy.

... the animation that wasn't whatever that blue antediluvian horror was, was pretty okay, though.
 
Sweet buttery fuck that is a horrifying and disastrous take on a design for him, with such a horrifically generic movie plot along with that.. thing. Did SEGA endorse this, object to it in some way, or at least say 'what on earth is this mutant abomination of a beloved character? how are you people okay with this?'
 
I feel like the only thing to do at this point is turn their marketing strategy into, "here ye, here ye, come on in and see the freak!"
 
Czer said:
Sweet buttery fuck that is a horrifying and disastrous take on a design for him, with such a horrifically generic movie plot along with that.. thing. Did SEGA endorse this, object to it in some way, or at least say 'what on earth is this mutant abomination of a beloved character? how are you people okay with this?'
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They did, reportedly.

It was just when it was too late to stop the events that were set in motion.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top