movieshadow98

[movieshadow98]

If we got a Shadow spin-off show like the Knuckles series but it focused a little bit more on a human character ( Like Wade in the Knuckles show ) I NEED it to be Stone.

[movieshadow98]

@doodlesketchgirl

We got it, man, we finally got it ;-;

I love how taken aback Knuckles is when Sonic suddenly hugs him, but once Tails joins in, he just melts into the embrace <3

[movieshadow98]

Sonic Movie 3 Sonic and Shadow dynamic conversation… spoilers ahead!

So I think a lot of us can agree the dynamic between Sonic and Shadow in this movie was great. Of course there was the discourse at first, Shadow being frustrated at first was understandable, same thing with Sonic when Tom was hurt. And then they came to a mutual respect on the moon. After the moon scene we even see them be playful with each other. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a catchphrase.” And “Just try to keep up” with a smile on Shadow’s face. It reminds you of what Sonic and Shadow used to have back in the day, a mutually respectful feeling towards each other and a fun rivalry where both loved the banter and competition.

My question is what are they doing to do to Sonic and Shadow’s relationship after this? We know Shadow is alive and they will inevitably meet again. In the games, the next time Shadow and Sonic see each other again after SA2, they still held that same wonderful dynamic. But with Sega’s current depiction of their relationship, I worry. Now-a-days, Shadow pretends to barely tolerate Sonic, dislikes working with him, while Sonic commonly teases him and seems to be the only one who enjoys the banter.

With how things in the movie ended off, Sonic and Shadow happily fighting alongside each other in an almost playful way; spinning around each other, bantering, smiling… I can’t imagine them going back to “the more you talk, the harder I want to hit you.” Even though that’s kinda how Shadow and Sonic’s video game relationship seems to be now.

If my theory is correct that Shadow shows up halfway through, possibly towards the end of Sonic 4 to help fight Metal (probably either Neo or Overlord at that point), I really hope they keep their demeanor towards each other positive. Sure, Shadow can be more serious, as usual, but please please Sega don’t make Shadow act like he’s frustrated to be working with Sonic.

[movieshadow98]

So was there an entire scene of Maria playing the guitar with Shadow at his side before Gerald arrives and says "we have to go, now!" or nah? I've only seen the part where they run from the soldiers and Maria gets killed.

There was 3 moments of that scene that were split up across the movie,

The first one was in the very beginning when Shadow was starting to wake up and we see Maria strumming the guitar, the second was when Gerald came to get them when the soldiers arrived, and the last one was when Shadow was moving the eclipse cannon out into space and he started to remember the past again to which we get this adorable shot:

So let’s just say this entire scene takes place the night G.U.N raided the base and this was the last moment of joy he had with her, because it’s more heartbreaking that way if we do 💔

[movieshadow98]

I haven’t seen anyone else talk about this, but when I tell you I teared up when I heard Maria playing live and learn on the guitar 🥺😭😭

It was so damn precious! AWK! It needs to be discussed more! It flat out told you what the movie’s message was going to be…

[movieshadow98]

I don't know why this little moment of her just tossing the popcorn at Shadow and playing oblivious when he just looks over with a "Did you just?" kind of expression sticks with me so much, but I think about it constantly 😄

[movieshadow98]

I CANT FIND THE FULL AGENT STONE AND SHADOW TELENOVELA SCENE PLEASE

[movieshadow98]

Okay I need to get this out of my system before I pop. I've been letting Sonic 3 marinate in my head for a few days and god Movie!Shadow makes me so fucking sad.

Spoilers below the cut. I'm also mainly going to be talking about Movie!Shadow here and his story is a tiny bit different from the games. Just a heads up

Shadow is treated like a freak of nature and a weapon of destruction the moment he wakes up on Earth despite not having done anything at that point but because he's essentially an alien with a crazy amount of power, everyone is afraid of him and what he could potentially do but at the same time, they want to experiment on him to see how they could use his power for their own personal gain. Dude was never even given a chance and he probably doesn't even know what he's doing wrong other than his mere existance.

The only person who even makes an attempt to see beyond his rough exterior and get to know him as a "person" (he's an anthropormorphic hedgehog, but you get my point. He has human emotions and feelings) is Maria, a young girl who only happens to be there because her grandfather wants to have her around while he does his work. Maria ends up ultimately dying while trying to escape with Shadow because G.U.N was so terrified of him and ended up raiding the base in an effort to capture Shadow and seal him away and was willing to kill even a child if they interfered in this process. What's even more fucked is G.U.N ended up blaming Shadow for the incident essentially using him as a scapegoat to cover up their horrible actions and arggh fuck G.U.N that's all I gotta say.

Shadow's story in the games is also tragic as hell when you consider that he was created to help find a cure for Maria only for her to die tragically before he could fulfill that purpose and while unfortunately that aspect is lost in the movie since Maria doesn't seem to be sick here, I still think this version of Shadow is great and this story still hits me almost just as hard.

[movieshadow98]

What is Gerald’s game characterization if I may ask? I’ve never seen the game and while I know he was butchered in the movie I’d like to know the degree in which he was butchered

Gerald was the most brilliant genius of his era who wanted to improve the world and make people happy through the power of science.

However after the tragedy of Maria his beloved granddaughters death, Gerald was imprisoned and locked away in isolation and evidently very malnourished during that time as a prisoner. He was left to stew in grief and despair until he began to lose his mind. He was very aware of how his sanity was slipping away and it terrified him, but ultimately he succumbed to madness. His final act was to implement a plan of unthinkable vengeance that would ultimate wipe out all life on planet earth.

His character was expanded on in future games, like in ShTH2005 and most recently Shadow Generations where we get to see more of Gerald when he was still sane and a good man. But that was his story as it existed in the self contained narrative of Sonic Adventure 2 when he was introduced. Gerlad's story is a tragedy of a man with great gifts and who sought to use those gifts to better the lives of all of humanity, but loss and grief and guilt tore him apart from the inside out and by the end of his life he was left a broken shell of a man. A shadow of his former self. Fueled by a hollow and self destructive desire for blind vengeance.

To that end, I actually don't think Sonic 3's depiction of Gerald is 100% ruinous to his character. It's only 99% ruinous. So much of Gerald in this movie is unfunny Jim Carrey shenanigans and it's so frustrating. It's once again the character that existed in the source material being sacrificed at the alter of Jim Carrey Comedy. BUT occasionally the character of Gerald Robotnik does shine through.

The Gerald that exists in Sonic 3, what little there is beneath the blubber of Jim Carrey Bullshit, is the Gerald who has lost his mind to grief in the aftermath of Maria's death. The Gerald who wants to burn down the world to make them all feel the pain of his anguish and loss. The scenes where Gerald manipulates Shadow by weaponizing his pain and grief against him to get him to carry out the plan even when Shadow starts questioning it are actually very good Gerald moments in my opinion.

Shadow:"Professor, is this really what Maria would have wanted?"

Gerald:"It doesn't matter what Maria would have wanted. Because she's gone. They took her away from us."

THAT is a fantastic "evil Gerald" scene in my opinion. It's very true to the character we see in the Firing Line recording in the Last Story of SA2. I also like the scene where he finally comes clean and reveals to Eggman that he intends to destroy the world, with Eggman being aghast because he wants to RULE the world and also not die. I DON'T like when Eggman tries to appeal to Gerald by saying "but you have me now, we're a family ='c " but I DO like Gerald's response of him telling him "you're no Maria. When she was taken from me my family was destroyed. So now I want to burn it all down."

So there's two little moments in this movie that feel like authentic Gerald Robotnik in my opinion. Two little nuggets of gold in the septic tank. It's disappointing that so much. So. So. SOOOO much of the movie is just Jim Carrey not at all being funny. Just clown shoes bullshit. Because Gerald Robotnik (evil) did exist in this movie, for maybe twenty collective seconds of screen time. And those fleeting glimpses of potential are what leave me disappointed most of all.

[movieshadow98]

My hot take for the Sonic movies and children’s media in general is I hate the whole “it’s for kids so it has to throw in all these jokes and it has to tone down these serious moments.” Why are we acting like kids can’t handle serious themes? Why are we acting like they’re brainless idiots who can’t handle more complex storylines? I was like 4 years old watching my cousins play SA2 and I promise you I was not traumatized by Maria getting shot. I was not offput by the darker tone. I enjoyed that it took the story more seriously because it made ME feel cool. It made ME feel like I was older than I was, which as a kid was a really cool feeling. Having Sonic and Shadow in the middle of a serious moment about grief and having Live and Learn begin to play only for it to get cut off by Jim Carrey spanking himself?? I just wish the Sonic movies and kids media in general could take themselves more seriously.

The day we give kids more credit for their media literacy is the day we achieve world peace.

[movieshadow98]

What I loved (and hated) about Sonic 3

*SPOILERS BELOW*

What I loved:

Every. Damn. Shadow. Scene. Keanu Reeves was perfect casting

The fight in Chao Gardens, ft. Stone’s badass entrance

Jim Carrey breaking the fourth wall

The Shadow and Maria flashbacks, particularly Maria drawing a bunny face on Shadow’s incubator tube

Knuckle’s slagging off Caspar the ghost

Tom and Maddie finding hobbies while their kids are away

REVENGE GUAC

The unhinged dance scene

Team Sonic vs. G.U.N vs. gravity

Shadow telling a fictional woman she is not a prize to be won, like a true feminist

Shadow’s flashback to Maria’s death when he injures Tom

Wade cameo

Sonic and Shadow’s beautiful heart to heart

All the Stobotnik fan service

What I hated:

Sonic’s lack of excitement at encountering another hedgehog for the first time in his life. It was super underwhelming

The Ivo and Gerald scenes were fantastic, but way too dragged out. To the point where Shadow and Sonic almost felt like secondary characters

Sonic and Shadow deserved way more interaction than they got

Zero reaction from Shadow when Sonic started falling to Earth

Sonic hardly acknowledging Shadow and his sacrifice

I just want them to be friends okay

[movieshadow98]

THIS SCENE WAS SO EMOTIONAL 😭

She was the first person that didn’t treat him as an experiment, nor was she afraid of him. She truly loved that little boy… and holy shit did he need some love.

[movieshadow98]

“End of the Line” will now and forever be Shadow and Maria’s song… I will always think about them when that song plays.

Oh, absolutely my dear! “End of the Line” by the Traveling Wilbury’s is a great song that reflects their relationship with each other, as well as living life to the fullest and discovering your own source of happiness (and coming to terms with loss in order to move on).

[movieshadow98]

You just suddenly see this little guy sitting all alone, giving this saddest puppy dog look he could ever throw at someone,

What would you do?

[movieshadow98]

SONIC 3 SPOILERS BELOW CUT

Is anybody else like deeply amused by how built different movie Shadow is compared to his counterparts. Like immediatly after escaping stasis he put all of Team Sonic into the ground, he can teleport without a Chaos Emerald, if it's true that Gerald survived as long as he did due to being exposed to Shadow's chaos energy then Project Shadow worked and this Shadow wasn't even built to be Project Shadow, he survived not only a fall from space but a nuclear explosion and if the fact that he knew to search for his inhibitor rings is any indication he didn't even lose his memory. All that and this is almost undoubtedly one of the squishiest saddest wet creature Shadows we have ever gotten.

[movieshadow98]

MASSIVE Sonic 3 spoilers, don’t click on if you haven’t seen it. I need to infodump about one specific scene.

—

I wanna talk about the Super Sonic and Super Shadow fight scene, which may I say, was one of the COOLEST things to come out of the Sonic series thus far.

It posed the question, who would win? Super Sonic or Super Shadow?

It straight up told us the answer, with Shadow saying “you’ve won, so finish it!”

But Sonic didn’t win. I don’t think he would win that fight regardless. I think Shadow said that and gave Sonic an opening to kill him to prove a point.

Even while still on Earth, Shadow was goading Sonic about how they were alike, how Sonic was acting out of anger the same way he criticized Shadow of doing. He was trying to push Sonic to a breaking point. He brought up and mocked Tom, there’s no way he wouldn’t expect to be hit for that. At MOST, maybe he was caught by surprise, or underestimated Sonic, but I think he left himself open on purpose. Shadow is too skilled of a fighter to make that mistake.

Then Shadow, on the moon, tried to goad Sonic into killing him, “finishing” it. He stayed down, but I don’t think he was out or done fighting. We see that he wasn’t beat because of the Eclipse Cannon fight later. I think he feigned being beat to prove to Sonic that he does not have the moral high ground; Sonic can be dragged to the depths of anger, despair, revenge, and violence over something painful happening the exact same way Shadow was. And Sonic proved that Shadow was wrong about him.

Regardless, I think this perspective lends a lot to Shadow’s character as a whole, and his rivalry with Sonic. Though they hadn’t known each other long in this continuity, Shadow believes he is better than Sonic in every way. Even in the context of the movie, he probably sees Sonic as some naive, incredibly cocky and powerful kid who acts like he knows what’s right when he can’t even fathom what Shadow has been through. Shadow has to show that he’s better than him. That even when Sonic thinks he’s won, even in their most powerful form, Shadow still will rise above him.

And yet, Sonic still surprised him and proved him wrong. Because Shadow so firmly believed in his righteous pursuit of justice and revenge as the only way to go, until Sonic chose not to finish the fight and kill him.

And then, as annoying as he finds Sonic, he can respect him because he showed Shadow a way he hadn’t even considered. There’s something to be admired in that level of optimism, even if ultimately, Shadow still believes he’s better than Sonic.

Anyway, this concludes my analysis. Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.