#I love Sonic lore but I’d just be so happy if we got more footage of stob’s daily lives inside the crab

[corneredcopia]

Everyday I hope for a stob short in the sonic movie 3 digital release just like we got drone home for movie 2. Like imagine if we could get a funny short taking place before the movie with rob and stone shenanigans inside the crab. ☹️☹️❤️

[darkcloud-kcalifornia]

You know, I think it’s time for me to try watching that there new video game movie.  Based on a real old game too.  What was it called again…?  Ah yes, Dragon Quest: Your Story.

 What?  Why in the world would I wanna watch a Sonic movie?

 * This opening is not filling me with confidence for the rest of this movie.  I mean yeah, there’s a lot of story to cover in Dragon Quest 5 if you’re making an adaptation, but that’s, like, why it’d be better to not try and cover all of it.  Like, one movie for childhood, one for young adulthood, and one for fatherhood. Instead we’re skipping past almost all of childhood with a whole lot of exposition thrown in quite clunkily and through game footage.

* Well, give the movie some credit here, they’ve introduced Dr. Agon a bit earlier so as to establish relevance (and yet more exposition…), and he doesn’t have the indignity of Luca and co. having to rescue him from a runaway mine cart.

* Well I’m not entirely sold on character appearance, and the dialog seems to be sped up often to match mouth flaps, but some of the scenery shots are downright gorgeous.

* Suspicious slime is suspicious.

* Aw… no Harry falling in love with a cute nun?

* Man, this whole thing is pretty much on fast forward.  I don’t like it.

* Well, interesting change about the sword being the one in, um, the rich person’s care (look, it’s a long name and I’m horrible with those, alright).  Although this makes me thing that they’re going to skip the rest of the Zenithian equipment and focus on just the sword.  Because if not, well, Luca’d be claiming the sword right about now.

* OK, the metal slime scene was pretty good.  As was Luca being stocked about the cash drop from the Goodybag and Mimic.  Because let’s face it, if there’s two things every Dragon Quest player is familiar with, it’s the frustration of trying to kill those slimes and being short on cash.

* And again we get the ludicrous fast pace with him suddenly getting Gootrude and Purrcy on the team.

* OK, as much as I love the DQ theme and for all that it makes sense for a “starting off on the journey” choice, ending with the triumphant trumpets as Luca comes upon a recently burned city?  The amount of dissonance here is unbelievable.  Who directed this?!

* Um… I don’t think you need to translate the subtitles into English when the subtitles where there to translate something written in English.  Also, they’ve changed the marriage quest to demon slaying rather than magical wedding ring retrieval?

* I know this awkwardness between Luca and Nera is supposed to be cute.  But it’s not.  It’s really not.  I’ll admit though that I might have had a bit more emotional investment here if their previous interactions as children wasn’t brushed past in 3 seconds of sprite work!

* Gootrude has the sword! She must be the Heavenly Hero! …Dang it, I was making a stupid joke, but now I can’t help but wonder what her and Luca’s kids would end up looking like.  Stupid generational plot.

* Alright, time to give the movie credit again.  The failed attempt at drawing the Sword was pretty funny.

* Oh come on, at least let us see Bjorn in the party!

* Again, the supposed emotional connection would be a lot stronger if they didn’t skip past the adventures as a kid with Bianca too.

* Well, if Luca owes Bianca half the reward I guess she’s marrying Nera too now.  Rather naughty of Nera, trying to get two spouses like this. Well OK, to be fair this is more her dad’s decision.

* Bianca is three sheets to the wind.  How old is she supposed to be right now again?  I mean, medieval society, different standards for drinking and all. I just hope that Luca and Nera don’t mind her tendency to get hammered occasionally.

* But seriously it’s a little late to be pulling the “which one will Luca marry” thing after he’s already popped the question to Nera.

* Man, they are seriously trying to push the Bianca possibility with now having a pushy fortuneteller.  I mean not that I’m complaining about the ship, Bianca was my bride of choice in the game, it’s just, well… he already proposed and is quite happy with his choice. There’s a point where it’s a bit too late to indulge in this plotline!

* Although it would be kinda funny if drinking that potion showed him a vision of Deborah completely dominating him.  Never mind that Deborah hasn’t been in this movie yet.

* “Refusing to drink a strange glowing potion given to you by a very pushy magic woman obviously means you’re in denial!”

* *Luca falls into his subconscious*  When did this become a Kingdom Hearts movie?

* Alright, while most of the wedding plotline wasn’t very good, and Luca changing his mind after proposing was kinda infuriating, the old woman being Nera in disguise was a nice touch.

* Only one kid? Before Luca finds out about and reclaims his kingdom?  There’s supposed to be royal twins!

* Also kinda weird how they changed the two-bloodline thing needed for the hero to just having even more Zenithian blood.  But then Bianca was captured rather than petrified, so really we’ve pretty much almost completely jumped the plot rails at this point.

* Ah there’s the petrification.

* Yeah, this version of the years in petrification is kinda sad, but honestly I found Luca being placed in the garden of a family as a supposed protective spirit, being there to watch the family’s young boy grow up, only to be helpless to do anything when the boy is kidnapped my monsters to experience they same kind of horrific slavery he did, the father yelling impotently at the statue he purchased and pushing it over, only for even more years to pass, to be far more poignant. I mean, that scene wouldn’t have even taken that much more time than this one did.

* OK, I kinda like the monster just being able to follow Ollice’s Zoom spell with one of their own to be pretty good.  It’d be nice to see that in the games at some point.

* And the drawing and first use of the Zenithian Sword was definitely cool.

* “That’s just how it is this time around.”  Wait, is Dr. Agon suggesting multiple timelines here?  And that he’s aware of them?  You know, that would be one way of handwaving all of the discrepancies between this movie and the game.  Or even the differing versions of the game.  Different timelines and realities.  Or that could apply to the different games in which the Zenithian Dragon appears; rather than a continuous timeline which wouldn’t make much sense due to the massive differences in the landmasses and lore of the settings, it could be different realities that the Zenithian Dragon has been appointed over by the Goddess, and thus has a split awareness.  …Which in turn suggests more realities through multiverse theory on which girl Luca marries.  The timeline here just got incredibly complicated.

* This… this time travel plotline is being bungled so badly.  And Luca was the one who gave himself relationship advice in the past? Uuuuuuuugh.

* It’s Mada!  Mada is dead!  OK, honestly that one isn’t different at all from the game.

* Sudden reinforcements? OK, I’ll admit I was kinda hoping that Bjorn would show up, but I wasn’t expecting Harry.  At least not after the battle has already begun.  Like, if they were going to toss this one in wouldn’t it have made a lot more sense to have the heroes gather forces before the big battle than have them show up out of nowhere during the big fight?

* Well that’s… odd. I’d crack a joke about the movie crashing, but I have the feeling that plot point isn’t out of the question here.

* OK, so, the movie really is a game world, and “Nimzo” is a virus that was inserted into the programmed final boss, so now everything is going absolutely haywire.  Well I guess that’s what the “Your Story” title is about. It’s the story of the player of the game.  And as Luca is the player avatar, he’s the only one still with any kind of awareness. But Dr. Agon and Mada seemed to have some awareness of the nature of their world, hence their reference to “this time around”.  It’s “this time the game is being played”.  But if things were changed about the basic nature of the game, some of the plot points and so forth, that makes me wonder if the reason for those changes is because this isn’t the base game, it’s actually a ROM Hack. One that carried a virus in it.

* So I was mistaken. It was a remake for a VR system. Oh crap, the virus is going to try to do a mind hijacking, isn’t it?

* No, just a nerd pissing match.  Man, this thing got strange.  And kinda disappointingly shallow for big bad motivation.

 Well, that’s the movie. I guess they wanted to try and do something of an examination of nostalgia and gaming?  But honestly in the end even that plot point was rushed, and even if there were a few hints at something being off that still felt like it came out of nowhere.  Points for effort?  But this was not a good movie.  At all.  I can see what it was trying to do, and that could have made for good storytelling if enough time and care had been devoted to it.  But there just wasn’t.