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hishighnesstheprincess · 4 months ago

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"But Prin if you hate the Sonic movies so much why don't you just write a better version of them-" ok I will.

Here are the rules. I have 3 movies and a Knuckles TV show, same characters with no major additions or subtractions, no massive character change in backstory or personality, no lore changes or massive lore additions, may as well throw the Prequill Comic and drone home in there too for good measure, no throwing in major headcanons I have just to make things flow better, working within the limitations the movies have (aka I can't just shove them into mobius for a bit bc that would be hell on the budget), and no making movie 3 just a carbon copy of sa2.

My main goal with this is going to be sticking to the rough structure and themes of the movies (movie 1 being about Sonic not isolating himself and finding a friend in Tom + him ending up in the Wachowski's residence; Prequill Comic being a series of short stories setting up movie 2 without being crucial to understanding movie 2; movie 2 being about Team Sonic coming together, the Master Emerald stuff, Super Sonic, Sonic accepting Tom as a father figure; Drone Home being primarily comedic and showing Team Sonic being somewhat dysfunctional; Knuckles Show being about Knuckles finding a purpose on the earth and developing Wade's character; movie 3 is a lot more up in the air but I imagine it's going to be contrasting sonic and shadow as well as showing their similarities, everything to do with GUN and Shadow's backstory, the general sa2 conclusion of humanity being worth saving, and maybe Team Sonic learning to work together/Sonic learning to be a leader and them all being brothers) and to improve the overall characters, arcs, and world while still sticking to those structures and themes.

Movie 1.

Main characters are Sonic Tom and Eggman.

Roughly the same setup with Sonic accidentally leading the echidna tribe to Longclaw, Sonic being teleported to another planet (which the Knuckles show confirmed wasn't earth btw) and Longclaw and the echidna tribe wiping each other out. Only noticeable change in this section will be Longclaw saying Sonic needs to protect something and that he's the only one who can use it, getting cut off either by the arrow that hurts her or from the echidnas interrupting their conversation when the arrow knocks Longclaw out of the sky. This is here to establish the presence of the Master Emerald as something that Sonic knows vaguely about and his ability to use it to go Super instead of it being something that comes out of nowhere in Movie 2. Eagle-eyed viewers may at this point say this violates my rule about not changing any lore, because in flashbacks in the original version of movie 2 we see an echidna warrior using the Master Emerald, but just hold on a second, I'm gonna get to that in Movie 2 (and the Knuckles Show and Movie 3).

From there we will see Sonic going to the planets we see Xed out on the map he has in movie 2 and discovering the reasons for why they weren't habitable for whatever reason (toxic air, hostile native life, he just couldn't find enough food, etc.) until he winds up on Earth and decides to stay, not risking his luck any more, electing to just stay in a cave in the most peaceful (and boring) town he can find, this of course being Green Hills. Then we get him spying on the town, idolizing Tom (and to a lesser extent Maddie), messing with Carl. We also see Carl's growing paranoia and desperation to catch "The Blue Devil", but also the residents of Green Hills aren't blind in this version and notice weird stuff as well- massive, unexpected windstorms, paths through the forest like someone has been running through it, someone stealing from (insert big grocery and entertainment store here) without ever being caught or leaving a trace behind, stuff like that. Tom jokes that this is the most entertaining part of this town, but he still yearns for being a #bigboycop in the big city (San Francisco if I'm remembering correctly) where Rachel lives. There is also a sequence of Sonic appreciating nature on Earth, but gradually getting bored because of his self-imposed restriction to stay in Green Hills.

And so, things continue, until Sonic has his scheduled breakdown about how empty his life is, the military takes an interest in the town, and through a series of conveniences Tom finds Sonic in his shed and shoots him in the leg with the tranquilizer dart, and Sonic loses the teleporting rings. Things are much the same during Sonic initially persuading Tom, but we include the line "Why did you have bear tranquilizers in the first place?" and Tom looking guilty/doubtful of his actions before trying to defend himself, which a still slightly woozy Sonic just decides to roll with bc a) this is his first real interaction with his hero and b) he's painfully aware that he needs Tom's help right now and doesn't want to jeopardize that. They get out of the house the same way (I am absolutely including the joke about breastfeeding because that's the funniest moment in this entire fucking franchise and the best part of the movies so far imo) but when we get to when Tom kicks Sonic out of the car and tells him to find his own way to San Francisco is the first major change of the movie. Tom hands Sonic a map to San Francisco, and we see Sonic actually go there (because in all his time learning human culture and finding his way around the universe he absolutely learned how to read a map)... and then he goes back to Tom and says he doesn't know how to find San Francisco, and Tom takes pity on him and the road trip from H-E-double-hockey-sticks begins. There is a reason for this change, which I will get into later when I cover the characters arcs in this film.

Things on the road trip don't vary up until we get to the bar fight, and during this scene (which will not include a crappy Quicksilver sequence homage) Sonic is having fun right up until he sees that Tom is actually starting to get hurt, so he then zips around and disables everyone so Tom doesn't get any more hurt. Back in the car, Tom says something about wishing he had his gun, and Sonic excitedly asks if he would have shot "one of the bad guys", at which point Tom says that people don't deserve to get shot just for being in a fight and that he would have just told everyone to leave them alone before fleeing the bar with Sonic. Sonic pouts and says that's not as exciting, at which point Tom retorts "being a police officer isn't supposed to be-" before he cuts himself off, a bit of a contemplative expression on his face. He then deflects the conversation back onto Sonic, and they get onto Sonic's bucket list, full of childish stuff (maybe for emotional impact we could have seen Tom doing some of the items himself while just living his life in Green Hills earlier in the film) and obviously the "make a friend" item. Tom looks sad but doesn't say anything about it, and they go to bed.

The next day while on the road, Tom is visibly tired and still injured from the bar fight, and Sonic is feeling exceptionally guilty. Tom says he shouldn't feel bad because he ended the fight as soon as he could, and Sonic seems to be on the verge of confessing that he could have gone to San Francisco by himself, but Tom accidentally distracts him from that by telling him that he's moving to San Francisco which Sonic gets angry about. Just as they're really getting into it Eggman attacks the car. During the fight Tom yells something about "not signing up for multiple near-death experiences", and also Sonic has to take control of the car for a lot of it, during which time he navigates using a map, which Tom sees. The fight ends the same, but just as Tom is about to question Sonic on how he can read the map, they notice the bomb stuck to Tom which both of them freak out about, but Sonic freaks out considerably harder than Tom expected him to and starts emitting blue sparks similar to his initial breakdown in the baseball field (this is because of his Longclaw trauma, which the audience is made aware of when Sonic says something like "not again, I can't be responsible for something like this again" or something along those lines), and then Sonic gets the bomb on his glove, says something about how it's better he dies than someone else he cares about, and then gets blown up. There is one other change here: the bomb gets stuck to Sonic's shoe, and his leg is injured.

Tom is understandably fucking worried about Sonic's minor breakdown and how hurt he is, but quickly realizes Sonic is alive and gets him to Rachel's house. All the human interactions go basically the same, with added Tom and Maddie interaction where he says he's furious that Sonic obviously lied to him about not being able to read the map and has potentially ruined his life, and Maddie gently reminding him that Sonic's a kid who just almost sacrificed his life to make sure Tom wouldn't get hurt. When Sonic wakes up he and Tom have a fight about the Everything™, with Tom being understandably angry that Sonic lied to him and put him in danger and Sonic yelling about how Tom wants to have a more exciting life without valuing the peace he already has. It's at this point that he yells at Tom about his traumatic backstory and why he was in Green Hills for years in the first place, at which point Tom softens and says that he's sorry, but he isn't going to help Sonic anymore. However, there's a genuine problem at this point. Sonic's leg is injured so he really can't run fast enough to just go up the side of the building the rings are on, and after some needling from Maddie (+ Rachel begging them all to get the fuck out of her house for some comedic levity) Tom agrees to smuggle Sonic up the building.

At the top of the building, Sonic says goodbye to Tom and Maddie and genuinely apologizes to Tom, saying that he would try to make up for it but he's gonna have to go live on a mushroom planet now (btw there would be a scene earlier in the film where Sonic complains about how boring + dangerous the mushroom planet is) which leads to Tom experiencing a moment of doubt as to whether or not Sonic really has to leave. Of course, at that moment Eggman shows up, and Sonic, once again freaking out over the possibility of getting Tom and Maddie killed, gets them out of the fight in the same way he does in the original movie, and starts using his powers to run again, despite the fact that he's making his leg injury worse while doing so. Like the original film, Sonic ends up in Green Hill, and Tom gets in-between him and Eggman even when both Sonic and Eggman tell him to get out of the way. It's at this point that Eggman taunts Tom over his general inability to fight like the two of them can, and says that Tom will never amount to anything more than a busybody in a small town where no one will ever need him to save them, and Tom retorts that he's fine with just saving Sonic, who he then calls a friend. Queue the third-act friendship power up and Eggman's defeat.

After all that, Sonic collapses due to the strain on his leg and Tom and Maddie say he can stay with them "until he finds a new home", which Sonic agrees to. When the GUN Commander swings by, he offers Tom whatever he wants, and Tom says he's happy with just staying in Green Hills "with my family", at which point the GUN Commander says that he meant Tom could get whatever he wants at Olive Garden (yes I find those jokes funny, sue me). The film ends with Tom and Maddie showing Sonic to his new home in their house, but when Tom says something like "now you can stay safe in an actual house now" Sonic will mumble "stay..." and glance out the window, looking a mix of genuinely happy and unsure.

That's the entire plot of this movie, bar the Tails post-credits sequence (I would personally change that to having it just be Tails noticing the massive energy surge from Sonic's breakdown earlier in the film/his powerup later, but whatevs).

Now for the character arc explanation that I promised, the idea is that Tom's and Sonic's goals in this film are relatively morally pure but get twisted because of their conflicting desires. Tom wants to be a cop who does more "important" things but fails to consider how he's already helping people in Green Hills and how he probably should not want to have a more exciting lifestyle when police officers, should, ideally, prevent bad things from happening to people and not just hunt down bad people (with heavy air quotes around the idea of crime making someone a bad person obviously). Sonic has two conflicting desires, that being wanting to keep himself/others safe by isolating himself vs. his natural desire to explore and find fun things to do. Tom wants to fulfill his wishes just by going to San Francisco where there is more crime for him to solve, and Sonic tries to satisfy his wishes by lying to Tom just to have a few days of genuine fun before isolating himself further. Both of them realize that their goals and methods of achieving those goals are flawed, and Tom completes his arc by realizing he can protect Sonic as best he can. Sonic's arc is not complete yet, but he's finished the first stage of it by making a genuine friend and no longer isolating himself.

Some other notes: during the road trip Sonic is going to spend a lot of time looking out the window and marveling at the changing scenery. Despite it all, America is quite beautiful, and I think this should be used to establish that Sonic likes exploring and experiencing nature and seeing people interact.

I don't think my version of the film is perfect. Obviously Tom is still a cop at the end of the movie and that is broadly portrayed as a morally neutral thing, but I couldn't figure out a way to put in a dissection of the politics of being a police officer in America without massively derailing the plot, so the compromise was to show that cops definitely shouldn't aim to be the """"""heroes"""""" and should just be there to actually serve and protect. Additionally, Maddie still isn't much of a character in this, she's kind of just there to be Tom's nice wife who pokes him and Sonic in the right direction. There's also some confusion with Sonic's idolization of Tom and him wanting to have "exciting" adventures vs. his trauma over the first real act of violence he was a victim of in his life, Longclaw's death, but I digress. If there are many other major issues anyone noticed feel free to put them in the notes.

Prequill Comic.

5 stories, focusing on Sonic, Stone, Knuckles, Tails, and Eggman, in that order.

I will keep Sonic's story mostly unchanged, with the caveat that it's going to be obvious that he's going stir-crazy not just because he wants adventure, but also because he's getting bored just being in Green Hills, especially with only Tom, Maddie, and Ozzy for company. This will contribute to his arc in movie 2 of getting friends/brothers while still not having the problem of Sonic's love for exploration be solved fully in the second movie.

Stone's story is unchanged I genuinely love it so much. Maybe make it a bit clearer how genuinely gay he is for Eggman.

Knuckles story I will change up a bit. I'll establish just how long he's been looking for Sonic and make it so that he also doesn't know why Sonic was important to Longclaw.

For Tails, I'm gonna take the opportunity to world build a bit. Make it canon that every "Zone" in the games translates to a planet in this universe, and have it be that Sonic's energy signature is both unique and extremely powerful, even more so than whatever is trailing Tails in the comic (which is Knuckles, who canonically has similar powers to Sonic in that his quills can serve as energy sources for other things). Also, include a mention of Chaos Emeralds in the world that Tails' ring-teleports to that he says has leftover Chaos Energy in it. Nothing big, just a few casual mentions.

For Eggman, he's also gonna be basically just the same. Maybe a bit more about how Sonic's quill is unique as an energy source in that it has potentially infinite energy if harnessed right, which Eggman does not yet know how to do.

Movie 2.

Main characters are Sonic, Eggman, Tails, and Knuckles. I think Movie 2 is vastly better than Movie 1 so there won't be as many changes but there will still be some.

The opening sequence with Eggman accidentally summoning scavengers + Knuckles will be kept the same. Sonic's escapades in San Francisco and Tom confronting him about it are also mostly the same, but Sonic expresses a desire to get out of Green Hills, at which point Tom reminds him that GUN are probably looking for an excuse to hunt him down and that it's too dangerous. When Tom and Maddie leave for Hawaii, Sonic still throws a massive party, but he still looks incredibly bored (maybe he says something about throwing the same party for himself every time Maddie and Tom are away from the house for a significant period of time). When he turns the tv on instead of showing a funny lil Ben Schwartz meta joke reference thing, it's instead going to be a newscaster following a crime being actively committed in (insert big American city here) and Sonic appears visibly frustrated but decides to stay in Green Hill.

When Eggman arrives, he's going to make a jab about the Wachowskis having a pet hedgehog as well as a pet dog. The first confrontation will play out basically the exact same, but I'm adding a line where Knuckles says, "Don't lie to me, I know she must have had a reason for keeping you safe when she killed so many others!" I don't believe this counts as a massive lore change because Knuckles in movie 2 already has a line about his tribe dying at the hands of Longclaw, so it's not a stretch to imagine that they had fatal encounters before she took Sonic in. When Tails rescues Sonic, he doesn't introduce himself during the car chase and instead focuses on how cool it is to meet Sonic. This will be our first hint towards Tails' self-esteem issues. I will also be changing things slightly to have Sonic be the one to give Tails' nickname to him. When Tails drives the car off the cliff and lifts Sonic into the air to get away from Knuckles, that's going to be the first time Sonic calls him Tails, in a clearly approving way.

Btw the scenes with Tom and Maddie in Hawaii will be mostly unchanged aside from one bit. When Tom says he wishes Sonic had friends, Maddie will say, "He already has you," and Tom will respond with, "He has only me. It wouldn't be enough for a normal kid, and Sonic is.... he wants to get out there and see this world, but I don't know how to let him do that if he's going to put himself and others in danger. And then there's the government as well," at which point Maddie says he's worrying too much and that they haven't seen the government since the end of the first movie, which Tom reluctantly agrees to (this will lead into a conflict in movie 3). Also the Eggman, Stone, and Knuckles scenes will be mostly unchanged, but again I will be adding a bit where Eggman asks Knuckles about why he hates Sonic, at which point Knuckles will tell him about the beef between the echidna tribe and the owls, but portraying the owls as the villains and the echidna tribe as just trying to protect themselves and the Master Emerald, which Knuckles will describe as being part of his heritage or something to that affect. This will later contrast with the story of the war that Sonic will tell Tails, where echidna tribe were invading conquerors, and the owls were just trying to stop them (because I never understood in the movie why Tails is the one to explain the lore of the echidna tribe and the owls, when Sonic is the one who actually experienced at least some of it). This is because I think the original movie tragically misses out on the idea that neither Sonic nor Knuckles know what really happened with the echidnas and the owls (even if the lore of the series that we see in Tails' Prequill Comic section as well as what we see of the echidna tribe in the movie 1 intro and movie 2 when Knuckles is reminiscing about his dad do imply that the echidnas were the aggressors).

During the section in Siberia, I'm going to change it to be that Sonic and Tails need to get information about the exact location of the owl temple out of the locals (because I just do not buy that humans would be a threat to Tails let alone Sonic), which is where the misunderstanding via Tails' faulty translation device comes in. Somehow the natives become hostile to them, at which point they start calling Tails a freak, and he begins to freak out. Sonic notices and gets in front of him, defending him, at which point Tails gets enough confidence to try translating again, and the machine gets enough words right this time for the locals to point them in the direction of the mountain. When they're heading up the mountain, Sonic asks Tails about him freaking out back in the bar, at which point Tails tells Sonic his backstory of being bullied for his twin tails, making him an outcast even among Mobians. Sonic would be confused and say that his twin tails make him able to fly, which is cool, and generally reassure Tails that Sonic thinks he's awesome because of his differences. Tails would be happy that Sonic thinks he's cool, but still look somewhat unsure. At this point, Tom will also text Sonic asking if he's fine and not getting up to any trouble, and Sonic will lie and say he's still at their house (paralleling when Sonic lied in movie 1).

When they get to the owl temple, Sonic gives his side of the echidna-owl conflict, but Tails appears somewhat confused and says, "But that's not what.... never mind," but when Sonic presses him on it he says that's not what he was told in school, and what Tails was taught was that the echidna-owl tribe got into a war over who should have access to the Master Emerald and wiped each other out over it, with Longclaw being one of their most powerful warriors who just withdrew from the war suddenly, leading to the rest of the owl tribe being wiped out without her. I might be stretching my rule of "no massive lore changes" here but the movies themselves do not give us a lot to go off of when it comes to what actually happened because every single active player in that story is long dead by the time we get to actually talking about it. What Tails contributes to this conversation is telling Sonic about how the Master Emerald can give the "ultimate power" to whoever can use it, and the Chaos Emeralds that forged it. Sonic then connects this to Longclaw telling him in the first movie that he has to protect something and that he's the only one who can use it, but is still confused as to what she means because Tails told him that echidna warriors in the past have used it, so Sonic doesn't know wtf she meant when she said that only he can use it properly. When they use the map to get the compass, Knuckles and Eggman show up, and they have the same fight, with Tails ending up knocked out, Eggman getting the compass, and Sonic and Knuckles get into their confrontation on the snowy cliff, with Knuckles yelling, "Longclaw killed my people and my father" and Sonic yelling, "your tribe killed my mom" showing their differing perspectives on the echidna-owl conflict. When Tails gets knocked out and Sonic decides to protect him instead of going after the compass, Knuckles looks doubtful about leaving them both behind.

Queue awkward wedding scene (I personally cannot watch this scene but only because I get intense second-hand embarrassment from media, so I will be keeping it in at my own expense). Also queue the GUN reveal, and Tom, Sonic, and Tails getting captured. The main difference in this section is that Sonic and Tom will talk while captured, and Sonic will apologize for lying to Tom again, and Tom will say, "I'm sorry you felt like you had to lie to me." He'll also say he's proud of Sonic for prioritizing protecting Tails over anything else. Tails will also wake up, and he'll apologize to Sonic for messing up, saying he's useless, etc. Sonic will reassure him that Tails was helpful and that without him Sonic would have probably gotten himself killed, and Sonic will say that he still needs Tails to prevent Eggman and Knuckles from getting the Master Emerald. When Maddie frees them, Sonic and Tails go off by themselves (after filling Tom and Maddie in on everything that has happened to them) after stealing the wedding plane, and Tom and Maddie try to get GUN on their side. Btw Rachel and Randall's plot is gonna go the same, because apparently, they're both going to be in the third movie so I can't just have Rachel kick him in the balls and be done with him.

The temple will go the same, with Knuckles + Eggman and Sonic + Tails all trying to get to the center of the temple at the same time and arriving at the same time. At this point Sonic and Tails fight Knuckles, while Eggman spectates and starts slowly making his way to the Master Emerald. With Tails' help, Sonic gets close to actually beating Knuckles, before he notices Eggman grabbing the Master Emerald and yells at Knuckles to turn around. Eggman gets the Master Emerald, Knuckles realizes he's been betrayed, and after Eggman teleports away the temple falls apart, with Sonic and Knuckles getting trapped under the water. Sonic helps Knuckles get out of the water, and Tails persuades Knuckles to go back in to get Sonic to safety, after which Tails flies all three of them to the nearby island. From there Sonic and Knuckles have their talk on the beach, come to the mutual agreement that they don't have to continue the conflict of their ancestors (biological in Knuckles' case and foster in Sonic's case) and they all agree to work together to stop Eggman.

Final fight time! Eggman goes to Green Hills to pick up Stone and also destroy the home Sonic has made for himself with the Wachowskis, and Team Sonic (gonna use that from now on to refer to Sonic + Knuckles + Tails without typing out all of their names individually) teleport there using one of Tails' rings. The fight goes broadly the same, but at one point Eggman mentions that the power of the Master Emerald is getting harder to control, and Knuckles says that even the best echidna warriors couldn't use it for very long. Things during the fight go basically the same, with Knuckles and Tails knocking the Master Emerald out of Eggman and Sonic grabbing it on the ground and running away with it. Tom and Maddie save Sonic before their car gets blown off the road, and Eggman has them trapped and is about to kill them. Sonic gets his Super Sonic power up and defeats Eggman pretty easily, but afterwards Knuckles freaks out over Sonic using the Master Emerald as well and is surprised when Sonic gives up that power easily. Knuckles explains at that point that even the best echidna warriors could only use the power for a brief amount of time, and that anyone who used it for too long will eventually get overloaded by the power and die, or get corrupted somehow and start using it for evil (for clarification: it's not inherently evil just an extremely powerful source of energy and considering that it can literally grant wishes, even the slightest amount of bad intentions in its users can result in catastrophe, which is why the owls hid it instead of using it themselves). He asks Sonic how he was able to use it so well and give it up easily, and Sonic says he doesn't really know, but he didn't feel like it was hard to handle at all.

From there we get Sonic accepting Tom as his father figure, Team Sonic officially forming to protect the Master Emerald, and all that. When Knuckles reforms the Master Emerald, he says that it's lost a lot of its power so it shouldn't be capable of letting anyone go Super anymore, but that they should still keep it safe. At the end of the movie, Sonic will be happy about having new friends/brothers, but still feel somewhat dissatisfied with his life in Green Hills, even if GUN's interference at the wedding has made both Tom and Maddie want to keep the three Mobians in Green Hills for their own safety, which Sonic reluctantly accepts once again. Post-credits scene with Shadow will be unchanged.

A lot of the lore stuff I put in there is just gonna be used to explain why the Master Emerald is not a magical "solve everything" button that Team Sonic can use for any and all physical threats, as well as trying to make the echidna-owl conflict less one-sided by introducing questions like, "Why did Longclaw leave the war and take Sonic? Even if the echidnas were the initial aggressors in the conflict, was it right for them to be wiped out?" and just generally making it clear that it was a terrible thing that unfortunately got passed down to Knuckles and Sonic, which they eventually move on from after realizing they shouldn't be tied down by the mistakes their predecessors made.

I also changed things to give Tails more screentime, and developed his and Sonic's relationship a bit more, because I felt like in the original movie Tails was tragically overshadowed by Knuckles (who later got a TV show where he was overshadowed by his own human sidekick probably due to a lack of budget), and made it so that Tom and Maddie have an actual reason to want to keep Team Sonic exclusively in Green Hills for their safety, and also continuing the instances of Sonic lying to Tom. Those last two things are going to have a payoff in the third movie >:)

Drone Home.

Main characters are Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Unit.

Drone Home is mostly the same, but with extra emphasis on Knuckles going ahead regardless of what Sonic wants them to do as a Team, and Sonic's reliance on Tails' plans to get out of trouble after getting himself into it.

Knuckles TV Show.

Main characters are Knuckles and Wade.

Honestly, I think the Knuckles show could be vastly improved just by having more focus be on the titular character. I will be changing the overall theme of the show, just because I feel like the topic of finding a home and purpose in other people is already decently well covered in movie 1 and 2. Instead, I will be changing it into a bit of an exploration of Knuckles' character and how to find a purpose in life after already achieving what you thought would be the culmination of your life's work.

Basic setup will still be the same, Knuckles being extremely overprotective of the Master Emerald and hostile towards the people just trying to work on the house and getting grounded by Maddie as a result. That will all happen in episode 1, but when Pachamac shows up he tells Knuckles that he has to "continue the legacy of the tribe" and train another warrior. Pachamac will also say that legacy can only be protected with violence. Through comedic circumstances that are actually well-written this time, Knuckles comes to the conclusion that he must train Wade in becoming a warrior at bowling. The episode ends with him getting captured.

Episode 2 is broadly the same, but with the plot point that the two ex-GUN agents are using Knuckles' own quills to power the machine that is keeping him contained (because otherwise he could just break out easily using his power), but at the end of the episode when Wade is about to lose to the female ex-GUN agent (I cannot be bothered to remember their fucking names I'm sorry) the power of the quill fails, so Knuckles breaks out and saves Wade before fleeing the mansion. The ex-GUN agents were able to get a decent number of quills from Knuckles before his escape, so that's going to power their weapons for the rest of the series.

In episode 3, I'm removing the stuff about Wade's mom learning Krav Maga in the IOF and just keeping it strictly about Jewish religious practices. I'm also removing the joke where Wade's mom learns about Knuckles' tribe being wiped out and goes "oh so he's basically Jewish" because that just puts a bad taste in my mouth. This may not be my place as a gentile person, but equating Judaism with being genocided isn't a joke I'm comfortable with. This episode will still cover the Shabbat Dinner, because I think including Jewish representation is still important regardless of real-world events currently happening. I'll also be changing Wade's sister to make her less... actually abusive towards Wade, and while she'll still be just as obnoxious in my ideal version of this show the writing will be actually funny, so it won't be a problem. At the end of the episode, we get the fight where Knuckles and Wade's mom protect the candle, and at the end of it Wade's mom thanks Knuckles for protecting the candle and their Jewish heritage. Knuckles says that he should have finished off their attackers, and she says that protecting the candle is more important than anything else (is the symbolism and theme obvious enough yet). Also, at the end of the episode I'm just going to insert a scene of Sonic and Tails covering for Knuckles to Tom and Maddie.

Episode 4. I'm gonna have Wade's bounty hunter ex-friend capture both Wade and Knuckles, planning on handing both of them over to GUN/the government, and Knuckles tells Wade about all his adventures. I guess I should include the low-budget rock opera musical, we can have it be that Wade is hallucinating from getting electrocuted by the cage, so he imagines it as being the musical. Also, they can't just magically escape because Knuckles got electrocuted repeatedly so he just doesn't have the strength after that and also the massive amount of fighting he's done in the past few days. Wade asks why that is when Sonic never seems to run out of energy no matter how much he uses, and Knuckles says that Sonic is uniquely powerful among Mobians, even though they don't know why yet, or if there even is a proper reason why he has so much energy. Eventually Wade figures out a way to trick his ex-friend into getting close to the cage, at which point Wade grabs him and Knuckles knocks him out, and they escape the cage before heading to Reno.

Episodes 5 and 6 blur together in my head, but I'm gonna say that they're broadly the same except Knuckles helps Wade in the tournament (because in the beginning of the show they made a big deal out of it being a doubles tournament which is why Wade's ex-friend wanted to find someone better than Wade to partner up with but when they get there it's just a singles tournament and oh my god this show is so poorly written but I digress) and when they expect to go up against their second-to-last opponents (before facing Wade's dad) they instead find the ex-GUN agents. During their fight Knuckles throws a few bowling balls which end up scoring Wade and Knuckles enough points to move them on to the next round. When they defeat the ex-GUN agents Wade questions how they knew they were here, and then Knuckles and Wade realize that Wade's father sold them out to GUN. They move onto the bowling tournament final, where Wade's dad's bowling tournament partner turns out to be the guy giving the ex-GUN agents weapons. He and Knuckles fight while Wade and his dad do the bowling tournament stuff. After both of them win their respective fights, Wade comments that he should have maybe treasured the family he already had instead of disregarding them to look for his dad, and Knuckles realizes he doesn't have to be a warrior anymore, he just have to protect his family and his inheritance. They have the sitcom high-five, and Knuckles goes back home.... only to be greeted by a furious Maddie and Sonic and Tails sheepishly saying they failed to cover for him.

I don't think I did a very good job with this one aside from just making the plot more logical and trying to make the theme about protecting your inheritance being more important than attacking those who you think will hurt you. The stuff with Pachamac was kept deliberately vague because the movies might at some point make a loose adaptation of sa1, but I wanted Pachamac's characterization to be closer to his game counterpart and have it be more that Knuckles was misinterpreting his advice instead of just having this chieftan warlord tell Knuckles he has to help a random guy in a bowling tournament. Also, I removed the instance of Wade getting superpowers

Movie 3.

This one I'm just gonna have to guess that the main characters are Team Sonic, Eggman, Shadow, prooooobably Tom, and Gerald, with GUN initially being friendly to our heroes then turning out to be the main antagonistic force.

We start with Shadow waking up on Prison Island (why now of all times will be explained later) and breaking out. For a few weeks (during which the events of the Knuckles series take place) GUN tries to keep everything hush-hush but when it becomes clear to them that they just can't take Shadow out without help. It's at this point that they go to the Wachowski household, blackmailing them using the property damage Knuckles caused in his TV show and Sonic's crime-stopping adventures in the very beginning of movie 2 to get them to stop Shadow for him. This is secretly a plan from GUN to get Team Sonic and Shadow to wipe each other out (they have a backup plan to deal with Shadow if it comes to it), so they don't tell Team Sonic about Shadow's combat prowess and his ability to teleport.

Team Sonic gets wiped by Shadow in Tokyo, after which they ask GUN why Shadow is seemingly attacking random places, at which point the GUN Commander tells them that he's attacking GUN facilities all over the world which contain the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic furiously asks why they weren't told about this initially, and GUN says that they didn't know that Shadow could use them in combat (for his chaos powers like teleportation and such). Team Sonic is extremely skeptical of this claim but ultimately accepts it. They then go to England (ew) where GUN says they have another facility with a Chaos Emerald. Tails looks into GUN's files and sees that they've erased a lot of their own files recently, but then Shadow attacks, and while it is less one-sided Shadow still wins, but during the fight he says something about being imprisoned by GUN, which confuses Sonic. Team Sonic question a random GUN agent (Krysten Ritter's character) about Shadow, and she accidentally lets slip that Shadow was imprisoned on Prison Island for 50 years.

It's at this point that Team Sonic fully don't trust GUN, and they go to Eggman because they figure that if Eggman was previously employed by the military/government, he may have more knowledge of what is going on than they do. They trade Sonic's quill for his help with taking down GUN/Shadow, and Eggman manages to guide them all to another GUN facility, this one not on any of the maps GUN gave them to show where all the Chaos Emeralds were being kept. It's at this point that they find some evidence of what happened on the ARK, and Eggman, exploring the facility by himself, finds Gerald. Gerald explains GUN's intentions of wiping out

Because Team Sonic has gone sort of AWOL, GUN takes Tom as a sort-of hostage and keeps him at another facility in (insert big city here. Personally, I'm hoping we get some South American representation if this really is a globe-trotting adventure). This is the next facility Shadow attacks, and because Team Sonic is busy getting exposition-dumped by Gerald/whatever physical files they find in the abandoned facility, Tom ends up getting injured in the fight and almost dying. Sonic is furious at this, and goes along with GUN when Shadow attacks the next facility (for anyone keeping track Shadow has now attacked four facilities and has five Chaos Emeralds, the fifth one being from Prison Island which he nabbed on his way out), which results in Tails and Knuckles almost getting killed... from a GUN soldier firing on all four Mobians while they were in the same area.

This results in Team Sonic directly confronting the GUN Commander (they've separated from Eggman and Gerald at this point, there was a betrayal which they all expected) with all they've learned, at which point they learn everything about the ARK, Shadow, Gerald, and Maria. Sonic is furious and says that he won't fight Shadow anymore, but he is told by the GUN Commander that Shadow aims to destroy the entire world (no one knows about Maria's wish yet, and that whole thing with Gerald which I will be changing from its sa2 version so just hold on until then).

Meanwhile, Gerald is slowly drip feeding Eggman information, saying that they can rule the world together after Shadow brings them all the Emeralds. He skirts around the topic of Maria, which Eggman notices. Eggman than inquires about the ARK, but everyone (Eggman and Team Sonic and GUN) get distracted by Shadow attacking yet another facility, aiming to get another Chaos Emerald (let's have this one be in Africa). Team Sonic does go to try and stop Shadow again, but this time Sonic attempts to reason with Shadow, drawing parallels between Shadow's loss of Maria and his own loss of Longclaw. Shadow is furious at this and says they're nothing alike because Maria died in his arms, and Sonic retorts that he was directly responsible for leading the echidna tribe to Longclaw, whereas Maria's death was definitely not Shadow's fault (so they both lost loved ones but are carrying around two different types of survivor's guilt). Shadow once again says that he doesn't know what he's talking about, but seems a little more hesitant this time. The GUN Commander sees Sonic trying to talk it out with Shadow, and at this point fully betrays Team Sonic, trying to kill all of them. Shadow gets the sixth Chaos Emerald and dips, but confuses Sonic by saying "we have them all now" and "when we're done, there won't be anything left". Team Sonic gtfo of there, and they quickly figure out that Shadow has an ally who already has the last Chaos Emerald, who they then realize is Gerald.

It's at this point that Gerald reveals his true intentions to Eggman. After both he and Shadow witnessed Maria's death (and her final words were "Shadow, I beg of you, please do it for me..." but she crucially DOES NOT FINISH SAYING HER WISH BEFORE DYING. I know this will be a massively controversial change but I'll get back to it later), Gerald assumed she wanted humanity dead and persuaded Shadow that that was what she wanted before they were both captured by GUN, Shadow put into his cryosleep coma and Gerald forced to help GUN become an overwhelmingly powerful military force with branches all over the world. During this time Gerald secretly worked on his ARK Project, building a weapon into it that would require a massive power source, which he designed from his research on the owl temple on Siberia. While Gerald never found the Master Emerald temple he resigned himself to just waiting until someone else found the Master Emerald, which happened 50 years later. When someone did find the Master Emerald Gerald immediately woke Shadow up (how he accomplished all of this.... ig it's just because he's a genius who can manipulate GUN into letting him do whatever he wants and he had 50 years to put all this into place) and told him to go find the Chaos Emeralds.

It's at this point that Eggman asks where the weapon is, where the ARK is, and where the last Chaos Emerald is. Gerald says they're all in one place- the very facility both of them are standing in- and when Shadow arrives, the very last part of Gerald's plan activates. The ARK is the facility they're all in, and Gerald has the last Chaos Emerald. With all of the Chaos Emeralds gathered in the same space, the ARK is capable of powering itself again, detaching itself from the planet and lifting into the outer atmosphere, orbiting the Earth. Gerald begins charging the Eclipse Cannon with the Chaos Emeralds.

GUN at this point just plans to raid the facility mere hours before it fires and kill Gerald and Shadow, and has put Team Sonic on house arrest. Sonic goes to see Tom, and says that he's not going to lie to himself or Tom anymore- he plans on stopping GUN and Shadow and Gerald, and that no matter what he does he's still going to be threatened by people like the GUN Commander and Eggman, so he'll just live as true to himself as he possibly can. He thanks Tom for being his dad but says, "every kid has to grow up someday," and Tom reluctantly agrees, asking Sonic to keep himself as safe as possible. Krysten Ritter's character sneaks a ring to Team Sonic and they use it to teleport into the ARK, ready for the final confrontation.

Knuckles and Tails try to deal with the hordes of machines Gerald has on the ARK, while Sonic goes directly to Shadow, asking why he's just going along with what Gerald wants, and asking if this is the fate Maria would want for the world and for him. After a fight in which Sonic and Shadow tie (something something they're equals now something something rivalry), Sonic tells Shadow that he's never going to give up on this world or on his family, and Shadow finally admits himself that Maria probably wouldn't have wanted him to do this, and goes with Sonic to stop Gerald. At this point Eggman is already working with Knuckles and Tails to get to the center of the ARK, and with Sonic and Shadow's help they get there, with Tails and Eggman disabling the Eclipse Cannon (during all this GUN is being generally unhelpful and trying to kill everyone). At this point Gerald gets truly desperate and goes straight for the kill switch, causing the ARK to start hurtling towards the earth. Sonic and Shadow both realize what they've got to do, and they use the Chaos Emeralds to go Super, using Chaos Control to teleport the ARK and stop it from crashing down to Earth. Shadow falls out of the sky, but Sonic, having flashbacks to Longclaw falling out of the sky and Tom getting hurt, refuses to let him go, and it's at this point that they both get rescued by Tails and Knuckles. Gerald, refusing to accept his loss, dies fighting GUN, and Eggman escapes. Tails forces GUN to back down by threatening to reveal the truth about what happened on the ARK, and Krysten Ritter's character forces the GUN Commander to step down and takes control of GUN herself. She promises to leave the Mobians alone from now on (unless they really do need their help dealing with any kind of extraterrestrial threat) and says they'll all be forgiven for all their crimes, including Shadow.

The movie ends with Sonic offering Shadow a place in their family, which Shadow rejects because he wants to find his own path, and to see what Maria loved about the planet. He goes his own way. The Wachowskis slowly recover from everything that's happened over the course of the movie, but when Tom is fully recovered he pulls Sonic aside and says he knows that Sonic wants to leave Green Hills and explore the universe. Tom is very clearly sad about this but willing to let Sonic go (and potentially Tails and Knuckles if they want to go), even if there is still the possibility of Sonic being attacked by rogue GUN agents or Eggman. Sonic hugs him and says he'll visit often and bring back lots of souvenirs. The first place Sonic ends up going to once he leaves Green Hills is his old house where he and Longclaw used to live, and he says goodbye to her as well, promising to keep her and everyone else he's ever met in his heart. Then he sets off to an unknown planet in search of new adventures. In my ideal version of movie 3 the post-credit scene would be setting up a CD adaptation, with either Amy Rose or Metal Sonic being shown (with Eggman creating Metal Sonic using the quill he got from Sonic earlier in this movie).

This movie is intended to be the end of a trilogy in my version, and whatever the next movie is should start fresh with new themes. But the throughline for the trilogy is not letting yourself be ruled by the past, whether that be Gerald directly trying to manipulate Shadow into doing what he wants using Maria's memory or Sonic and Knuckles assuming that they have to fight just because their ancestors fought or even Sonic just going along with what Tom and Maddie want him to do to keep himself safe instead of finding his own path in life. The other main part of the trilogy is Sonic growing up, I imagine there wouldn't be any major character changes for him after the third movie.

Apparently, there's talks of a Shadow TV Show and Movie 4 being in development but I'm not even going to try and write a version of that when we haven't even seen movie 3 yet.

Conclusion

I am way too fucking tired to write out a proper conclusion after all that shit, and yet I feel that I have to write it anyways.

Truth be told, I still don't think my version of this universe would fix a lot of the fundamental problems I think it has. There are a lot of bits that are clunky, heavy-handed, rely on the audience just not thinking too hard about the logistics of everything that is happening (especially in movie 3), and many more problems that I can think of even as the person who created it. I still, in general, don't approve of it being a live-action adaptation, I don't like the celebrity casting, and I don't like movie Sonic's personality in general or how he's voiced (sorry Ben Schwartz, I like you in other stuff just not this), and the lack of female characters would still be a pretty big problem! But I do genuinely think that even with these limitations, the movies could have been so much better than what they are. I hope my version shows that, and fixes at least some of their problems.

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