#If this is weird or doesn't gel with you then we can plot?

[peridyke]

why do you hate new crystal gems

I really hate how it flandarizes the characters and I think it's the worst example of an episode doing so in the series. The entire premise of the episode is kind of a fourth wall breaking "side characters pretend to be the main characters" gimmick which is already more typically cartoon trope-y than I like to see in SU but the way Lapis Peridot and Connie seem so self aware of the premise of the show that they seem the primary protagonists as being exaggerated character traits that they can mimick just super takes me out of the experience. Even though SU is a cartoon usually the characters are written to realistically interact with each other and it feels weird seeing characters so blatantly say things like Pearl is always shrill and emotional/Steven is always positive and saves the day/Garnet is the cool leader/etc. Those are observances and simplification that viewers and fans of the show might make about these characters but hearing it as an observation by certain characters about people who are otherwise their friends is tonally jarring. I can see some people enjoying it and not being bothered but for me it feels cheapening and it throws me out of the experience. I think I just typically expect a different tone from SU's character writing and the contrast is unflattering.

I also reeeeeeeeaally dislike Peridot and Lapis's character writing specifically, which is especially disappointing for me considering how few times we see episodes dedicated to their relationship after Barnmates (in fact I think this might be the only time). Peridot is at what I would consider to be her worst here in terms of flanderization, and Lapis's writing just feels so awkward and weird. I feel like it's a waste of an opportunity to see how Peridot Lapis and Connie would interact in favor of a plot trope that just doesn't end up being particularly funny or engaging. I think I'm specifically bothered by Lapis's attitude towards Connie and her lack of care to having hurt her in the past, especially after she shows remorse for hurting Greg in Alone at Sea. Lapis feels most compelling to me when she's written as being aware and regretful of her hurtful actions, otherwise she comes off as overly mean and unlikable. I don't like how much they fully slot Peridot into comic relief territory and I think it's really reducing of her complexities.

Also I just like, really don't gel with the humor ghdhd. Awhile back I was doing a rewatch of every episode featuring Lapis and this was the only one I couldn't get all the way through just because of how much the writing made me cringe LOL </3

#txt #askz #i will say im a wee bit high gjdhd hope this makes sense. ive been meaning to elaborate on why i dont like the episode for months

[storywonker]

TASM2 is... a weird movie. That's obvious, and there's a reason it didn't do well. It's ultimately got too much stuff in it and loses the thread of its best bits in an attempt to set up a wider universe.

If you're going to do an MCU competitor with a Marvel character then framing it around Spidey is probably the best choice - after all, there's a whole spidey mythos in the comics that only minimally intersects with the rest of the universe and can easily be split off. But the film takes some truly bizarre moves if that's the idea, the weirdest of which is the plot point that only Peter could've become Spider-Man.

As an idea in a self-contained story or series of films it's not an awful idea - I don't much like it as I like the take that anyone could've been bitten, and it's Peter's acceptance of his uncle's power-and-responsibility schtick that truly makes him a hero - but it could work, especially as this movie emphasises Peter's parents as an emotional thread.

But as part of a movie setting up a big cinematic universe it's a bizarre choice. Either you have to write around it to introduce new spiders, in which case why have it, or you've locked yourself in to the character of Peter Parker for basically every future movie, and that means you're locked in to Andrew Garfield too (good thing Sony kept him sweet, huh?... oh, right, huh). It basically only exists as a plot point to make the parents mystery plot-relevant and to justify Harry's turn to the Goblin, neither of which seems actually needed.

Plus, there's Gwen's death. Yes, it happened in the comics but it's still one of the most famous fridgings around, and the Peter-Gwen relationship was the best thing about the films, not least due to the leads' chemistry. Hell, Spider-Gwen as an idea came off these films' drawning boards, so I have to assume they realised it was something they'd need to write around - so why do it?

Especially since it makes something of a mess of the Peter-Gwen thread anyways - obviously we've had a lot of buildup to a doomed relationship that, if the idea was to introduce MJ in TASM3, we're not going to stick with. Plus the whole question is whether Peter is right to push her away due to the danger to her and his promise to her father despite her own desire to date him - and the film, until the last 20 minutes, seems to come down on her side! She has a whole speech in the finale about how she's got agency and he doesn't get to make her choices for her - and then like 10 minutes later her head hits concrete. What's the thematic point, here?

I guess part of this is we don't see where they were going - all this could work in theory in a less-stuffed movie that had a payoff in a sequel. But we never got the sequel, mostly because apparently Sony didn't know where they were going either.

Which is something of a shame, because there are some legitimately great scenes and sequences in this film. The opening chase with Rhino is one of the best spidey sequences on film, the action scenes - and the montages of Peter being spidey - are well-done and great fun. The Peter-Gwen scenes are excellent and really sell the idea that these two are aboslutely smitten but also trying not to be.

Cut the Harry plot and you might have a stronger movie, although you still have the issue that you don't necessarily have a thematic throughline - there's the idea of time and not having enough of it, but the film never seems to resolve it, and it's muddied by the parallel hope-bringer theme. There's just too many elements, and despite the legitmately good quality of some of them, they just don't gel into a cohesive whole.

Anyway, onto the actual point of this exercise: catching up on the MCU films I haven't seen.

#yes I am analysing an 8-year-old movie what of it #I like to take apart fiction to work out what it does well and less well #and tasm is compelling to me because it has a lot of promise but bungles the execution in a few key ways #joel liveblogs #tasm

[kinetic-elaboration]

January 22: Secret Obsession

Last night I watched the movie Secret Obsession on Netflix because I wanted to watch something simple and genre heavy and maybe a little trashy--and it was perfect for scratching that itch. Afterward, I read some reviews of it, because I felt like part of the pleasure of this sort of media is reading other people being incensed/feeling smart about catching plot holes. NPR did a pretty great skewering. In general, though, I feel like reviews or reactions that are really mad miss the point. It's light viewing. It's simple in its plot and over the top in its emotions, it's obvious, it's predictable, it's stylized, it's genre heavy. It is, in a weird way, comfort viewing.

So, it doesn't feel particularly useful to me to point out plot holes. We're in Cinematic Amnesia territory folks: it's not going to make sense. And large holes like 'why didn't anyone care to investigate these four other mysterious deaths' and 'why doesn't this woman have any other friends or family looking for her' seem to entirely miss the point, in my opinion. Because that would make the plot too complex. Also, this is nominally a thriller but really it's more an exaggerated abuse horror story: the villain has all the attributes of many real life domestic abusers (isolating his victim, lying to her or even gaslighting her, being nice/sweet/romantic and then physically abusive in turn, etc.) but he's doing everything on a grand scale. She's not just separated from her family; they're dead. The abuser isn't just hiding aspects of his personalty, he's straight up created a new identity. The isolation involves a house in the mountains, a sabotaged cell phone and internet, and her own physical disabilities following her accident. It's all turned up to 11. That's the whole point.

That said, I had some suggestions for improvement.

First, I would cut the detective's missing daughter story line. I get that the point was to give him more substance and character, and a sort of personal stake in the whole proceeding. But there are really only 3 characters of any worth in the whole film, they are all archetypes, and he's one of the three. We care about him because he's The Detective. We know who he is because he's The Detective. And he's invested in the case because, duh, it's job. It seems more weird that other people AREN'T invested in it tbh. Further, that saving Jennifer would allow him to let go of his unfinished business with his own lost daughter doesn't gel. I know the idea is that Jennifer is like a surrogate or metaphorical daughter, and that saving her is like 'saving' his real daughter, but it just doesn't work. First, they don't know each other and we really only see one scene of them together, at the very end. It's not believable that he has a personal stake in her even by the transitive property. Second, she has no attributes similar to that of his daughter. Maybe she is now the age his daughter would have been, but that's never made clear. All we know is his daughter was 10. Jennifer is an adult. Third, though details are spare as to what happened to the daughter, there's no reason to believe it was a similar situation to Jennifer's--in fact, it couldn't have been so similar, since Jennifer's kidnapper fake-married her. Pretty sure that didn't happen with the 10 year old girl. I got the impression hers was a straightforward kidnapping, but Jennifer's situation really wasn't a straightforward kidnapping. You have to squint to see the parallels. Basically, if you're not going to really do the parallel or really dive into the trauma, just don't do it. Even I have limits on how half-assed something can be even in a film like this before I get annoyed with it.

Second, and speaking of half-assed, I would cut the nameless red herring guy. He's so obviously here to misdirect the audience away from the husband, but, look, if you've watched the trailer you know the fake husband is the villain, and even if you haven't....the fake husband is obviously the villain. If you're going to misdirect with someone else, at least give him.... a name, some sort of actual non-creepy reason for involving himself in this, some sort of backstory or something. Also, I think there are other ways to bring into the plot or otherwise resolve the elements he does, or tries to, provide. For example, his murder shows off fake Russell's rage. But I think this rage would be better showed slipping through the cracks with Jennifer on a day to day basis. We have that one scene where he gets mad when she won't have sex with him, and of course she's unnerved by the degree of isolation she's experiencing, but other than that he goes from Doting Husband to Violent Killer with almost no warning. The audience doesn't need to see him kill some other guy because we've already basically guessed he's the guy from the intro--we've seen his murderous rage already. And Jennifer doesn't see him commit that murder, so it has no effect on her.

The red herring's body is something creepy for Jenifer to trip over late, but I would have that be the body of her actual husband--way creepier and more distressing imo.

And finally, we need a red herring weirdo because the intro tells us that Jennifer became injured when she was running from someone--begging the question of who she was running from. Again, this is obviously the fake husband but if we're pretending we don't all already know that, there has to be another suspect. This can be solved by starting the action later.

My third suggestion is, then, start the action later. I rad one review that suggested it start after her stay in the hospital. I disagree with this. Her time recovering in the hospital shows off the nice guy/no red flags side of Fake Russell. It also explains why she might "remember" him as her husband or have fond associations with him. This is the courtship period. It's what built trust between them and what adds to his betrayal later. So I would include that sequence. But I would not include the circumstances of the accident. I'd either start it with her running into the road or, even better, arriving at the hospital. We'd hear random shouts about what happened, car accident, etc., but it would be as confusing to us as to Jennifer. There's a mystery there and an implied villain, but there's a lot going on. Best not to think about it. Then the flashbacks she has to someone attacking her would be more startling, and would mean the same thing to the audience as to the protagonist--a good place to be. Slowly, she and we would recognize BOTH that something very sinister caused her accident AND that her husband is not who he seems.

Finally, and this was also a suggestion from some reviews, it would have been more interesting to have Fake Russell set up the whole thing, to have planned the accident in order to confuse Jennifer, and make her physically reliant on him, so that he could make her his isolated mountain wife. Would this be realistic? No, but what else in this film is? And which is worse: he thought he'd just kill her, but then she gets into an accident instead, so he swiftly pivots his whole plan to show up to the hospital and claim to be her husband, having no idea that she isn't perfectly lucid and able to identify him as not her husband, or that he somehow planned her accident figuring that if she didn't get amnesia, she'd at least be in enough pain and disorientation to be gaslit into believing she just "forgot" him even if she absolutely did not? I mean, both unbelievable, but the second is way more sinister, which is what we're going for with villains in this particular genre, and also... out there in a more satisfying way. Like, he lucked into this wild and wacky evil plan, or he created a wild and wacky evil plan? If I'm suspending disbelief I want to suspend it for a villain worthy of the effort.

Also, while I assume the photoshopped images were for his own personal enjoyment, it would explain more neatly why he had them all set and ready to go when he walked into the hospital.

Anyway, not that this film was worth that much thought but I did have the thoughts, so. I enjoyed it. It was what it said on the tin, and that's what I wanted to watch.

#the year 2023 #2023: fandom thoughts #2023: movies

[undxroos]

@gcrminator​  /   *   liked this post for a short starter   .

HE MUST HAVE HIT HIS HEAD PRETTY HARD. Peter had seen aliens and some advanced tech but this guy was blue . . . right?

It was a big risk to land in the middle of the bad guy’s science fair, Spider-Man easily gave their experiments a hard FAIL but Peter was impressed . . . well he was! The presentation of the forced division of cells, rapid growth, expansion and gene modification was years beyond what genetics companies were doing!

                                                      ━ It was kinda cool.

Spider-Man asked them nicely to pack up the BadGuyCon and go home but they all just shouted at him and pulled their guns out . . . they had no sense of humor. One of them, the main boss, told his men to drop their guns, that he had something just for him. Peter hoped it was a slice of pizza but it was a bomb. Of course.

The blast was a hybrid of a typical bomb and a chemical bomb. The blast sent him flying across the warehouse and the gas caused him to see colors. Too many colors. How many people were in the building when he showed up? All these people came to the BadGuyCon?

❝ You’re blue, ❞ he said dumbly to the guy that had approached him, his head lolled, his eyes trying to focus on the man’s shoes, pants, white shirt . . . jacket,  ❝ I’m sorry, ❞ that was rude. Spider-Man rubbed his head, his lenses narrowed, finally the guy came into focus and his lenses widened.  

#LOL LOOK AT ME WITH A SHORT STARTER #I hope this is good! I wasn't sure what would make them meet #I couldn't find an MCU verse on your page #so here's what I did #These bad guys at the BADGUYCONVENTION created a chemical that makes people's cells do THINGS #Okay filter this through a SMARTtm filter and basically these cells are drawn out? #Can Ozzy be in someone else's body not canon #he doesn't have to be in Peter's body xD But he can be? #idk where he came from I wanted that to be up to you #If this is weird or doesn't gel with you then we can plot? #I also added all the colors #those are more cells that were drawn out by the gas #maybe they just be walking around now casually xD #gcrminator #🕷 queue ━━ ʜᴇʏ ʙᴜᴅᴅʏ ɪ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴏsᴛ ᴛʜɪs ◦

[littleeyesofpallas]

I have a lot of beef with the tybw arc in bleach, but it definitely had little glimmers of potential. I really liked the idea that YHWACH's powers were all about him being this weird miracle baby that could basically grant people wishes, albeit with a few caveats... But the idea that his whole power lending process was based on compensating weakness could have been really interesting as an actual basis for the Sternritter! But then they falls apart almost immediately when half the Sternritter powers just don't gel with that idea... ironically starting with the very first power/backstory we really get explained. If As Nodt's whole neurosis was his fear of death, shouldn't the power he had granted to him by YWHACH have been Bravery, not Fear?

That makes sense, right? I'm not just being weird about this? If a man is blind, you give him the miracle of sight... The mute, the power of speech... the deaf, their hearing... the fearful, bravery... Same with Gremmy, he didn't lack for imagination, he was a brain in a jar, it was literally the only thing he could do. So in that vein, what even were some of these powers?

(Also, what's so cool about making all their powers about what they lack rather than what they have is that it makes their powers the polar opposite of hos zanpakutou work: by weaponizing your inner self. Zanpakutou powers are based on who you are, including all your weaknesses, but Schrift could've been all about who the Sternritter aren't because their powers and their faith are all about their reliance on their god/king/savior. And that ties back into the conflict of buddhism and christianity that Kubo already had at work in the final arc)

Almighty, despite the way it ended up being his nonsense do-whatever power, it made sense initially from name alone that his own schrift he'd give himself was technically just the accumulation of every schrift he'd ever given and taken back, as having no power was what his schrift was compensating. Maybe that seems a little too My Hero, but that seemed to be the most obvious route, and one I would've found satisfactory...

Antithesis, feels very un-character-motivated and more plot contrivance. Poor Uryuu getting muscled out of his own arc. although to be fair so did Orihime and Chad. Rukia's really the only "kidnapped" friend whose arc actually turned out to be about them.

Balance was another kind of really poorly defined power. It's overly convenient for the purposes of the plot and doesn't actually seem to reflect much on him as a character. It would've been thematically appropriate if, as the one Quincy without powers, his Schrift allowed him to make others just as powerless as him, or the redistribute powers within an area to everyone within it, and it would by consequence account for his ability to share in The Almighty without having to give him yet another unique ability... power granting, almighty sharing, the balance, and his random special shield all being different features and not aspects of one core trait felt like a mistake.

Compulsory? I mean... I guess a severed hand lacked agency and was given compulsion/impulsivity? That feels like a wild stretch though. And besides, Mimihagi seemed to exist apart from the Soul King fine on its own.

Deathdealing: Askin didn't have the power to poison things and was given it? Kidding, but that's what the surface of it looks like and that's silly. Presumably the only sensible explanation would be more like, he needed the ability to survive poisoning and was given the power to alter its potency. A little round about, but I can appreciate that it had to have a little more utility than just poisoning people or not being poisoned.

Explode?????? I don't even know how to spin this. clearly not one Kubo actually thought about in terms of his own world building. Although I'm also convinced she wasn't supposed to be the explode originally. her really conspicuous scene with the one nameless goon, and the fact that she was so overtly clad in heart accessories when the other girls weren't(at least at first) really makes me think she was supposed to be something more like The Erotic or The Ecstasy?

Fear: see above...

Glutton: finally one that makes some sense. Starving little malnourished girl wants food, she gets the power to eat anything. problem solved. nice, clean, simple.

Heat: this is such a weird one... I've done a whole thing about the Sternritter powers' kanji before, but I'll say it again... His power name in both Japanese and English very conspicuously sidestep making his powers just fire-based, and both have second uses as descriptors of passion or fervor, not just literal thermal heat. The implication seems like it would've/should've been that his powers fluctuate based on his enthusiasm. And THAT would've been a really cool power to have. He could've been a guy plagued with ennui given a supernatural source of energy and motivation.

Iron. This one's simple but kinda cool. I like the implicit drama of a guy whose whole power is invulnerable skin having a scar on his face. It seems like an implicit backstory that he lost a fight once, and only once, but the shock and subsequent insecurity of feeling vulnerable motivates his need for invulnerability. And that's just what he gets from his power.

Jail. I dunno... It's a little abstract as a motive. I don't really get what Quilge gains from the ability to jail people that he'd really lacked without it? Batman origins? If only someone had put criminals or hollows or shinigami or whatever other enemy in inescapable cages... something something... and so Quilge wanted all the powers of Jail?

K. haha what K

Love: this kind of works, if still weird and gross... PePe being a gross weird old unlovable pervert given the power to force people to love him. Weird...

Miracle: I don't even know... Heart of Soulking is itself a giant uncertainty, but what he didn't believe in miracles and so he got the power to perform miracles? That feels like gibberish. That's nonsense logic. but then so is the power.

N. nope

Overkill: I can't make heads or tails of this one.

Power: this is neat and I wish there was more too it. Meninas being conventionally high femme, the idea that she'd want to be stronger for any number of reasons is pretty flat, but perfectly workable. But there's a brief moment in the fight with Ichigo where we see three of the girls have little daydreams of what they want most; Giselle's brain is a blank void... Lilttoto wants food, obviously... But Meninas sees a bunch of, like, gilded rococo furniture? overt and kind of cliche image of aristocratic almost royal opulence and wealth. And I think it would've actually been super cool to see her power be less about just overt strength and more about leveraging the values of how power is defined. Less a matter of physical force and more a matter of abstract influence. So in a fight maybe that means the obvious power to punch and lift good, but under other circumstances the power to leverage the social value of beauty resulting in her high femme design, or wealth where that's the deciding factor of an enocunter, etc...

Question: I mean... Not being inquisitive enough and being given the power to not just question things but get answers, seems kind neat. But Berenice died off screen so we'll never really know... Unless the anime decides to give us an extended fight.

Roar: I don't know... The power of loud voice is one thing, but why the power of gorilla...

Superstar: this is a great one, and in general Superstar just got a lot of attention from Kubo. There is this funny little detail where when the Mask fight ends, YHWACH can be seen saying, "James, your power has returned to me..." suggesting that Superstar was actually James, the goofy little gremlin fanboy, and not Mask the whole time. A weird little boy(?) in need of a hero got one, is a neat power.

Thunderbolt? I don't know, man... She's mentioned as being one of the least experienced as her vollstandig can activate without her meaning to. It's a wild stretch with no grounding, but it could've been cool if her lightning theme was also about flashes of inspiration, and her real power, apart from lightning bolts, was to make progress in sudden leaps, like a kind of savant. Kind of like Findor and his mask, or Pernida and its neural evolution actually...

Underbelly? Again, what a stretch to try and make any sense of... If it was about NaNaNa wanting to be strong, he'd have just end up like Meninas, so what circumstance would motivate needing the specific ability to pinpoint and create weaknesses in others

Visionary: see above...

Wind: this one is neat actually. shame we saw so little of it. We see Nianzol has some funky eyes, I like the simple solution that if he can't see straight, he was just given the power to make what he sees how reality operates, basically warping his physical surroundings to match his walleyed perspective.

X-axis. I don't know how to make sense of this. But I'm more willing to handwave this one, because X is just a hard letter to cope with here... Complete range in a vector counteracting a lack of depth perception from his missing eye?

Yourself could have made sense but didn't? Twins unable to be told apart want the ability to be unique taking other people's unique powers and features is actually pretty cool. The fact that they do it by specifically becoming indistinguishable duplicates of them however breaks that.

Zombie. I feel like there should be at least some kind of bad excuse for this, but I can't think of one right now

#bleach #tybw #quincy #sternritter

[beevean]

I'm of two minds about Ian Flynn being the head writer of Sonic Frontier; on the one hand, I personally think he gets elements of the characters/world right, he does do a fairly decent job, particularly on things like dialogue or decent setup/pacing of dramatic scenes (if you disagree on this that's totally fair- s'all subjective innit). On the other hand, let's not pretend his writing is flawless- it isn't- and yes, he has very clear interpretations of how certain characters are or should be that doesn't always gel with what we see elsewhere, and yeah, comics writing and games writing are two entirely different beasts in terms of pace and structure. More pertinently, the plot details revealing that this is yet another "Eggman finds a Power/Creature/Thing, tries to control it, loses control, things go wonky" story has left me a little bit cold- regardless of writer, surely that story is well trodden ground by now? It's something that can be revisited, sure, but that's particular setup has been at the very least the backbone of every mainline title from Heroes (arguably Adventure 2) to Generations; for what issues Forces has, it at the very least bucked that particular trend and I'm not very thrilled to see it make a comeback in the game immediately after it.

I'm a little cool on Fromtiers in general so far; I'm not outright uninterested and I cannot fairly judge a thing that's not even done yet, but for as technically impressive as the world shown off looks it felt a bit... drab? Obviously the final game will have more location variety (well, you'd like to think so), and what we see in the teaser may be spruced up further, but I'm not wholly sold on it yet. I think part of it is a style clash- that more realistic-ish looking setting might work better for something that's... not Sonic, but I dunno. I'm also a little unsure about the music- this one's not to do with the trailer itself, but I know Forces' soundtrack (which I really liked) caught a fair bit of flack, whilst the Team Sonic Racing tunes (which Jun Senoue had a lot of a hand in, and whilst I don't dislike his work I'm so beyond tired of Buttrock Sonic Tunes at this point) went down a lot better; I'm worried that that indicates a style shift back to that Senoue style sound, possibly to the point of other Sonic Team composers- Naofumi Hataya, Kenichi Tokoi, Fumie Kumatani etc.- taking a backseat and contributing very little, which would be a huge shame as despite their not getting the same degree acclaim as Senoue and lately Ohtani, they're extremely talented composers with really interesting styles that I wish the series would explore a little more. Again, of course, this is all entirely subjective taste-wise and, more importantly, is pure conjecture and speculation drawn from basically nothing, but it is something on me mind. We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.

Conversely, Sonic 2 looks pretty good. Like, really good. Far better than it has any right to be- much like the first film did (and ultimately was). It is so surreal to me that I can sit here and say "I am really looking forward to the sequel to a live action Sonic the Hedgehog movie, possibly even over the next actual game, in which beloved and talented actor and musician Idris Elba has been cast as Knuckles" and mean it. What a weird timeline we've found ourselves living in!

You know the thing?

I know that Flynn is so praised because he saved Archie Sonic from the absolute ungodly mess that was what Ken Penders left behind. And I appreciate it! From what little I know, he did a good job!

But I never read Archie, so my exposure to Flynn was IDW, which started off as great and tumbled down into sheer stupidity after 19 volumes. Sonic became OOC, Eggman became OOC, Shadow I don't even know whose fault was for his IQ being dropped, Starline lost everything that made him interesting, Belle is too bland for how much focus we got...

I saw Flynn as someone who looked like he could extrapolate the hints left by the games and build a coherent, interesting world with compelling characters, and then ripped all of that away from us.

Then he started directly contradicting canon, and that's when I decided I wasn't going to bother with him anymore. I had fewer positive experiences with him than the older Archie fans, that's all.

Anyway. Writing for a comic and writing for a game are two different things, for different reasons. Maybe he won't pull an IDW 2.0. We shall see, even though the concept itself sounds so boring and outdated.

It's something that can be revisited, sure, but that's particular setup has been at the very least the backbone of every mainline title from Heroes (arguably Adventure 2) to Generations

Adventure, Adventure 2 and Unleashed were all about Eggman unleashing an entity that then replaced him as the villain. Heroes and Advance 3 had him simply replaced by his own robot, and ShTH and '06 had him replaced by an alien/divine creature.

Colors, the first game written by Pontaff, avoided this cliché completely, and then every game had a different twist: in Generations he managed to tame the beast, in Lost World he survived the Zeti attack and waited until Sonic was done with them to attack, in Mania he battled against Heavy King, and in Forces he dispatched Infinite when he became useless. I love this! It all shows how clever and resourceful he is. I wasn't expecting for the next game to go back to the old "eggman fucked up" concept.

Agree with the rest. I won't judge just yet, especially because the trailer was nothing more than a showcase of the Hedgehog Engine 2, but I hope that in the actual game it doesn't look like Sonic was plopped into a generic fantasy setting. The music was pretty, but surprisingly un-Sonic for something composed by Tee Lopes and Tomoya Ohtani.

Well, I love Senoue's buttrock so I wouldn't complain if he came back :P I personally wish Ohtani took a break, he's great but they really squeezed him to the bone in the 2010s. I doubt Senoue's music will be used for this kind of game, though - the pipedream is that Kenichi Tokoi and Mariko Nanba will come back and the music will sound like '06's <3

Nothing to add about Sonic 2. Sonic as a vigilante is a bit odd, but it could lead to his canonical portrayal of someone who does heroic things out of fun. Tails is adorable, Eggman is cool, and Knuckles holy crap that one like sounded way more badass than it had any right to be. Even in Italian! I swear these are the only movies that I can enjoy in my language without cringing <3

#sonic the hedgehog