ontd original: Game's the Same (or not) -- The accuracy of Sonic, Mario, and Pokemon in their movies
With the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, that makes 3 of the largest video game franchises with popular movies.
Technically 4, bc there's Warcraft. But I don't play Warcraft, I play Pokemon (sometimes) and Sonic (more often) and Mario (Kart), and I want to look at how closely each one adheres to its source material.
First up is the man of action, 30 years after his disasterous last theatrical outing:
The general appeal of Mario is that it's simple, almost insultingly so -- Save the princess, beat the dragon, do the thing. Even Miyamoto agrees and was wary of having a backstory for Mario, no matter how simple it was. So this is coming from someone who knows shit via cultural osmosis only and not actually playing anything besides Superstar Saga, Kart, and Smash Bros. as a kid.
I'm sure we all remember the contention over the vocal casting of Mario, so I will not rehash it. It is a pity that we just don't cast voice actors anymore, but I think we need to admit that, to a certain point, Mario's actor could be considered a VA, I mean, the dude has done this 3 times before.
Maybe not well, but it's been done.
Everyone else ranges from bad, to okay, to tolerable, to actually great, with Bowser and Luigi beingn the closest thing to the "canon". I'm not even sure Donkey Kong has a personality in his games.
The Song:
The only movie song charting on this list is "Peaches" by Jack Black. Maybe because it's much shorter than any other song on the list, allowing for playability. If only certain rap musicians had a song this song could beat so we could see her throw a tantrum on Twitter! (Edit: She actually does, a collab with Ice Spice)
src
Very mild spoilers here:
The stinger is a little...odd, as it references something that's kind of already shown, very briefly, in the film.
The references: I got more of the references than I understood the canon, as I know more about Nintendo history than Mario. That was fun!
Does it fit with canon?: I'm not a Mario fan, and from what I've seen of it, there is no canon besides 'kidnap a princess', a few characters in Paper Mario may be trans, Rosalina is timeless. So, yeah, it does! A lot of people are less interested about seeing more Mario locales and more interested in the potential of a Super Smash Bros cinematic universe.
I don't see it happening on multiple levels, from the amount of characters you have to establish, to the fact that every other Nintendo property actually has a fucking story.
Moving on...we gotta go fast:
Because Sonic is the one film thus far with two films, I'm going to focus on film #2, as that has more elements from the original games, including 2 of Sonic's Friends!
The controversy was not with Sonic's voice, as with his spindly appearance, culminating in...
src
Luckily, he was revamped to be a little less terrifying, in a move that pushed the film back 3 months. My favorite part of the entire shebang was that people who don't play Sonic games were perfectly fine with it.
In a true instance of SEGA does what NINTENdon't, Colleen O'Shaughnessey, who has played Miles "Tails" Prower across all mediums since 2014, was back as his voice in the movie.
Knuckles has different VA's across mediums (and also different characterization, in Boom he's an idiot, in Forces and Frontiers (Which came out after both movies), he's his old serious self, and so, when speculation was rife, one day, there was a tweet by Idris Elba saying he was Knuckles the Echidna!
Sonic also has different VA's (I think Roger Craig Smith may have left and returned, but he's not the voice in Prime), but here he's voiced by Ben Schwartz ("Ducktales 2017").
This Eggman is a little more in line with the canon from Sonic Boom and a touch of mainline game canon. Not as funny or standalone as the first movie. "Mainline game canon" is a funny thing these days; These movies do a lot of refrencing to the 16-Bit era, where the plot was simple unless you read the game manuals (remember those!) -- there's a great video essay series about the 16-bit era and how the canon is pretty interesting, but -- well, see The Stinger section below.
The Song: There were two -- "Stars in The Sky" by Kid Cudi from 2, but my personal favorite is "Speed Me Up" by& Wiz Khalifa, Ty Dolla $ign, Lil Yachty & Sueco the Child (literally the only person I know here is Lil Yachty) from 1 -- It samples music from either Scrap Brain Zone in 1 or Metropolis Zone, I'm not real sure which.
src
The References: A few musical cues, something was a ringtone, you can hear a little of the iconic Drowning Theme at points
The Stinger: Shows that #3 will jump from the 16-bit era to the 3D era, and pull diretly from Sonic Adventure 2, a continued fan favorite to this very day.
Does it fit with canon?: Sorta. The origin story quickly moves from Mobius to the human world, where in the games, it definitely varies between "Robotnik is the only human" (16-Bit) and "humans and anthro characters exist in tandem" (Sonic 06, Sonic Unleashed).
My initial review: Called 1 great for nostalgia, but somewhat irritating, and called 2 an improvement, but still kind of bad. Enjoyable tho. The jokes they give Sonic are still awful.
Finally, the biggest multimedia franchise in the world:
Detective Pikachu is actually a standalone game outside of the main gens! I guess it was more accessible for people to attach to a detective story than the possibly complicated lore of then-8 generations of pokemon games.
Though it focuses far more on Gens 1 and a bit of Gen 2, with the one exception of having Gen 6's Greninja with a prominent role. There are pokemon from later gens in background roles.
There is no Zangoose, so that means the movie sucks jk.
For something that is very original, it feels like it can take place in the Pokemon world, although the setting is a little dark looking at points, it's amazing to see the Pokemon come to fruition, although the scale is kind of weird.
Like why is Snubble HUGE? It's almost as big as a Snorlax sitting on the curb in Rhyne City.
That's scary.
On the plus side, Pikachu himself is very cute!
Ikue Ōtani has voiced various Pikachus across mediums, and WB/Legendary thought that, somehow, we needed to hear Ryan Reynolds be the famous rat. But we have Justice Smith in his second big budget nerd property, the first one being Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and the latest one being Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Theives now playing in theaters.
The villian is just some guy played by Bill Nighy and his son.
I don't even think his name is Giovanni.
The Song:
I'd be loath to ignore the song by our One and Only SaviORA, "Carry On" by Tyga and Rita Ora , who had a cameo in the movie (somewhere):
<
src
The References: ... the entire movie? There are touches of the original theme to the show.
The Stinger: There was no stinger! But the end credits with the games' art style, is very cool.
My initial review: called it 'semi-competent' Rewatching it,I laughed a lot more than I remember. The entire sequence with the Mr. Mime is hilarious.
Overall, you can't really decide which one is most accurate; Mario is 1:1, Pokemon is a spin that could theoretically take place in the Pokemon world that we just haven't seen, and Sonic pick and chose what to include in our world, which, in a way, is canon.
But the true test is this: Which one, game or movie, is your favorite?
Poll
src: Universal/Illumination/Nintendo, Paramount/Sega, Pokemon Company/Warner Bros/Legendary,screenshots, links to videos inline, eyes.
Technically 4, bc there's Warcraft. But I don't play Warcraft, I play Pokemon (sometimes) and Sonic (more often) and Mario (Kart), and I want to look at how closely each one adheres to its source material.
First up is the man of action, 30 years after his disasterous last theatrical outing:
The general appeal of Mario is that it's simple, almost insultingly so -- Save the princess, beat the dragon, do the thing. Even Miyamoto agrees and was wary of having a backstory for Mario, no matter how simple it was. So this is coming from someone who knows shit via cultural osmosis only and not actually playing anything besides Superstar Saga, Kart, and Smash Bros. as a kid.
I'm sure we all remember the contention over the vocal casting of Mario, so I will not rehash it. It is a pity that we just don't cast voice actors anymore, but I think we need to admit that, to a certain point, Mario's actor could be considered a VA, I mean, the dude has done this 3 times before.
Maybe not well, but it's been done.
Everyone else ranges from bad, to okay, to tolerable, to actually great, with Bowser and Luigi beingn the closest thing to the "canon". I'm not even sure Donkey Kong has a personality in his games.
The Song:
The only movie song charting on this list is "Peaches" by Jack Black. Maybe because it's much shorter than any other song on the list, allowing for playability. If only certain rap musicians had a song this song could beat so we could see her throw a tantrum on Twitter! (Edit: She actually does, a collab with Ice Spice)
Click to viewsrc
Very mild spoilers here:
The stinger is a little...odd, as it references something that's kind of already shown, very briefly, in the film.
The references: I got more of the references than I understood the canon, as I know more about Nintendo history than Mario. That was fun!
Does it fit with canon?: I'm not a Mario fan, and from what I've seen of it, there is no canon besides 'kidnap a princess', a few characters in Paper Mario may be trans, Rosalina is timeless. So, yeah, it does! A lot of people are less interested about seeing more Mario locales and more interested in the potential of a Super Smash Bros cinematic universe.
I don't see it happening on multiple levels, from the amount of characters you have to establish, to the fact that every other Nintendo property actually has a fucking story.
Moving on...we gotta go fast:
Because Sonic is the one film thus far with two films, I'm going to focus on film #2, as that has more elements from the original games, including 2 of Sonic's Friends!
The controversy was not with Sonic's voice, as with his spindly appearance, culminating in...
src
Luckily, he was revamped to be a little less terrifying, in a move that pushed the film back 3 months. My favorite part of the entire shebang was that people who don't play Sonic games were perfectly fine with it.
In a true instance of SEGA does what NINTENdon't, Colleen O'Shaughnessey, who has played Miles "Tails" Prower across all mediums since 2014, was back as his voice in the movie.
Knuckles has different VA's across mediums (and also different characterization, in Boom he's an idiot, in Forces and Frontiers (Which came out after both movies), he's his old serious self, and so, when speculation was rife, one day, there was a tweet by Idris Elba saying he was Knuckles the Echidna!
Sonic also has different VA's (I think Roger Craig Smith may have left and returned, but he's not the voice in Prime), but here he's voiced by Ben Schwartz ("Ducktales 2017").
This Eggman is a little more in line with the canon from Sonic Boom and a touch of mainline game canon. Not as funny or standalone as the first movie. "Mainline game canon" is a funny thing these days; These movies do a lot of refrencing to the 16-Bit era, where the plot was simple unless you read the game manuals (remember those!) -- there's a great video essay series about the 16-bit era and how the canon is pretty interesting, but -- well, see The Stinger section below.
The Song: There were two -- "Stars in The Sky" by Kid Cudi from 2, but my personal favorite is "Speed Me Up" by& Wiz Khalifa, Ty Dolla $ign, Lil Yachty & Sueco the Child (literally the only person I know here is Lil Yachty) from 1 -- It samples music from either Scrap Brain Zone in 1 or Metropolis Zone, I'm not real sure which.
src
The References: A few musical cues, something was a ringtone, you can hear a little of the iconic Drowning Theme at points
The Stinger: Shows that #3 will jump from the 16-bit era to the 3D era, and pull diretly from Sonic Adventure 2, a continued fan favorite to this very day.
Does it fit with canon?: Sorta. The origin story quickly moves from Mobius to the human world, where in the games, it definitely varies between "Robotnik is the only human" (16-Bit) and "humans and anthro characters exist in tandem" (Sonic 06, Sonic Unleashed).
My initial review: Called 1 great for nostalgia, but somewhat irritating, and called 2 an improvement, but still kind of bad. Enjoyable tho. The jokes they give Sonic are still awful.
Finally, the biggest multimedia franchise in the world:
Detective Pikachu is actually a standalone game outside of the main gens! I guess it was more accessible for people to attach to a detective story than the possibly complicated lore of then-8 generations of pokemon games.
Though it focuses far more on Gens 1 and a bit of Gen 2, with the one exception of having Gen 6's Greninja with a prominent role. There are pokemon from later gens in background roles.
There is no Zangoose, so that means the movie sucks jk.
For something that is very original, it feels like it can take place in the Pokemon world, although the setting is a little dark looking at points, it's amazing to see the Pokemon come to fruition, although the scale is kind of weird.
Like why is Snubble HUGE? It's almost as big as a Snorlax sitting on the curb in Rhyne City.
That's scary.
On the plus side, Pikachu himself is very cute!
Ikue Ōtani has voiced various Pikachus across mediums, and WB/Legendary thought that, somehow, we needed to hear Ryan Reynolds be the famous rat. But we have Justice Smith in his second big budget nerd property, the first one being Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and the latest one being Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Theives now playing in theaters.
The villian is just some guy played by Bill Nighy and his son.
I don't even think his name is Giovanni.
The Song:
I'd be loath to ignore the song by our One and Only SaviORA, "Carry On" by Tyga and Rita Ora , who had a cameo in the movie (somewhere):
<
src
The References: ... the entire movie? There are touches of the original theme to the show.
The Stinger: There was no stinger! But the end credits with the games' art style, is very cool.
My initial review: called it 'semi-competent' Rewatching it,I laughed a lot more than I remember. The entire sequence with the Mr. Mime is hilarious.
Overall, you can't really decide which one is most accurate; Mario is 1:1, Pokemon is a spin that could theoretically take place in the Pokemon world that we just haven't seen, and Sonic pick and chose what to include in our world, which, in a way, is canon.
But the true test is this: Which one, game or movie, is your favorite?
Poll
src: Universal/Illumination/Nintendo, Paramount/Sega, Pokemon Company/Warner Bros/Legendary,screenshots, links to videos inline, eyes.