2024.08.28 ★ Hanging on the Edge of December 20th
1. As I've said enough times at this point, the sheer amount of complaining about the lack of a trailer created enough promotion and hype up until now. I'm SO glad that part is over. I don't know what was worse, the sheer amount of fake leads or the news sources pushing them as true without verifying anything. I know you can do better!! I believe in you!!
On the flip, the pre-trailer marketing was peak, projecting onto major landmarks in cities around the world. A sharp contrast to what Persona 5 Royal tried, projecting onto... the local pharmacy and all that.
2. That said, everything looks fantastic!!! And Eggman is finally fat!!! YEAH!!!
3. AND the Stobotnik fam is getting fed LMAO
4. The JP trailer has a bit of extra caption that shows the facility where Shadow is being held is off the coast of Tokyo, hence the JP title being Sonic × Shadow TOKYO MISSION.
Speaking of which, so much of the cute humor is lost in the JP version (in the trailer, anyway). Although, when Shadow sees Team Sonic for the first time, he says 「目障りな奴らだ」 (You eyesores) which is 100% on point for his character. Like, I'm sure he says that in one of the games, about the enemies iirc. I just can't remember which right now, lol.
5. A lot of people have been asking for Amy and Rouge to show up. I don't think it's their time to shine yet because of the story thus far. In case you haven't seen the Knuckles show (and I don't blame you if you didn't watch), the kids are still being treated as a dangerous quantity who aren't allowed to leave Green Hills without military intervention (in the case of Knuckles, it's two GUN agents who have gone rogue). That means Amy, who was always a free agent, would have to live in hiding a la Sonic or with the Wachowskis if she was introduced too early (they're a wonderful couple, but adopting another kid...?) Rouge is a government spy, but at our current point in the story the government doesn't have full trust in the aliens yet - I think the results of this movie could be used to change that. That still doesn't determine whether they'll still have to live in semi-hiding or not, though. The only reason Rouge would have for showing up at this point is attempting to steal the Master Emerald now that it's been located, but that's doing too much right now.
That said, Xitter is being funny as fuck about them right now.
Sonic movie 3 gonna be like...#SonicMovie3 #SonicTheHedgehog https://t.co/kaTEQQAzed pic.twitter.com/pWNBR6nedf
— |DoreFatum| (@DoreFatum) August 27, 2024
https://t.co/LvHVmA4Cmj pic.twitter.com/BNfz1LX4GK
— Steve 'Stevesie' Gregson (@RoboticSteve) August 27, 2024
Speaking of GUN, I've seen some people wondering if this means they're becoming the good guys now, which would suck, because they're fucking GUN. I don't trust them yet. Asking Team Sonic to fight Project Shadow could be their way of creating a mutual trust, or it might be their way of "Let's let the aliens finish each other off and never worry about any of it ever again." Oh yeah, Shadow gets called an alien by Sonic. So Gerald didn't create him this time around? On that note...
6. Professor Gerald is still alive, and Robotnik is actually teary-eyed to see him. This is a stark contrast to the ending Shadow the Hedgehog (2005, JP version) where Eggman calls Gerald a mad scientist for selling everyone out to Black Doom. LOL
But this also implies that Shadow may not be operating off of manipulated memories, but off of sheer grief. Oh boy...! This also brings into question what role GUN played in Shadow's creation. IN SA2, the United Federation ordered Project Shadow, GUN funded it, and then forcefully shut it down and covered it up. And Gerald... what's he been doing all this time after losing Maria? GUN killing Maria drove him mad with grief... so was GUN not the culprit here?
