Knuckles (Sonic Series Event)

A clip of my favorite moment from the show: Knuckles’ dad spontaneously turns into a muppet during Wade’s vision in episode 4. And he dies.

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Apr 28th 2024 at 9:52:52 AM

Am watching the show right now, and just went through that scene. The show is very funny throughout, but this musical number is on another level...

Talk to your doctor about your risk for random muppetification today. Don’t let your family be caught off guard.

The Whipples family dinner scene is one of the most cringy, uncomfortable yet still funny dinner scenes I've seen since Wedding Crashers.

I wasn't expecting Wade to turn the tables on his sister so quickly.

Edited by FOFD on Apr 28th 2024 at 6:20:44 AM

If people somehow expect a serious affair instead of something similar to the first Sonic movie (they even do the "awakens after an inspirational speech in the final battle"), they'll be disappointed. Otherwise, very fun and with lots of laughs. Of all the needle drops, considering the setting of the final two episodes, surprised "Humming, all the way to Reno..." didn't show up.

And it's surprising Knuckles has been anything but Australian.

The full first episode of the show is up on YouTube

Also, regardless of how much of the series he’s in, it’s at least clear that Knuckles is going through a character arc.

UPDATE: looks like they took it down.

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on May 6th 2024 at 11:23:25 AM

There's silliness and then there's a grown ass woman stabbing her brother with a fork and dislocating her own thumb to spite him.

What the fuck?

Wade's sister is depicted being as much a stereotypical loser as he is... there is one rather unexpected shot of her dislocating her thumb to get out of handcuffs; she does this despite Wade offering to free her just to spite him.

I have played some violent video games and watched some gross films, but seeing a dislocated thumb in Knuckles caught me off guard.

Edited by FOFD on May 1st 2024 at 12:08:28 PM

Okay, we hear about Wade's family, but do we at least get some lore on the Echidnas?

Ehhhh... they reiterate some stuff we knew about Longclaw's species fighting and slaughtering the Echidnas, Chief Pachamac shows up twice in weird moments, and therw is a song and dance number about Knuckles that was kind of interesting? There's a tidbit that might set up things for the later films.

Spoiler Knuckles busts out flaming fists seemingly tied to Iblis from Sonic 2006. I need to rewatch the scene that explained why he had them.

Well, the show is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

And it broke record for most viewed debut on Paramount Plus.

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on May 2nd 2024 at 1:30:13 PM

It's impressive that this show broke records for Paramount Plus. I wonder if this means that the show will get a second season?

The creators said they would if they came up with another story worth telling.

That's good. I'm glad that the creators are focusing on storytelling for this franchise.

A behind the scenes video on episode 4:

My friend and I binged the whole thing on Saturday night. We...thought it pretty hit-and-miss. Had its moments, but my God did it feel like they were spinning their wheels.

There were certain things/tropes that the first two Sonic movies were so good at avoiding. It felt like this show couldn't and while it could've been worse, it should've been better too though.

I think they should have made this 4 episodes to save on budget and they could show more of Knuckles with Wade being his sidekick, which was how their dynamic worked in the first episode.

Like, the fact that they made this a 6 episode series yet took out Knuckles for a good chunk of the show screams to me that this show was bloated in a "the suits were so busy thinking that they could make a Knuckles show with 6 episodes to bring in viewers they didn't stop and think if they should make it 6 episodes."

4 episodes would force them to make the plot tighter and cut out the fat, I've heard a lot of complaints that this show is spinning it's wheels.

Also it really sucks that the black coded protagonist played by Idris Elba is sidelined in favor of a white manchild protagonist learning how to bowl good.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 8th 2024 at 12:00:51 AM

If the Knuckles show does eventually get a second season, do you think that Knuckles will be the main focus this time around?

That's a very big IF, and frankly with how good the show is doing on streaming, Paramount can get away with sidelining Sonic characters in favor of cheaper non-CGI human actors, so I don't see them giving Knuckles more screen time in a hypothetical second season.

They need to actually budget and plan around limited Knuckles screen time if they want to get more mileage out of the concept. If Paramount really is planning more Sonic tv content for their streaming service, I have no doubt that they'll just continue to lean on the human characters.

There's no way in hell they can afford Keanu Reeves Shadow the Hedgehog for more than 2 episodes max if they want to give him a tv show.

I mean, I have to imagine Keanu would work for scale on a project like that.

Sorry, care to elaborate on what you mean? I don't understand what you mean by work for scale.

Do you mean Keanu would adjust his paycheck if he was doing TV voice work?

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 8th 2024 at 2:51:45 AM

Working for scale is an industry term. It means a performer is choosing to be paid less, sometimes the lowest union rules permit, deliberately.

So the only thing expensive about Shadow would most likely be the actual CGI.

Ah, alright, thanks.

The CGI budget is something Paramount really has to consider going forward with their Sonic projects.

I can give them the benefit of the doubt since Sonic 2 addressed quite a lot of complaints with Sonic 1, particularly how the human cast was handled. I wasn't particularly fond of how the first movie seemed to make Tom more of a personal foe to Robotnik than Sonic himself so I was happy that Robotnik in 2 made it clear Sonic is his arch-enemy and he doesn't care much for Tom.

So maybe Paramount can resist sidelining Sonic characters for humans in future TV shows on Paramount.

But why would they? Knuckles is literally a record breaking success for them.

What youre suggesting is someone looking at a show with impressive viewership, positive critic and audience scores and then deciding that their current approach is somehow...not working.