So it's been like two months since I first moved my blog over to The Sonic Stadium, so it's about time that I actually wrote an article about Sonic. Admittedly, I haven't even seen any of the Sonic movies yet due to chronic health issues affecting my attention span, but there was an article recently and I wanted to comment on it.

Recently Toby Ascher, the producer of the Sonic cinematic universe, revealed in an interview in Paste Magazine that he wants the Sonic movies to "be these Avengers-level events." Personally, I doubt that's going to feasibly happen no matter what Paramount does with the franchise, since even the actual Marvel movies have kind of fizzled out in terms of "Avengers-level events." (Though a lot of that is due to several developments over the past few years that Disney could not have possibly planned for, such as the Covid pandemic and the Jonathan Majors trial.) But given that the Sonic franchise has so many different characters to its name that the fanbase used to complain about them (and some of the fans probably still do for that matter; I avoid social media for obvious reasons), I thought it could be interesting to consider what canon Sonic characters I'd like to see explored in the Sonic cinematic universe.

Emphasis on 'canon.' Yes, a lot of my favorites are lost to copyright hell due to both Sega's own decisions and the actions of a certain delusional Archie writer who's almost certainly about to get whacked by Sega's copyright ninjas for bootlegging his own works (mark my words, if there's any justice left in the world it'll happen eventually), so as much as I'd love to see the Knothole Freedom Fighters return (even if they'd have trouble adapting Antoine in 2024 for also obvious reasons), it would take a major paradigm shift for Sega to even consider something like that, so I'm going to keep my wishes at least slightly more realistic.

So with that out of the way, here are my picks for canon Sonic characters that I want to see in the Sonic cinematic universe:

Team Hooligan/Trip. Trip was never actually part of Team Hooligan because Bean and Bark never appeared in Sonic Superstars, but I'm including her under this category because she's worked with Fang in her introduction, so she's done time as one of his mooks. While Fang, Bean, Bark, and Trip are all members of the 'Classic timeline' (or dimension, or whatever it's called depending on Sega's mood at the time), these may not be likely candidates for an appearance in the Sonic cinematic universe, based on Sega's creative control choices... but honestly, it'd be nice to see Team Hooligan show up as mooks working for Robotnik or even just acting on their own initiative, and I'd love to see Trip get more attention/lore. I mean, the girl turns into a freaking DRAGON. Seeing that happen on the big screen would be a cinematic event in and of itself.

Cream the Rabbit and family. Okay, Cream falls somewhere between "before Sonic Dream Team we'd thought we'd never see her again outside the comics" and "she's so stinking adorable that I just wanna see her done in photorealistic CGI." Yes, I put her before Amy Rose. Reason being that I think it's obvious that eventually we're going to get Amy Rose (heck, we may already have confirmation that I just haven't seen because I'm trying to avoid spoilers), but there's currently no indication whatsoever that Cream is planned for anything in the Sonic cinematic universe. And, yes, 'and family' does include Gemerl, who the IDW comics has confirmed is still living with Cream's family. It'd be interesting seeing the Emerl/Gemerl plotline from the GBA games play out again.

The Chaotix. Okay, after mentioning Cream's family, I feel I have to jump straight to the Chaotix because Vectnilla is a thing again and I wanna see how it plays out in the movieverse. Also, the concept of a team of misfit detectives that looks like it was composed by a TTRPG group is absolutely my jam.

The Babylon Rogues. While I've never played either of the Sonic Riders series, two of my favorite Sonic Comic stories involve the Rogues, both hailing from Sonic Universe: Treasure Team Tango, and that Babylon Rogues storyline that Tracey Yardley wrote that I don't really remember the name of. (Actually, a lot of Sonic Universe stories are among the Sonic comic stories I look fondly on. Although in hindsight what they did for 25YL/30YL seems kinda dumb. Why is Shadow the evil king again?) Getting back on topic, the Babylon Rogues have a great group dynamic and a not insignificant amount of cultural lore to build off of, and seeing Extreme Gear tricks in photorealistic cinema would be SICK.

The Battlebird Armada. While I'm more of a Sonic spin-off media enjoyer than an actual game player (my reflexes are not great, let's leave it at that), I did very much enjoy what Ian Flynn did with Tails' Adventure in the pre-reboot Archie comics. And while the fact that Antoine and Bunnie's honeymoon was involved has definitely influenced that (we even got to see Ant's rarely mentioned pickpocketing skills in play, which I never ever thought even Flynn would remember, except this is Ian Flynn and he remembers everything), I definitely enjoyed the character interactions of King Kukku, Speedy, and that one owl scientist whose name I'm not even going to attempt to spell for obvious reasons. Even without the Archieverse conceit of pretty much every major bird character outside of Harvey Who (who I also never expected to be in any way plot relevant, but once again I severely underestimated Flynn's devotion to being the Sonic lore maniac) having some connections to the Armada, just having an evil organization who's mainly a Tails villain rather than a Sonic villain is pretty darn interesting. I'll resist the urge to add Witchkart and the Witchkarters to this list, though -- that's scraping the bottom of the barrel even by my standards.

Tangle and Whisper. Unpopular opinion: as a socially awkward introvert with overstimulation issues, I really can't see Whisper and Tangle as a romantic pairing and I'm fairly certain them spending the rest of their lives living under the same roof would drive Whisper clinically insane. But they do play off each other excellently, and I love Tangle in particular because of her infectious energy that reminds me of one of my mom's Yorkies. I also love Tangle's weird extendable tail powers and the ways she uses them (including cheating at poker), and I think Whisper's Wispon system is pretty darn cool, even if the Pokemaniac in me wishes we got to see more of the Wisps actually having, you know, personalities. (Seriously, why tell us that Whisper can understand what her Wisps say and then barely ever let us actually hear them speak?)

On that note, what would photorealistic Wisps even look like? That could answer a lot of questions about their biology, or possibly broach even more. What REALLY happens when a Wisp enters your body? I'm not sure I want to think too hard about that one...

Mimic the Octopus. This one is kind of a given if Tangle and Whisper are included, but I wanna see Mimic. Not on his own merits as a character -- quite frankly, he's not among my favorites by a long shot -- but because of his shapeshifting power. Yes, that would put a great deal of money into the special effects department, but if they can put a Ditto jumpscare into Detective Pikachu, I'm sure the current CGI level can do Mimic justice.

Dr. Starline, Surge, and Kit. This one's potentially problematic in the context of a cinematic universe aimed largely at kids because what happened to Surge and Kit is royally messed up. The experiments and brainwashing were blatant violation on a physical and mental level, and Surge's reaction to the trauma being, well, a brazen declaration of omnicide is pretty darn dark for a kid's series, even by 'Maria gets shot' standards. But I must admit that since I only got into IDW because I fell in love with Starline's character arc from his Fandom wiki article, these three do deserve their place on my list of characters I want to see in the Sonic cinematic universe. (But I shudder to think what sort of fanart a photorealistic Starline would spawn. You know exactly what I'm talking about.)

Belle the Tinkerer. This is admittedly a long shot even by IDW character standards, given that Belle was created under very specific circumstances for Dr. Eggman and that Sage has pretty much filled the role of "Eggette except legally distinct because we don't want the fandom to sue us" for the time being. But if I'm honest, I want to see more of her, because she kind of faded into obscurity after her character arc concluded at the end of the Starline saga. I just want to see more of her dangit.

Tails Nine. This one has absolutely no good reason to be on the list because we've already had three seasons of Sonic Prime and that ship has sailed... but heck with it, I love the character. I'm a sucker for tragic villains, and it's very interesting seeing a version of Tails become a multiversal threat because he wasn't going to be anyone's sidekick and pursued his own goals, dark though they may be. Obviously if Nine made it into the cinematic universe, we'd also get the other Shatterspace variants like Thorn Rose and Knuckles the Dread, but Nine is the one I've got the softest spot in my heart towards. Although that leads to the question, would we get Shatterspace versions of the human characters, or would this be a literal crossover between the cinematic universe and the same Shatterspaces of the NetFlix show?

Also, this has nothing to do with anything, but I'm kind of curious as to how Nine and Dr. Starline would interact if they should ever meet. Whether it's as allies or enemies (and most likely both in that order), I'm fairly certain that Starline would entirely misread the situation, as he usually does, and be doomed to severely regret it. Nine does not mess around.

---

Preview of next week's article: