Film Theory: Did Sonic WASTE Our Time? (Sonic Movie 2020)

Something tells me there may be some Film Theory fans working on the set of the new Sonic

movie

. Remember in the trailer, when they showed Sonic running next to a radar and it read 760 miles per hour? Well, that trailer clip prompted me to respond with this video, where I looked at the reality of radar guns. Concluding that no weapon could reach such a high speed and that radar would instead cap out at around 200 miles per hour. And even if you don't know it, the scene changed in the final

film

. Where Sonic's new speed reaches between 250 and 300 miles per hour.

Coincidence? Maybe, but then how do you explain the scene where Robotnik, out of nowhere, just encourages Sonic to slow down, telling him that his speed is dangerous for his joints? "They showed it, you know..." is exactly what he says. Now, who are these "they", Eggman? Could it be the United States? I mean, we dedicated an entire episode to whether Sonic's body could survive his own extreme speeds, and we came to the conclusion that it's ultimately bad for his joints. I'm just saying there were more than a few parallels to our previous Sonic episodes. And I'm not angry, in any way.

In fact, I'm a little flattered. But next

time

you could at least invite me to the premiere. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to feed my sadness with this endless bowl of pasta from Olive Garden. *sips* It never ends! Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory! Where I'm here to remind you that Sonic changed his life in one year, you can do it too. Today I would like to start by congratulating the team working on the Sonic

movie

. Well done guys! You managed to do the impossible, like 3

time

s as much, by my calculations. In one movie you managed to 1.

Create a good video game movie, 2. Take criticism from the internet rage machine and use it to improve your movie, and 3. Make a kids movie with a minimal amount of shaming. I mean, having

sonic

floss not just once, but twice, was starting to push your luck a little, but you know what? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I like to think of it as a callback to the days when Sonic had to keep his weird little human-like teeth. I mean, why floss when you can ~floss~? But seriously, I had a lot of fun with this movie.

It was a perfect balance between original storytelling and fan service. The subtle references to Chaos Emeralds, Sega Saturn, the game's theme song. Some of Sonic's iconic poses, the fact that his punch is as effective as getting slapped in the face with a limp noodle. I mean, you even managed to keep some of the big cameos a secret, including what was, for me, the highlight of the movie, Sanic's guest appearance. I mean, how did you get that one out of your egg sac, Eggman? But don't let that comically oversized head get any bigger, Sonic Team. Because today not everything can be praise.

I have to hit you for some things. First of all, blatant product placement for Zillow? Come on! We all know Trulia is where she is, fam! What what! Actually, to be fair, any smart apartment buyer would do well to use all the major resources available, so I'm not really taking sides. That was just for comedic effect. Then there's Longclaw the owl. Let me get this straight: did you invent a new character for this movie? This is a franchise where there are more disposable characters than Game of Thrones. And you just increased the stack instead of taking an already established one?

I mean, I guess it's in the great tradition of OCs in the fandom. The only thing Longclaw was missing was a watermark above his head that said "DO NOT STEAL" in capital letters. But it's the last detail I have that I want to focus on for today's episode. You know, a little, little, little problem I have with the whole premise of the movie! Sonic drops his rings through a magical portal and they end up in San Francisco. So he and his human friend Tom need to get them back through a road trip. You took the video game character known for running very fast and loaded him into a truck for a road trip.

Going like 65 miles per hour. Oh, of course. You make the excuse that Sonic can't find San Francisco and, yes, I understand that the whole road trip was a thinly veiled excuse for Sonic to connect with humans in a way he always longed for, but couldn't due to his self-imposed isolation. , I understand! But I just don't care. As I crashed into the cold, dark waters of the Pacific, I realized a few things: I have no idea where I'm going. And clearly I'm not going to be able to do it alone. Don't sell yourself too short, Sonic. I have a feeling you would have been fine if you were left alone.

So today we're going to put that movie's premise to the test. Was Sonic's road trip with Tom a faster way to get to San Francisco than Sonic just running there alone? Knowing what we know about Sonic's speed, as well as his apparent inability to use a basic map, would Sonic run blindly across the country and eventually get it to San Francisco faster than jumping into the old Chevy Silverado and driving there at the same time? human style? So let's start with what we know. In the movie, his entire road trip lasts about two days. The first night is Sonic's big night out, eating chili dogs at the local biker bar, by late afternoon the next day, they are in San Francisco eating clam chowder and fighting Robotnik.

But I want to double check that figure. It seems like it's too short. We know that his journey begins in Green Hills, Montana, a fictional town that's apparently not that far from the world's largest rubber ball. A clue that you think could help us identify the real location of Green Hills, but it doesn't. The world's largest rubber ball was made in Lauderhill, Florida, and is now in a museum. Just a couple states away from Montana. I mean, Sonic might be seeing a sign from the world's second-largest rubber ball, a 175,000-band behemoth that lives in Eugene, Oregon, but it's still too early in the road trip for them to be here when they started. . somewhere in Montana.

So you know what? It may be better to locate Green Hills using another method. According to Green Hills' welcome sign, the town has a population of 1,981 and an elevation of 3,445 feet. Now, finding a place in western Montana that meets both criteria is surprisingly challenging. Because the Rocky Mountains run through that part of the country, elevations tend to be higher, on average, there. 4,500 feet and more. But by comparing the Montana elevation maps to the Montana population maps, I was able to roughly make out Powell County. And specifically the town of Deer Lodge as our top candidate for the real-world equivalent of Green Hills.

With an elevation of 4,567 and a population of just under 3,000, yes, it's not exact, but it's pretty close. And the closest you'll find in this part of Montana. What also helped me decide on Deer Lodge was this moment in the movie, when Robotnik is tracking down Tom and Sonic. We see red dots marked on the map, presumably key areas they visited during the trip. And the starting point is more or less here, right where Idaho has that first little piece of the state. So, follow that and BOOM! We're back in Powell County. So, citizens of Deer Lodge, the 3,000 of you who are clearly watching this show, your town will no longer be known simply as the home of the Montana State Prison...

Really? My God. It's a shame it's something to be known for. Well, all of you watching from your little prison TVs while you stamp the license plates, be proud to know that you are now the featured city of a pretty good video game movie! Anyway, using Google Maps to calculate the length of the road trip from Deer Lodge to San Francisco, we see that there are two possible routes. The northern route, which went up through Washington and down through Oregon, and another more direct route that passed through Idaho and Nevada. Again, going back to the Robotnik map I mentioned earlier, it looks like Tom took the longer, northern route.

We see red dots in both northwest states. Also, when Robotnik zooms in on the map, he looks at southern Oregon, which, again, is nowhere near the southern route. So, knowing this, we see that it is an 18 ½ hour road trip from Deer Lodge to San Francisco. Pretty aggressive for a 2 day road trip, but certainly not impossible. It's actually much faster than I expected. So now the question is: Would Sonic have been able to find San Francisco blindly in that same 18 ½ hour time? Or was the road trip, incredibly, a more efficient way to get you to your ultimate goal?

We know for a fact that Sonic can read. In the opening montage of his life on Earth, we see him reading tons of Flash comics. He also knows that his rings ended up in San Francisco because he read it on Tom's tight T-shirt. So, it's not so much that Sonic doesn't know where San Francisco is when he sees it, but rather that he simply needs help finding the city directly in the first place. Now, I'm going to assume that he's not reading road signs to follow directions or mile markers. We're just going to assume that, once he gets to the city, if he makes it to San Francisco, he'll be able to visually see the Transamerica building where his rings landed, because it's a very recognizable piece of architecture.

So how do we calculate the odds of him finding San Francisco in the first place? Well, I propose we do it by working under the assumption that he will walk every street in America until he finds it. Just a lot of trial and error. He brute-forces his way across the country until he finally sees a sign that says, "Welcome to San Francisco" or, better yet, he ends up at the foot of the tower. Which, of course, as with any Sonic episode, brings us to the inevitable question about Sonic's speed. Now, the last time we covered the Sonic movie, we estimated that Sonic was running close to the speed of light.

It is the only way to emit an electromagnetic discharge capable of cutting off electrical networks and interrupting the flight of satellites. But let's not go to that extreme speed yet. Let's give the movie the best chance it has to win this little race. Right at the beginning of their adventure, shortly after Tom and Sonic escape Green Hills, Tom kicks Sonic out of the truck and tells him to find San Francisco on his behalf, prompting the cutscene I played earlier. Sonic runs west, just as Tom tells him, he crashes into the Pacific Ocean and then runs back with a fish on his head.

Now, timing this scene, yes, I actually had a stopwatch in the theater, so not only was I the weird, single guy in a room full of families and little kids, but I was also the weird, single guy in a room full. of families and young children who carry a stopwatch and use it throughout the movie, but from the moment it takes off to the moment it returns to the truck, exactly 3.9 seconds pass. I'm going to round this up to 4, just to make the calculations a little simpler. Speaking of 4 seconds, I have a challenge where you have to go fast: can you, in the time it took Sonic to run from Green Hills to the Pacific Ocean and back, ring the subscribe bell and leave a comment below?

I bet you can't! Let's try it, shall we? Four! Three! Two! One! You've done it? Well, whether you have or not, know that we appreciate your subscription. I'm trying to reach 10 million subscribers sometime this year on this channel and I need all the help I can get, so subscribing means a lot. Thank you so much! Now on to the episode. If you took Tom's advice literally, Sonic ran straight west toward the Pacific, and then back in that time period. If he draws a straight line from Deer Lodge toward the Pacific, he will see that at this point it is about 550 miles, or 885 kilometers, away from the ocean.

That means that, in 4 seconds, Sonic traveled 1,100 miles or 1,770 kilometers. That's 275 miles, or 442 kilometers per second, or our final figure of 990,000 miles per hour. 1.6 million kilometers per hour! Now, Tom gives Sonic the instructions to "head west", so let's do it. Suppose Sonic explores all roads west of where he is currently in Green Hills, Montana. They will mainly be the states of Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, a little more than Montana and Nevada. So, I added up all the roads, both paved and unpaved, for all of those states, and found that we're dealing with approximately 1,083,000 miles of roads. 1.7 million kilometers.

Sonic could cover all of that in just over an hour. But hey, maybe Sonic doesn't know which way is west. Maybe he's going down the wrong path. Well, in the 50 states, the United States has 4,092,729 miles of highways. 6.58 million kilometers. He is by far thebest, longest and most robust highway system in the world. And Sonic could cover it all in 4 hours. Giving him more than enough time to get lost, backtrack, and stop at every giant rubber ball he sees along the way as he arrives at the Transamerica building 3 times before Tom's truck. And remember, this is still me assuming the worst case scenario.

That's Sonic, not traveling at the speed of light, not reading road signs, that's Sonic traveling every highway in America before finally stumbling upon San Francisco as his final destination, because, you know, it's hard to pass overlooking one of the largest cities in the country. . But you know what? Call me Angelica Schuyler because I'm still not satisfied! What if Sonic really, REALLY got lost and took a road that went south of the border? Or even Canada? Or maybe he just wanted to enjoy some good eggs rancheros near the Nazca lines. So I counted all the roads in all the countries and territories in North and South America, because I didn't feel like separating the island nations, to be honest.

So I went the whole nine yards and got 7,029,306 miles of road, 11.3 million kilometers. 7 hours and 6 minutes of Sonic run time to travel every street, every road both paved and unpaved, on every terrain in all of North and South America, and yet it's STILL taking less than half the time would require. for Tom to take on that 18 ½ road trip. And then, yes. I went there, because I had already come this far, why not take the final step? I went to the CIA World Factbook and added up the 215 entries they had about roads around the world. Paying attention to every last number, even Tuvalu's little-reported 8 kilometers of paved road, because that's just how Type A I am!

An absolutely tedious process of data processing that became completely useless when I got to the last 4 entries of that CIA list and saw that "World" was a separate entry in itself. Why wouldn't you put that at the top of the list, CIA? Or at least to the bottom? I know you watch this show because you're nervous about the things in my search history when researching this series, so come on guys! What are some basic data entry best practices for me, okay? Anyway, I got, well, I got a little more than half of what they reported as a worldwide total.

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure how it happened. I think they counted the European Union twice in their calculations, because their numbers simply don't make sense relative to what they report. Central Intelligence Agency my foot! More like Shitty Information Archive. And that, my friends, is why it pays to be thorough and check government organizations with your own Excel spreadsheet. Anyway, my final total for all roads in the world was 25,010,432 miles, 40.25 million kilometers. A distance that would take Sonic 1 day and 1 hour to travel. Which means we've finally, FINALLY, reached a number that Tom's road trip can beat.

Or is that it? Remember, we said 18 and a half hours was Tom's trip if he drove non-stop, but we know they took breaks, beat up biker thugs, farted in their hotel room, figuratively and literally. (flatulence) In total, that road trip lasted at least a day and a half, probably 36-40 hours total before it was all said and done. Which means that Sonic traveling all the roads in the world would end up taking less time than sitting next to Tom on old Route 90 West. And again, remember, this is me making a conservative estimate every step of the way, here.

We're not even taking into account his ability to travel near the speed of light. And don't start telling me that they needed Tom to smuggle him to the top of the building when he got there. At the beginning of the road trip, they didn't know that little piece of information. And, as Sonic and Eggman chase each other around the city in the

film

's opening sequence, we see Sonic's ability to literally run up the outside walls of buildings. Sure, it's an outside view, far removed from the action, but still, he's scaling the building like a champ. It's almost as if everything was manufactured by Sonic to make Tom feel important in the first place.

That manipulative little hedgehog. It seems that speed is not his only super ability. There you have it, my little chaotic ones. You should see the Sonic movie for many reasons. It's fun, fun, it does justice to the characters. Just don't expect a premise that makes much sense. Or a precise location of the world's largest rubber ball. Or an appearance by Charmy the Bee. COME ON GUYS! Do you make Longclaw, but neglect Charmy the Bee? It's time to fire up the internet's furious machine once again for the sequel! But first I have to buy an apartment. Zillow...dot com.

But hey! That's just a

theory

! A cinematographic

theory

! Aaaaand cut. *video game music*