We Don't Talk Enough About How Much Sonic Was Inspired By Star Wars

It's hard to find a corner of science fiction that hasn't been touched by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars in some way. That includes 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic the Hedgehog, even if at first glance, you wouldn’t necessarily notice the connection (or, even think of Sonic as sci-fi). Trust me, though, I’m ♌going somewhere with this.

George Lucas' science fantasy epic introduced a wide variety of characters and concepts that still exert their influence on the genre to this day. Part of the reason Star Wars is so potent is that Lucas was drawing on a wide variety of work and genres that he loved. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, samurai films, westerns, World War 2 movies, old adventure serials, Dune — it was all grist for the mill. So it only seems right that Star Wars would similarly worm its way into every corner of entertaiꦰnment. Or, to paraphrase a wise old man, Star Wars surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds pop culture together.

Part of the reason modern Star Wars has frequently been pretty weak is that, unlike Lucas, the current generation of creators playing in the universe were primarily influenced by Star Wars. Andor, t🐈he best-received Star Wars project of recent years, was created by Tony Gilroy, who admits to not really being a fan of the franchise. That breadth of inspiration adds de꧒pth to the work.

The Star Wars influence is readily apparent in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, too. Sonic takes the science fantasy of Star Wars and updates it for the '90s, with decade-appropriate edge and talking animals. You’d never see Luke Skywalker with a chili dog though.

When I began thinking about this, I was prompted by one glaring, specific example that was so clearly borrowed from Star Wars that it seemed wild that no one really talked about the connection. I'm talking about the Death Egg, which is just the Death Star with a slightly different name. In appearance and title, it's so comically close it borders on Spaceballs territory.

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Robotnik's planet-shaped floating metal fortress first appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and, since then, has (per ) appeared or been mentioned in 18 games (including the forthcoming Sonic X Shadow Generations) and has always looked exactly like the Death Star, but with Eggman's face on it. This is like if Bowser was called Darth Gator and we all just went along with it.

Sonic also follows Star Wars' example in more general ways. The Chaos Emeralds, like the Force, are mysterious and magical, but grant the person who wields them tremendous power. The series breaks characters up into initially black and white, good and bad columns, which then become more gray over time. Think about how Shadow, initially, was introduced as a villain — one of the playable characters in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic Adventure 2's Dark campaign — but over time has become a friend to the good guys. It's not unlike Vader's redemption. Of course, Star Wars didn’t invent these tropes, but it provided a modern template that many other stories have used. When we think of evil space villains, we think of Vader, while heroes are often made in the image of Luke Skywalker. Sonic looked at that success, and sought to emulate it in a new way — like much of the popular media that followed Star Wars has.

The two series also have similar attitudes toward nature and technology. The big reveal of Return of the Jedi is that underneath the armor, Vader is just a doughy middle-aged man preserved in machinery by the Emperor. Grievous, another of the series' villains, is similarly a combination of flesh and metal, and both Clone troopers and Stormtroopers are biological humans wrapped in armor that makes them look like machines. Sonic's villains are often robots that are powered by animals encased inside their metal shells, all serving an evil dude who lives in a floating metal fortress the size of a planet. In both series, metal is the imposing shadow on the wall cast by unimpressive flesh.

Is Sonic a lot like Star Wars? No, they're obviously different. But Sonic is just one example out of thousands of the influence that Star Wars wielded over the stories of future generations.