How I’d make an 06 adaptation

I’ve seen more than one post discussing how to adapt 06 into a movie. Because even if they just use bits and pieces of the plot, there are still a lot of moving pieces to keep track of in Sonic, Shadow, and Silver’s different stories. So how do you condense this into a 2-hour max runtime?

Short answer: write out Sonic.

Compared to Shadow and Silver, Sonic’s story feels the least load bearing-the most important thing he does is die. Shadow can’t be taken out because he’s important to Mephiles’… everything, and you can’t take out Silver because he’s the time travel character and even a loose 06 adaptation would involve time travel in some way. And there isn’t much you can give Sonic without taking away from the other two.

Adding onto that, Mephiles is Shadow’s villain. He has Shadow’s appearance, he was imprisoned by Shadow, and he spends much of 06 taunting Shadow and trying to get revenge on him. When early speculation was coming in about the Knuckles series and people thought Metal Sonic would show up, I was against the idea-after all, why introduce a character who looks like Sonic and was made to match Sonic’s abilities in a series about Knuckles and never have him fight Sonic? I would feel the same way about introducing Mephiles in a movie without Shadow.

Also, I’ve shared the sentiment that Shadow is one of the few characters that could carry his own movie, and since his story is one of the better received parts of 06, it can be reworked into a Shadow movie. Silver can still be there as the new character, and they could even end things with the possibility of bringing Mephiles back for bigger and better things, including a proper adaptation of the final battle.

Sonic’s 06 story isn’t unsalvageable, but “Sonic rescues an emotionally repressed princess and teaches her to let down her barriers and smile” sounds like the plot for a mini-series, not a million dollar blockbuster.

While writing this, I completely forgot about Knuckles having the Flames of Disaster and how that affects things. Honestly, it’s unimportant, Iblis was a macguffin and less narratively important than Mephiles. If Mephiles ever comes back, they can find a way to work around that little factoid.

I know this isn’t a proper premise or anything like that, this is just the first move I’d make for an 06 adaptation.