John's Journal

2024 is shaping up to be a big year for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Specifically the blue blur's iconic black rival, Shadow. In addition to being the antagonist of the upcoming "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" movie in December (voiced by Keanu Reeves no less!), Shadow is also set to take center stage in a port of "Sonic Generations" called "Sonic X Shadow Generations" in which the black hedgehog stars in a new campaign where he meets his old nemesis Black Doom who has mysteriously returned after his death in Shadow's game with a new plot to take over the world. Guys, "Generations" is one of my favorite Sonic games of all time, so seeing that it's gets a port with a brand new story and levels centered around one of the biggest breakout stars of the franchise has ignited a lot of excitement within me. I remember back when the original game was about to come out, I would always be on forums speculating which levels would make the cut for th...

 One thing I always liked growing up is watching shows about characters in school. A lot of them were set in elementary school (ex: "The Fairly OddParents"), some were in middle school (ex:"Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide"), but a grand majority of them seemed to be set in high school. You name it, "That's So Raven", "Danny Phantom", and "Kim Possible" it seemed like the go to setting for a work of fiction was a high school. Heck, even movies loved that setting. Of course you have stuff like "High School Musical" and "West Side Story". Not to mention both cinematic Spider-Man reboots put Peter Parker back in high school. But as I began my college years I began to notice something, you really don't see that many works of fiction set in college as opposed to high school, where it seems that we get endless amounts. So that brings us to today's question, just why is college a less popular fiction...

  Hello everyone, it's been quite a while since we've had a proper movie review on this blog hasn't it? To get back into the swing of things let's take a look at the newest offering of Dreamworks Animation: " Kung Fu Panda 4". Now this franchise is bar none my favorite from Dreamworks. Yes even more so than "How To Train Your Dragon". "Kung Fu Panda" boasts charming characters, moving storytelling, and of course some of the best fight scenes ever seen in an animated film, if not THE best. So imagine my surprise when I found out that there was going to be a fourth installment to the franchise, especially when it seemed like the third film wrapped things up perfectly.  Just like a certain other franchise. In Po's fourth outing, Shifu informs him that his time as the dragon warrior is coming to an end as he now has to take up Oogway's old position as spiritual leader of the valley of peace. Naturally Po is hesitant to give up being the...

 I think I speak for everyone when I say that 2023 was not a good year for the house of mouse. Especially considering that was their big 100 year anniversary. Aside from "Elemental" and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", volume three almost all of their movies, have flopped at the box office. Quite possibly the most humiliating failure was Disney Animations "Wish", which was supposed to be celebrating a century of storytelling. Unfortunately it got trashed by critics, got a mixed response from fans, and it grossed $243 million on a $200 million budget. After a string of failures, a lot of people have been wondering how Disney Animation can bounce back from this. Well they got their answer on February 7th, as the studio announced their newest feature to be released in November, which, as it turns out is a sequel to "Moana". Now this caught everyone off guard, including yours truly. While I am looking forward to seeing how this turns out, I have som...

 Well folks I finally saw “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and I loved it! With both this and “Spider-Man No Way Home”, Marvel is going all in on the multiverse saga. But since this is yet another discussion about variants in the MCU, let’s discuss how this all can affect a character we’ve discussed here twice before: King T’Challa a.k.a. The Black Panther.  Now before I go on let me make a disclaimer: This blog post will contain heavy spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. So if you have not seen the film, turn away now. You have been warned. With that out of the way let’s begin. Earth 838 In MOM, Doctor Strange and America Chavez are on the run from the Scarlet Witch (aka Wanda Maximoff), and end up in an alternate earth where’s Stephens variant died in the line of duty. We later find out from a variant of Christine that they are in earth 838, while Stephen is from earth 616. Not only that but we also see the Illuminati, consisting of variants...

  With Paramount wanting to turn the Sonic film franchise into a cinematic universe, there is a huge plethora of storytelling possibilities as Sonic has 30 years worth of content and storylines to pull from be it from games, comics, or cartoons. But one thing I’m curious about is what kind of bad guys we could see in these films and streaming shows. Sure we have Eggman, who is the main villain, but Sonic has amassed a colorful rogues gallery across various mediums. With that said I’m going to share with you all which bad guys I think could do the best to give us their worst in the Sonic cinematic universe.  7. Chaos Starting things off, we have the water deity that debuted in 1998’s Sonic Adventure, Chaos. For those of you who don’t know Chaos is a mutated Chao that guarded the master emerald and the Chao that lived around it thousands of years ago. But everything changed when the war hungry ancestors of Knuckles stormed the master emerald shrine in order to use its powers for...

 So earlier last month, Paramount dropped the bombshell that not only is a third movie in the works but there’s also a live action Knuckles series that’ll be exclusive to Paramount plus with Idris Elba reprising his role. And keep in mind this is all before the second movie is even out in theaters at the time that I’m writing this, which should speak volumes about how much confidence paramount has in this franchise. Needless to say it’s a very exciting time to be a Sonic fan.  But with the future ahead of us in terms of films I just couldn’t help but wonder about other characters in the franchise such as Amy or Shadow and who Paramount could get to play them. Well today I’m going to share with y’all who I would personally recruit to play the rest of Sonic’s friends should they make it to the big screen. Now for this I’m going to have two categories: Returning voice actors and celebrities. With Tails’ voice actress from the games playing him in the films, that tells me right th...