Sonic Movie Pitch #1 Josh: The Boy Who is More Important Than Sonic!

Q: You yelled about the Sonic Movie, are you going to yell about the movie pitch "Sonic Wonders of the World" from 1995?
A: yes.
A: YES

If you hadn't heard...Recently there was released about 8 pages or so of a movie pitch for a Sonic Movie in 1995. It was to be run past Sega & etc. and if it looked good enough they'd make it at MGM Studios, as is the usual. You can now find the pages freely on Twitter and the internet to read it/it isn't very long, but it involves some history and it's an interesting enough read to see what they were thinking about at the time. Dr. Robotnick's a Bunny! Look out! (no, it never makes sense)
Japan ended up nixing it, VERY VERY fortunately because it doesn't make a lot of sense and it really isn't about Sonic very much. Sonic is a tool used to help a little boy and his stupid parents. The story is about THE BOY and not about Sonic at all. 

Caution: I get mean ahead.
Passes the Bechdel Test? No. Surprised? No.
The sappy theme: Standing up for what you believe in
Yes really...but it doesn't EVER apply to anything in the movie? "Standing up for...not stealing the great pyramids of Egypt" is......stupid? Like? Everyone agrees don't steal those? It doesn't make ANY SENSE. ALREADY! All 90s things tho had to have such themes to get approved 'for the kids'.

But, before getting to the pitch pages there's a few Sonic facts to know about fist:
He had several origins but so far none of them are cannon, somehow?

There's the Fleetway origin where Eggman was good but turned evil
There's the Reincarnation of WW2 Bomber/Test Pilot man
There's the Archie origin where he has parents but they're not special
Each one has problems and no one can agree, so...no cannon.
One of them involves world war 2...which is really creepy and not great because...have you ever even looked up this war? You DONT want that stuff being cannon anywhere near* Sonic. Writing this after seeing a video of an elderly couple driving their car on a suburban street and a tank comes around the corner and hits their car with a shot out of the top gun turret thing is--well it's the worst, war is the worst, and having Sonic be a reincarnation of some shitty white guy who dropped bombs on other people is.....the worst? What kind of a crappy origin is that? 

All origins aside, let's get to Josh! He's Important! He's The Star!
The pitch-notes reveals that it was done to "appeal to a wider audience" than something like SatAm Sonic or AOSTH, and when grownups say "Appeal wider audience" they mean "how can we remove Sonic from the content?" The answer is generally 'fairly efficiently', to have a fairly Sonic-free Sonic movie where the story can be about what 'Sonic fans' REALLY want, which is humans who have nothing at all to do with Sonic! /sarcasm/
Ask fun questions throughout like
What are Sonic's feelings?
What does Sonic think of the situation?
Sonic 2 was out by now so where was Tails? Amy? (Sonic CD)
Why do they have to de-power Sonic at every turn?
Why does Sonic not come up with a plan?
Why does Sonic need Josh to save him?
Where are the robots Robotnick likes to make?
Is Robotnick an evil genius as he is characterized in every game ever??? Or does he have to rely on "Smarter humans" to get his technology?
You can't answer them because the movie isn't about him, his world, or much of anything from it. Sonic is not the hero here. They HAD more characters to work with, They HAD Metal Sonic, time stones, little planet, Tails...Amy...they had whole worlds to work with! And they picked Josh.

So let's get started:
Josh Pinksi (oh boy is this a white kid with yellow hair and blue eyes? Or is his hair brown but the eyes still blue because reasons? Of course it's a boy and not a girl because only boys play video games and girls are stupid! NO GIRLS ALOUD in this movie unless it's mom who's not being fair to you.) 
He:
Likes playing Sonic games, is nerdy at school so nobody likes him, he feels like his parents divorce is his fault even though it's his dad's fault. He is imagining up an origin for Sonic in class (Because remember, HE didn't make Sonic, the games already exist) where he is the mascot of an air-speed record pilot-man because only men can fly airplanes.
His Dad is named Hal (because we love cliches*)
And he can't support his family because he can't keep a job no-matter-what because he is such a wacky 'hare brain computer nerd' so he freeloads off of the working mother always flitting from one project to another that don't pan out or make money, until she divorces him over it.
He's also incompetent at food so he forced her to have a 9 to 5 job AND cook all the meals for the family for free too. The house is 'a mess' of his projects so you know he made her* clean for him also. She was basically his slave in every way but FEEL BAD FOR HIM SHES MEAN OH. 
*Made* Was it going to be presented that he commands her to cook and clean? Of course not but he's characterized as 'burns the kraft-mac dinner' and the house 'a mess' now that she's gone so if she didn't want herself/her child to eat trash and live in a pig pen she had to attend all their needs as well as her job and her own needs and simply got sick of it but they get to paint her as the bad guy because it's ok for Dad to be whoopsie-pants incompetent and never contribute equally or otherwise.

So the dad leaves Josh at home alone after telling him not to ruin his projects so Josh goes and hooks his Saturn up to the dads' project because that totally won't ruin it, and Sonic gets out of the game to have a look around. Now keep in mind this would be like the worst CG ever and would look like trash. The best CG in all the world out of 1995 was Toy Story 1 and you know Pixar wasn't making this movie so the quality would not have been even TS1 level. 
The next thing that comes out is a fuzzy bunny which for some reason then "morphs into Robotnick" who pulls 'a space ship' out of nowhere and ruins the house while leaving. Did they have the term 'egg o matic' by now? Can't tell if treatment writer either didn't have the info or didn't care. 

1. WHY a bunny?
WHY? Why can't Robotnick just....jump out of the TV like Sonic did? Also he somehow knows about the Real World Dimension while Sonic didn't? Don't worry, none of this is ever resolved but the whole 'a bunny' thing makes EVEN LESS SENSE than anything else and is completely unnecessary like....what?? /end bunny tangent. 

Sonic chases Robotnick but finds out that his own attacks hurt him???? And he runs out of energy? And will die here? So they de-power him immediately. Unless he gets IRL Emeralds which are "inside of ordinary rocks" so you just have to break boulders or stones you find on the ground until a gemstone comes out. Also the rocks with emeralds in them are only on the only continent on earth "USAmerica" because other countries don't exist and or matter. Ever. They're also all in the same town! Wow! What are the odds????

Josh blames a burglar for ruining the house, his mom & dad freak out, the mom blames the dad for leaving Josh home alone, Sonic harasses* a woman & now the cops are after a 'blue burglar' and Josh has made his dad's life worse, and broken his whole house because he is stupid. They have to team up in secret to stop Robotnick or everyone will get arrested. 

Notice how we now have like 500 details about this stupid kid, his stupid family, and Sonic is weak and crappy already. How much of these words are ABOUT SONIC? Hardly any so far. You know all these details about IRL, Josh, his parents, his house, magic computers, cops, and maybe magic boulders.

Robotnick gets away, and sets up shop in an abandoned amusement park. He partially (or fully?) robotosizes the bullies from school, lures other kids there with free ice cream and rides and hires the dad, Hal, for his amazing computer systems. No parent ever questions a free amusement park with free food for kids and lets their kids go there unsupervised all the time yay. 

Of course, starving Hal needs a good regular job so he brings Josh (and stow-away Sonic) to the amusement park where it's revealed that Hal's magic computer can make robo-clones of the kids so that Robotnick can enslave them digging for Chaos Emeralds under the park while perfect robo-copies called "Kinderbots" go home with their parents and do everything the parents say as obedient slaves which everyone loves.

1. How are robots somehow WORSE at digging than literal children? Do you want a surly 12 year old with a shovel or a bulldozer? 
2. He can perfectly copy everyone's personality after 1 ride? None of this makes any sense. 

His plan is to steal all the wonders of the world (natural wonders) and digitize them into the game, then charge people to see them because........Everybody knows.....Robotnick's main goal was always to get rich? What???
Sonic & Josh get under the amusement park, are chased by Bullybots (The robotocized kids) and big surprise, Josh gets Sonic-Powers from an Emerald! We can't have SONIC save the day, it has to be JOSH because HE IS BETTER for wider audiences!

So it doesn't work, Sonic uses up all his 'energy' and gets thrown into a dungeon to save Josh who goes to his dad, who blames him for the panic at the park caused by the Bullybots, hands him off to his mom to whom he confesses that Robotnick is going to 'steal the wonders of the world' because he plugged a magic computer into a video game system. She then calls a shrink to try and have him institutionalized because he is stupid and crazy and trying to ruin his dad's chance at a steady job. 
Little kids:
They actually do not have the mental capacity to think hard enough about what other humans may be thinking. He is literally of an age to be too moronic to figure out that his mom would in no way ever believe all this nonsense and he goes to her without proof. It's realistic & in-character that he's stupid enough to do this. An actual point of realism? Wow. 

Now, there are 2 pages missing. 6 and 7 so this is taken from the Kotaku Article in which a person did a summary without criticism or commentary that IS verified accurate...mostly. 

"In the third act, Josh hatches a plan to get Robotnik back into the game world, inspired by Sonic’s speech about standing up for what you believe in. As Jeffries describes it, “the plan was Sonic was going to be the bait, and they were going to lure the boss back into the game world. But what happens is they do that, but the kids (This isn't accurate, it's Josh and his parents) get sucked into the game world for act three of the story.”

There’s a showdown between Sonic, Josh and Robotnik – with the good guys winning and Robotnik getting away to no doubt come up with a new plan to take over the world. The treatment reads, “Hal, Lisa and Josh step through the vortex. But there’s a sad moment when Sonic decides he must stay behind in the game world. He has to be vigilant against Doctor Robotnik and his nefarious ways. After all, that’s his job.”

The adventure brings Josh, Hal and Lisa closer together, but Hal decides that the XRI is too dangerous to ever use again and asks Josh to put it away for safe keeping. “Josh promises [not to use it again]… but notices on a TV screen nearby: Sonic winks at him, then goes about his gameplay business.” 

The treatment says that Hal & Lisa 'rediscovered each other' and are 'closer than ever' by going into a video game world and surviving it. So she'll go back to being Hal's slave? With the XRI Magic Computer shelved 'for safekeeping' and no more Robotnick Park Job, Hal is back to square one and will continue to freeload off of Lisa and she will return to being enslaved, but be happy about it this time. Happily ever after!

So no matter how salty the people got, it's good they canned the damn thing.
Hal wouldn't have learned a lesson that 'its ok to learn how to contribute to household chores' by being trapped in Green Hill Zone. The obvious "Sequel-Wink" at the end after Hal was dumb enough to give the magic computer to Josh. Notice also how the whole thing starts and ends without Sonic around and the only emotional investment anybody had was with Josh and the fam. Sonic spent part of the movie de-powered, in a dungeon, hiding in a trunk, powering up a kid, and at the end the fight was a 3-way battle with Josh, Sonic vs Robotnick. He destroyed the kids' house, harass a woman, knocked down part of a theme park...and he's the hero? He's a plot device, at the best.

Missing pages:
These likely addressed the kinderbots and the bullybots being stopped somehow but Kotaku missed that bit. Why they had these 'bots' is because it's easy and cheap to put cardboard and plastic over child actors and have them run around pretending. Actual badnicks are hard to make. Kinderbots are just the actors acting 'robotically' because that's even cheaper. 

Bottom Line:
Throw this thing in the bin with Mortal Kombat movie. It would have come out during the Saturn doldrums where things were starting to fall apart. It would have looked like trash with the era's tech capabilities, and it wouldn't have done well with Sonic fans because it didn't have enough Sonic. 
This will update if the last 2 pages get published.

*Don't want the cannon near it:
This is actually really common enough to be a meme even because story writers don't take it into consideration and now we have "Don't ask those silly yellow Minions where they were in 1943!"
or
"Since there's the CARS Popemobile, that means there was Car-Jesus so how did the other cars nail him to the cross? Also don't ask why the Wizarding World somehow didn't do anything about Hitler, Nanking or Pol Pot or Leopold 2 (Don't know that last guy? Don't look him up before lunch hmm.) Don't ask Who Are The Men Behind The Sun anywhere near kids media. Basically authors need to be smart enough to address this or it rips open giant plot holes in everything. And it's not like it's hard to address either.....1 or 2 sentences would even do it in most instances.

*HAL was the name of the amoral computer in Space Odyssey the classic scifi movie. Having anyone in computers/tech named Hal is so trite and stale.

*Harasses- It's written as 'tries to impress a girl' but she starts screaming sooooooo....what was he doing? Why would he try to impress a girl and let Robotnick get away? Makes no sense.

*A slave: If you work all day, hand over all the money you made to someone else, clean up messes of other people, cook for other people, and run their lives/schedules for them, transport them where they need to go, all without compensation that is a slave.

*Bechdel test: an extremely low bar for quality set for books and movies: this one you should look up! It's lots of fun. Play the Bechdel pass/fail with your memory & your friends.