I genuinely wonder how nobody has noticed the correlation between the series' shift in quality and it's odd change in political leanings. No I'm not joking, you'd actually be surprised.
We all know the original few games were environmentalist, that's a very simple premise to really put out there, but later on in SA2 we had GUN as well, like the actual military (possibly a private military). They were pretty distinct antagonists, I mean they literally murdered children.
After the shift to third party though, there IS a distinct change. By Shadow 2005 they actively write GUN in a sympathetic light and have characters you would not expect to help them, do so.
By Sonic 06, the shift is so major that the person previously victimized by GUN is now directly working for them. Ontop of that, it is the first time the series has actively justified monarchism as a real and tangible thing that has merit to be upheld. Elise is able to contain iblis because she is of royal blood, not of the specific, soleanan royal family, no just "royal blood." We know this is the case, because Silver (a peasant) tries to contain iblis, and Blaze, note, a PRINCESS, has to come and contain iblis herself. The game is actively justifying monarchism, by saying these two princesses are special for being royalty, biologically speaking.
Sonic 06 is arguably the pole opposite of what came before, writing wise. Sonic is no longer cool, he sucks it up to royalty, and literally tells Elise to run from her problems, but in any case, that's not my point.
The point is that after 06, things were never the same again, in terms of the series political leanings, subconsciously or not (since all art is influenced by external factors, which politics are), Sonic games have lacked what they did before.
Ignoring how the 2010s marked an era intentionally avoiding complication and sticking to very run of the mil plotlines (and rehashing), even the game conceptualized as "Sonic Wars" has very little in terms of political substance. The war in forces is a backdrop, there is literally zero depth to what a war torn earth is like, it's ironically a far cry from the series roots in environmentalism. Compare the locales in Forces with the bad futures of Sonic CD, and you'll see exactly what I mean.
All of those are the impetus for the Sonic movies, they are obviously commodified kids films, but personally I find them rather insulting. A "good cop" father figure is one thing, I hate it but
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