airskate | Misc Notes

GAME AND MOVIE DIFFERENCES
I'm mostly going to be addressing the game stuff that comes up in Sonic Adventure 2, since that's most of what the movie draws from and builds off of. I'll also only be hitting on the major divergences, since if I tried to address everything we'd be here all day.

Shadow is not created by Gerald Robotnik, and his origin is unknown. He lands on Earth in a meteor and is taken into custody by G.U.N., who later bring Gerald onto the project.

Since he was not created to try to cure Maria's terminal illness, Shadow has no idea what his purpose is, or if he even has one. That said, Maria is the sole point of happiness and meaning in his life, so he does still express that he doesn't know who he would be without her.

Maria does not have any parting words Shadow, and does not wish for him to protect the world; she just dies in an abrupt and violent manner.

Gerald does not brainwash Shadow into desiring revenge, nor does Shadow misremember Maria's desire for peace as a desire for revenge (because, again, she never expressed such a wish to him). Instead, Gerald (very easily, mind you) talks Shadow into it.

Since there's no last wish for him to misremember he doesn't abandon revenge after getting his memories back. Instead, Sonic helps Shadow realize that the love he still feels for Maria can outweigh the pain and rage he feels over her death.

Shadow can use Chaos Control without needing a Chaos Emerald to do so.

Overall, Shadow is much less aloof, brooding, aggressive, cold, and arrogant than his game counterpart. His personality is softer, and he acts like he's a a bit younger and less experienced. He is also more readily sympathetic to the pain of those around him.

Shadow cares tremendously for Maria, and vice versa, but the tenor of their friendship is different. Shadow no longer exhibits a protective or guardian-like attitude towards Maria, nor does he attempt to keep her out of trouble. Instead he goes along with Maria's mischief, even when it's potentially dangerous.

While the movies haven't addressed this yet, it's very likely that post-movie Shadow will be less aggressive towards Sonic, and much more accepting of his attempts at friendship, than his game counterpart. Again, Sonic is the one that talked Shadow out of his self destructive rage spiral. Even before that Shadow was shown to feel sympathy for Sonic and start to rethink his revenge mission just from seeing Sonic's grief over Tom.

LIVE AND LEARN
Live and Learn is an actual song in the universe of the Sonic movies! We don't know much about it, as we only hear Maria playing the opening riff on an acoustic guitar. So here's my headcanon on the matter until I'm contradicted.

HERE is what we actually hear in the movie, and HERE is an approximation of what the full song would have sounded like
The song was written by Maria
The song is not complete; Maria only managed to write the main melody up through the end of the first chorus
Only the melody exists; the song has no lyrics or even a title
No recording of the song exists
However, Shadow does have the song flawlessly memorized; Maria played it for him right before she died, and it haunted his dreams for 50 years, so it's stuck with him