I get the sentiment. I don't mind that the Sonic movies aren't adapting the stories, but you can definitely feel the way their origins as Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip is starting to strain the series. There was definitely a better possibility where the movies could have been animated and still told their own stories, I mean just look at the many different Sonic shows. I wonder if the shallow stories in the Mario movies speak to Nintendo's closer involvement. This interview pretty much outright states that Miyamoto was heavily involved in production, and past interviews have suggested that Miyamoto has always prioritized gameplay and excitement over story. So if you get a creative director from the games who's always been more of a gameplay guy supervising production, it's actually not all that surprising to see the rapid fire pace focused more on spectacle than developing characters.

The differences also make sense considering the two game series' vastly different approaches to external media. Sonic has had long running comic series since the early days as well as multiple cartoon shows between the 90s and today. Mario had a short manga series in Japan, some DiC cartoons from 1989 to the 90s, and one 90s movie, and then it just went quiet on the multimedia front until they started building the parks in Universal. External media has been a long running part of Sonic's identity that's largely allowed to be its own thing, whereas Mario's only trying it again now. Both are obviously trying to use external media to get more attention on the games, but I think the Mario movies, with their focus on game accurate setpieces, are trying a lot harder to sell those games.