On April 30th Paramount Pictures released the full trailer for Sonic The Hedgehog, the upcoming live-action and CGI film due out in theaters this November.
The feedback has been resoundingly negative for Sonic’s design in the film and the overall tone of the picture. It’s a bizarre mish-mash of a buddy-up comedy and a family-friendly action film. However, the main protagonist of the flick, Sonic, looks like a perverted, mentally challenged furry with a thyroid problem. Director Jeff Fowler says that they will be addressing this issue in time for the release of the film this November.
The news came courtesy of a tweet Fowler made on May 2nd, 2019, where he stated the following.
Thank you for the support. And the criticism. The message is loud and clear… you aren’t happy with the design & you want changes. It’s going to happen. Everyone at Paramount & Sega are fully committed to making this character the BEST he can be… #sonicmovie #gottafixfast ?✌️
— Jeff Fowler (@fowltown) May 2, 2019
A lot of people were quick to send in suggestions on how the new Sonic design should look, juxtaposing the movie’s CGI character with the original Sonic from the video game series.
I think @LadyGT_DA could probably help give some advice on how to make #SonicMovie not look like nightmare fuel #GottaFixFast ? pic.twitter.com/xOXVRuozcI
— ?ℂ???? スコット (@SC07TK) May 2, 2019
Others have been attempting to fix the movie so that Sonic no longer looks like a disturbing freak, giving him the larger uni-eyeball, a more approachable expression, less humanoid lips, a wider smile, less cannibalistic teeth, and an overall more agreeable look that seemed to hearken back to his classic days on Sega’s consoles.
You can see the comparison in the video below from YouTuber YongYea, which seemed to be quite popular on the video sharing service.
There was also an extremely popular rework by digital artist and comic book illustrator Edward Pun, who managed to create a design that garnered well over a quarter of a million likes on Twitter, which is more than the average amount of interactions world leaders get from making major announcements on the platform.
Left is original screenshot. Right is my rework to make #Sonic more stylized. pic.twitter.com/IhXeAZYlQI
— Edward Pun (@EdwardPun1) April 30, 2019
This is a positive departure from how Sonic was depicted in the original trailer, which you can view below to get an idea of what everyone has been complaining about.
If they can manage to make Sonic look remotely close to any of the do-overs that was tossed together by the freelancers and social media artists, then they might make the movie halfway tolerable when it releases this November… that’s assuming they don’t have to delay the film to deal with trying to make Sonic look less like nightmare fuel and more like a lovable hero attempting to save the day from Dr. Robotnik.
(Thanks for the news tip alex9234)
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