If you haven’t already seen the memes, watched the trailer, or heard the collective horrified gasps echoed throughout the internet, in reaction to the trailer for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, then, well, you still probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the reception to Sonic’s design was...less than stellar. In fact, the director of the movie, Jeff Fowler, made an official statement today regarding the look of the character.

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...

Changes will apparently be made, though, what exactly those changes will entail is unknown at this point. Seeing as the film will be hitting theaters this November, that doesn’t leave too much time to fix things, but at least the criticism has been addressed. Sonic the Hedgehog will be released in cinemas worldwide this November 8th. If you want something a bit more traditional in the meantime, you can check out the recently uploaded part 2 of the official Team Sonic Racing: Overdrive animation.

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[FAST6191]

Transformers is a bit different because the main character is a human and most of the robots are sidekicks (except maybe Bumblebee). Now it might not be like that in the comics (haven't read them) but as I understand it the comics don't have a lot to do with the movies anyway. I guess the CGI would be too expensive if the robots were the main cast. It's not like the CGI wasn't already expensive enough. Avatar uses a lot of CGI, but much of the movie is just Na'vi talking and exploring and that could all be done with costumes. You can't really pull off Transformers with costumes, so the CGI for the robots has got to be extremely expensive..

Still a stylistic choice -- go back and look at the cartoons, 1986 film, comics... and while many featured a human character or two they were mostly about the robots. Not to mention said robots were all sentient beings with their own emotions, motivations, goals, histories, limitations... which is more than enough to base a character or three on even without that. From a budget perspective I can see why they might have gone that way but it is in no way an artistic limitation.

 

[polychromeuganda]

RE: Why the awful character design? I don't think the ugly character is a clever publicity stunt. I think it was designed with 3 objectives

(1) differentiate the new animation from all the old low resolution TV animation and games by doing things with high resolution CGI that couldn't be done before.

(2) differentiate the line of tie-in games to be offered on current game platforms from classic games so that consumers a reason to buy because the Sonic in the old games won't meet the expectations of kids who see the movie.

(3) its based on a sample of a plush toy that will be on sale at the end of the movie. There will be people selling them at the exit doors as you walk out, The Apple-Pay lane will be like using EZ-Pass at a toll booth. They were originally planning to sell them at Toys-R-Us, and they can't encourage cell phone use in-theater by putting them on Amazon... so... This is Hollywood marketing genius...

(for those who don't have toll roads, A toll both is a checkout lane in the middle of the highway where you pay to use a road you already paid for with fuel taxes. EZ-Pass is a wireless transponder that saves driver's time because it doesn't require the vehicle to stop by electronically drawing down a pre-paid balance. The lane also takes pictures of the front and rear vehicle plates and the driver in case the transponder malfunctions and to bill those who use the lane w/o a transponder, plus a daunting service fee. Oh, it also reduces the state payroll by needing fewer toll-takers.)

 

[FAST6191]

An old phrase but one that seems to be forgotten more than it should

"never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence"

Similarly are we still of the opinion that Hollywood has any kind of respect for existing artistic works, much less computer games? How many times now have we heard producers, directors and editors say "I never read the book" or "I had the book read to/summarised for me"?

 

[Bernhard]

cant wait watching da movie... fml*-* have waited 4 my whole life to see that masta pice*-* damn boi hope that this gets released soon ....

 

[Kigiru]

You know what? After Disney showing their standards of treating fans via Star Wars and Captain Marvel (read - calling them names, making tantrums on Twitter and don't listening) seeing somebody actualy LISTENING AND UNDESTANDING what their customers are saying to them is kind of refreshing and heartwarming. Even if the final product will be mediocore at best, i'm positively impressed with position of SEGA and Paramout.

 

[KingVamp]

Didn't want to just keep posting fan art/edits, but I felt like I needed to show this.

I previously made a redesign for movie Sonic to make him look more like the game model but for this one I wanted to keep the eyes separated and change the body proportions a bit. #SonicTheHedgehog #SonicMovie pic.twitter.com/8YBgVvGlsA

— Giorgia Lenzi (@lenzi_art) May 4, 2019