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Description
You know that moment in an Anime series where a character gets the absolute shit kicked out of them, and as the badguy walks off in a "well, I'm done with that!" kinda deal that character suddenly unlocks their "true form" bullshit power? Getting that vibe from this. I also waited a while for this news story for I wanted to properly go over the details and see the general reaction. Gosh, who knew the Internet's collective whinging could effect a positive change for once?

The Sonic the Hedgehog Movie has had a very "troubled" existence to put it mildly as Paramount opted for a more realistic depiction of Sega's iconic mascot, though I think it's more charitable to call that design "nightmare-fuel." The very idea that NOBODY walked out of that meeting where it was first revealed and said "what in the name of greek buggery were you thinking?" defies all reason. The internet was very sure to drive that message home to Paramount, but what surprised everyone was how they actually took the feedback on the chin. Normally a studio would use every opportunity to trash and badmouth the audience (see Disney, Marvel, Blizzard, Activision, Sony and many others) and tell them to "stop complaining!" Yet director Jeff Fowler actually took the Hedgehog back to the drawing board and delayed the movie to 2020. Won't waste time on what I thought of the original design. Check this out if you wanna know - www.deviantart.com/randomdc3/a…

So, let's try this again.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=szby7Z…

Right off the bat, this new design captures more or less what Sonic is all about: very cartoony and expressive. There are a few minor tweaks I'd of made to this one, mainly ditch the blue arms and the fur textures, but I suspect that was more or less a compromise Sega and Paramount came to. The only other issue is I still don't like Ben Scwartz's take on the character (as I said last time I'm not a fan of his approach to voice acting) but I've watched the trailer a few times now and I've slightly mellowed to this. Not entirely sure what this "power" is Sonic is scared of being stolen, since his super speed is a natural ability. If they're talking about the warp rings then just say "they're going to still my rings!" On that note we get a brief glimpse of the Planet Mobius, and I'm left asking "why can't the whole movie take place there?" It's what slightly bummed me out with Bumblebee, cus I wanted the whole movie to take place on Cybertron. Seeing Planet Mobius in this high budget way was amazing, and then he comes to our world and it's like "oh.... th-that's neat, I guess?"

Also Sonic mentions that "people are trying to steal my power!" (again, the rings) but Robotnik doesn't come into the picture until Sonic comes to Earth. So who are these other badguys? Shadow? Knuckles? Metal Sonic? The Game Grumps? Jim Carrey is still being a massive twat on screen, however I must conceed he's acting more in line with what I associate with Dr.Robotnik. He's shouting more, sounding more like a mad scientist, and honestly giving me flashbacks to The Grinch with the "GIVE. ME. A. BIG. FAT. BREAK!!??" outburst. The dancing scene made me think of the recent Team Sonic Racing Overdrive shorts. In short, it's less Ace Ventura and more Boom-Eggman... I'm okay with that. The soundtrack for the trailer has been upgraded from "out of place" to "more appropriate." Is it sad that I want them to at least put Gangster's Paradise in the movie as a slight jab at the original trailer? Maybe while in the car, they're flipping through stations, and that song comes on.

James Marden: Urgh! (turns it off)
Sonic: Wait, put it back. I like that song!

What gives me cause for concern is that in binning Coolio, we're gonna get a cringey rap song that incorporates Green Hill Zone instead. You hear Green Hill Zone briefly in this trailer, and I was worried it was about to break into a "Shell Shocked" styled rap song like we heard in Michael Bay's TMNT. The new songs for this trailer are not exactly better, but they fit the tone the film is going for. I will say the energy and style of this trailer is vastly superior to the low effort "SyFy original" that the first one offered. The question of if the overall movie will be any good despite this new design remains to be seen. While it's great to see a more recognisable Sonic now, we still have the godawful plot about him being on the run from the US Government (which was heavily featured in the UK trailer) as an alien coming to our planet for a "fish out of water" angle that's been done to death at this point! So it's most likely going to be shit, but at least it'll be "pretty shit!" I also don't believe the "this was all a publicity stunt!" story since we've seen the leaked merchandise, documents, and other flowchart bullshit surrounding this film. No company would produce merchandise and accessories for something they couldn't possibly sell to begin with... Unless we're talking about the Nintendo Wii U of course.

But I wanna touch on a thought I had this morning (at time of writing) that maybe this will set a precedent. We've seen with Bumblebee, Detective Pikachu, Alita: Battle Angel, and now this redesign of Sonic that Hollywood doesn't need to go down the photo-realistic "uncanny valley" approach when adapting a bevolved or nostalgic franchise. Cartoon characters do NOT translate very well when applying them to either cgi or a real world asthetic. It's why the idea of someone drawing a photo-realistic version of my character Percy Positive honestly terrifies me! I mean it's a very sad and long list of failed attempts to translate cartoony characters into our world for a movie, while attempting to "modernise" them. Modernise is just a corporate way of saying "take a steaming shit on!" for the record. I mean we've seen Garfield, Alvin & The Chipmunks, The Smurfs, the Transfomers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Scooby Doo, Casper, Thunderbirds, Yogi Bear, Inspector Gadget, Paddington Bear, the Magic Round-A-Bout, The Cat in the Hat, Rocky & Bullwinkle, The Banana Splits, Howard the Duck, The Flintstones, Thomas the Tank Engine, The Lion King... Hell, ANY of the Disney Live Action remakes, Venom, Dragonball Z, Ghost in the Shell, Avatar, the Hellboy reboot, Jem & the Holograms, the Fantastic Four, He-Man, Green Lantern, Speed Racer, Ben10, Dora the Explorer, and the list just goes on. The only time I can think of where this treatment actually worked was with The Mask (starring Jim Carrey) but I think that's more due to Carrey's raw energy and talent, and the fact they took a comic book that 99.9% of the audience probably didn't even know was based on a comic book.

I would also like to see the end of a another trend in Hollywood. I kind of ragged on this earlier, but enough with the plots that really have nothing to do with the source material. An example of this would be the Power Rangers movie from 1995. The movie starts off in a typical MMPR kinda way, but then it shifts gears into some spirital bullshit quest about psuedo-enlightenment (that never happens). Or perhaps The Smurfs movie, where those little blue bastards leave their cartoony world and come to ours.... Hell, that IS the main plot these things have. Now you could argue Transformers and TMNT are built on that basic outline, but in recent years it's become tiresome. What it all boils down to for me is that the cgi special effects to generate these characters "in a realistic way" is not special or required anymore. Yes you *can* render a cartoon Hedgehog in a realistic way, with all his fur textures and details in his left eye, but is that really what people want? When the Transformers 2007 movie dropped, I think people barely recognised Optimus Prime while you had to take the movie's word for it that it was Megatron or Starscream. The best example of audience push back was with the 2019 Lion King remake, where people were put off by these emotionless lion characters that were dull as fuck and uninteresting to look at... Despite the fact they could all out emote Kristen Stewart. I know somethings have to be done in cgi because trying to replicate Spider-Man's web swinging in real life for example would be impossible. Yet instead of a movie where Sonic the Hedgehog comes to our world and mingles with a human cop, how about we get a fully animated movie about him on his home planet instead? That way the characters will look 100% authentic to the source matrial, you can hire the original actors from the games, and spare the world from seeing anymore hideous abominations all in the name of "realism." Basically take the Sonic Mania shorts, extend them to 90 minutes, give it a higher budget, and there's your Sonic movie, folks!

In the end, I'm glad they redesigned Sonic to look at least recognisable. Good on you, Jeff Fowler and Paramount, for doing the right thing. Whether or not this will make the movie watchable, enjoyable, and complaint free (I hate the fact I had to type that) for its 2020 release?

..... Eh. Jury's still out on that one.

Description
You know that moment in an Anime series where a character gets the absolute shit kicked out of them, and as the badguy walks off in a "well, I'm done with that!" kinda deal that character suddenly unlocks their "true form" bullshit power? Getting that vibe from this. I also waited a while for this news story for I wanted to properly go over the details and see the general reaction. Gosh, who knew the Internet's collective whinging could effect a positive change for once?

The Sonic the Hedgehog Movie has had a very "troubled" existence to put it mildly as Paramount opted for a more realistic depiction of Sega's iconic mascot, though I think it's more charitable to call that design "nightmare-fuel." The very idea that NOBODY walked out of that meeting where it was first revealed and said "what in the name of greek buggery were you thinking?" defies all reason. The internet was very sure to drive that message home to Paramount, but what surprised everyone was how they actually took the feedback on the chin. Normally a studio would use every opportunity to trash and badmouth the audience (see Disney, Marvel, Blizzard, Activision, Sony and many others) and tell them to "stop complaining!" Yet director Jeff Fowler actually took the Hedgehog back to the drawing board and delayed the movie to 2020. Won't waste time on what I thought of the original design. Check this out if you wanna know - www.deviantart.com/randomdc3/a…

So, let's try this again.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=szby7Z…

Right off the bat, this new design captures more or less what Sonic is all about: very cartoony and expressive. There are a few minor tweaks I'd of made to this one, mainly ditch the blue arms and the fur textures, but I suspect that was more or less a compromise Sega and Paramount came to. The only other issue is I still don't like Ben Scwartz's take on the character (as I said last time I'm not a fan of his approach to voice acting) but I've watched the trailer a few times now and I've slightly mellowed to this. Not entirely sure what this "power" is Sonic is scared of being stolen, since his super speed is a natural ability. If they're talking about the warp rings then just say "they're going to still my rings!" On that note we get a brief glimpse of the Planet Mobius, and I'm left asking "why can't the whole movie take place there?" It's what slightly bummed me out with Bumblebee, cus I wanted the whole movie to take place on Cybertron. Seeing Planet Mobius in this high budget way was amazing, and then he comes to our world and it's like "oh.... th-that's neat, I guess?"

Also Sonic mentions that "people are trying to steal my power!" (again, the rings) but Robotnik doesn't come into the picture until Sonic comes to Earth. So who are these other badguys? Shadow? Knuckles? Metal Sonic? The Game Grumps? Jim Carrey is still being a massive twat on screen, however I must conceed he's acting more in line with what I associate with Dr.Robotnik. He's shouting more, sounding more like a mad scientist, and honestly giving me flashbacks to The Grinch with the "GIVE. ME. A. BIG. FAT. BREAK!!??" outburst. The dancing scene made me think of the recent Team Sonic Racing Overdrive shorts. In short, it's less Ace Ventura and more Boom-Eggman... I'm okay with that. The soundtrack for the trailer has been upgraded from "out of place" to "more appropriate." Is it sad that I want them to at least put Gangster's Paradise in the movie as a slight jab at the original trailer? Maybe while in the car, they're flipping through stations, and that song comes on.

James Marden: Urgh! (turns it off)
Sonic: Wait, put it back. I like that song!

What gives me cause for concern is that in binning Coolio, we're gonna get a cringey rap song that incorporates Green Hill Zone instead. You hear Green Hill Zone briefly in this trailer, and I was worried it was about to break into a "Shell Shocked" styled rap song like we heard in Michael Bay's TMNT. The new songs for this trailer are not exactly better, but they fit the tone the film is going for. I will say the energy and style of this trailer is vastly superior to the low effort "SyFy original" that the first one offered. The question of if the overall movie will be any good despite this new design remains to be seen. While it's great to see a more recognisable Sonic now, we still have the godawful plot about him being on the run from the US Government (which was heavily featured in the UK trailer) as an alien coming to our planet for a "fish out of water" angle that's been done to death at this point! So it's most likely going to be shit, but at least it'll be "pretty shit!" I also don't believe the "this was all a publicity stunt!" story since we've seen the leaked merchandise, documents, and other flowchart bullshit surrounding this film. No company would produce merchandise and accessories for something they couldn't possibly sell to begin with... Unless we're talking about the Nintendo Wii U of course.

But I wanna touch on a thought I had this morning (at time of writing) that maybe this will set a precedent. We've seen with Bumblebee, Detective Pikachu, Alita: Battle Angel, and now this redesign of Sonic that Hollywood doesn't need to go down the photo-realistic "uncanny valley" approach when adapting a bevolved or nostalgic franchise. Cartoon characters do NOT translate very well when applying them to either cgi or a real world asthetic. It's why the idea of someone drawing a photo-realistic version of my character Percy Positive honestly terrifies me! I mean it's a very sad and long list of failed attempts to translate cartoony characters into our world for a movie, while attempting to "modernise" them. Modernise is just a corporate way of saying "take a steaming shit on!" for the record. I mean we've seen Garfield, Alvin & The Chipmunks, The Smurfs, the Transfomers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Scooby Doo, Casper, Thunderbirds, Yogi Bear, Inspector Gadget, Paddington Bear, the Magic Round-A-Bout, The Cat in the Hat, Rocky & Bullwinkle, The Banana Splits, Howard the Duck, The Flintstones, Thomas the Tank Engine, The Lion King... Hell, ANY of the Disney Live Action remakes, Venom, Dragonball Z, Ghost in the Shell, Avatar, the Hellboy reboot, Jem & the Holograms, the Fantastic Four, He-Man, Green Lantern, Speed Racer, Ben10, Dora the Explorer, and the list just goes on. The only time I can think of where this treatment actually worked was with The Mask (starring Jim Carrey) but I think that's more due to Carrey's raw energy and talent, and the fact they took a comic book that 99.9% of the audience probably didn't even know was based on a comic book.

I would also like to see the end of a another trend in Hollywood. I kind of ragged on this earlier, but enough with the plots that really have nothing to do with the source material. An example of this would be the Power Rangers movie from 1995. The movie starts off in a typical MMPR kinda way, but then it shifts gears into some spirital bullshit quest about psuedo-enlightenment (that never happens). Or perhaps The Smurfs movie, where those little blue bastards leave their cartoony world and come to ours.... Hell, that IS the main plot these things have. Now you could argue Transformers and TMNT are built on that basic outline, but in recent years it's become tiresome. What it all boils down to for me is that the cgi special effects to generate these characters "in a realistic way" is not special or required anymore. Yes you *can* render a cartoon Hedgehog in a realistic way, with all his fur textures and details in his left eye, but is that really what people want? When the Transformers 2007 movie dropped, I think people barely recognised Optimus Prime while you had to take the movie's word for it that it was Megatron or Starscream. The best example of audience push back was with the 2019 Lion King remake, where people were put off by these emotionless lion characters that were dull as fuck and uninteresting to look at... Despite the fact they could all out emote Kristen Stewart. I know somethings have to be done in cgi because trying to replicate Spider-Man's web swinging in real life for example would be impossible. Yet instead of a movie where Sonic the Hedgehog comes to our world and mingles with a human cop, how about we get a fully animated movie about him on his home planet instead? That way the characters will look 100% authentic to the source matrial, you can hire the original actors from the games, and spare the world from seeing anymore hideous abominations all in the name of "realism." Basically take the Sonic Mania shorts, extend them to 90 minutes, give it a higher budget, and there's your Sonic movie, folks!

In the end, I'm glad they redesigned Sonic to look at least recognisable. Good on you, Jeff Fowler and Paramount, for doing the right thing. Whether or not this will make the movie watchable, enjoyable, and complaint free (I hate the fact I had to type that) for its 2020 release?

..... Eh. Jury's still out on that one.