Sonic the Hedgehog is still a much-beloved franchise for a lot of people out there. Unfortunately, it hasn’t had the smoothest path, as shown by how people received the look of the titular character in the upcoming movie. For those who are curious, Sonic has had a number of looks over the course of his existence. Sometimes, these looks were well-received. Other times, not so much. However, his look in the upcoming movie stands out because of the sheer venom aimed towards it. To be fair, this wasn’t wholly unfair, seeing as how there is something unsettling about the revealed look, which is a curious combination of realism mixed in with what seems to have been a half-hearted effort to cling to the character’s cartoonish roots. Perhaps it is the very human-looking teeth or perhaps it is the strange proportions that make the character look like a terrible mishmash of man and beast. Whatever the case, it is no exaggeration to say that people hated the revealed look, so much so that Paramount Pictures made the announcement that it would be moving the release date from November of 2019 to February of 2020 for the sake of getting the look just right. Something that speaks volumes about the strength of the sentiment that prompted the move.
What Do People Think About the New Sonic Design?
Unsurprisingly, there is a fair amount of interest in what the new Sonic will look like, which in turn, means that there are people out there who have been working to cater to said interest in one way or another. For instance, a Twitter user claimed in mid-October to have photos of the new look for Sonic, which they proceeded to post for interested individuals to see. In them, the new Sonic is much closer to his best-regarded looks in the video games, which is the combination of a wide range of changes such as bigger eyes that have been positioned closer together, a lengthened nose, bigger ears, and new proportions that are much less human-like than those of its predecessor. As such, while people are still going to make jokes about the movie’s visual design for some time to come because of how memes perpetuate themselves, it doesn’t seem as though this look will provoke the same kind of venom as its predecessor.
Of course, there is a major issue with this purported reveal of the new look for Sonic in the upcoming movie. Simply put, interested individuals have no way of telling whether the reveal is real or not. This is important because fake reveals aren’t exactly uncommon when it comes to much-anticipated media coming out in the near future, meaning that there is a reasonable chance that this could be a fake reveal as well. Granted, if this is fake, it would be a fake that cost someone with the right skills a fair amount of time and effort to make possible. However, that kind of thing is by no means impossible, particularly since CG imagery has become so much easier to make than ever before in the present time.
How Did This Debacle Happen?
Having said that, one can’t help but wonder how this whole thing happened in the first place. As stated earlier, there was very widespread rejection of the revealed look for Sonic in the upcoming movie. Due to that, it seems reasonable to say that some of the people involved in the making of the upcoming movie came to the same realization well beforehand. Theoretically, it is possible that said individuals have no real emotional stake in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, meaning that they aren’t particularly concerned about whether the movie that they are making will be pleasing to Sonic fans. However, it seems very unlikely to say the least that every single one of them is like that. For that matter, even if they don’t have an emotional stake in the project that they are working on, they should still have the perfectly rational desire to want the project to do well so that they can claim some of the credit for such a success.
This is pretty much nothing but speculation. However, it is possible that some people chose to speak up but weren’t in the right positions for their speech to have an effect on the overall course of the movie making process. After all, while modern business studies stress the importance of two-way communication between the various levels of a project’s participants so that decision-makers can have a broader, wider, more up-to-date base of knowledge to guide their decision-making, that sentiment is still very, very far from being universal in nature. As a result, it seems reasonable to speculate that while there were people involved in the upcoming movie who noticed the problem with the look for Sonic, they weren’t in the right position to influence a change of course when the look was still in the works. Certainly, it wouldn’t be the first time that a particular decision-maker with particular tastes has had a detrimental effect on an entire project by assuming that everyone else’s tastes were the same as theirs. For that matter, chances are good that this won’t be the last.
In this line of speculation, it is likely that opponents to the look didn’t have enough sway to change it until the sheer extent of the backlash convinced people that the upcoming movie had a high chance of turning into an expensive disaster. Theoretically, an adaptation can succeed even without the support of the fans of the source material, but there was no indication that the upcoming movie would enjoy that kind of support from other segments of the market. After all, the venom aimed at Sonic’s look wasn’t based on the fact that it was different but rather on the fact that it was unsettling for a lot of people, which isn’t something limited to preexisting Sonic fans. Fortunately, the willingness to delay the movie suggests that the highest decision-makers do want the Sonic movie to succeed. Unfortunately, the delay is probably going to mean long, hard hours for a lot of people involved in making the movie.
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