Amen. Exactly how I feel. We're way beyond the tipping point, Sonic's been 'bad' for more years now than he's been good. Just give me a Mania 2 with no reused levels and I'll be happy. All this other fluff (including the modern titles) doesn't interest me anymore. EDIT: My good friend who's a creative director told me what his vision would be: a classic chase movie. Example, Robotnik kidnaps Tails and the whole movie is just once big chase scene with Sonic in pursuit. Stuff happens along the way. Simple. Effective. I'm all in for that. No one wants to see Sonic befriend a policeman for god's sake.
Well, if you wanna nitpick, there's the Mario and Luigi RPG designs, Paper Mario, Smash Brawl's "realistic" Mario, and various other iterations. But notably, all of those are SUBTLE changes that never tweak the character's core appearance. (Heck, even the live-action SMB movie didn't screw around with how Mario looked that much - he still looked like a stocky, stached Italian-American in red hat and red overalls with a blue-sleeved shirt, even if the overalls themselves were a bit of a weird design. In fact, now that I think about it, very few prior Hollywood adaptations screwed with the character designs of the main character that much before this point, even the worst examples like Street Fighter or Uwe Boll's tripe.)
actualy, yes! Mario Odyssey's Costumes has many of them based on Mario's other appearances including an 8-bit blocky mario that's not animated for some reason. You could even count Dr. Mario as a redesign. heck, there are at least a minimum of 5 different plumber mario designs on the NES.
I just don't understand the mentality of "This franchise consistently sells millions of units. Clearly there's something wrong with their current approach, so let's change literally everything." Not just in reference to Sonic, but pretty much any attempt at adapting games or anime that think that adhering to what is proven to work should be avoided at all costs.
I think it's more along the lines of: "I've been contracted to make this, but I want to make something else... If I have to make this, I'll just do this the way I see fit, my vision is more important than what the fans want."
Once again, we send off my War Rig to bring back guzzolene from Gas Town, and bullets from the Bullet Farm. Once again, I salute my Imperator Metal Sonic, and I salute my half-life Swatbots, who will ride with me eternal on the highways of Valhalla! I AM YOUR REDEEMER! It is by my hand you will rise from the ashes of this world! Glory to Immortal Eggman Joe.
Most of the time though it's a studio mandate, not the artist. A lot of the Hollywood executives and money men are trained to just chase trends rather than try and do something new, which often means contorting established properties into bland formulas. Take the original Pirates of the Caribbean for example - Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow was absolutely that movie's x-factor. Without him it would have been another generic blockbuster and it wouldn't have had nearly the same impact that it did. But the producers (and especially Michael Eisner) hated him in the role and thought he was ruining the movie. They get so concerned with the business side of things they lose the ability to recognize something for its artistic merit. There's also the belief that video games and anime are inherently niche properties, even though they make gazillions of dollars which is why you're making a movie out of them in the first goddamn place. This is what the people behind Detective Pikachu clearly understood - the movie doesn't shake up the Pokemon universe in any way to make it more palatable to mainstream audiences, because Pokemon already sells to a wide audience. Each game already sells like a guaranteed 15 million copies.
Oh hey, corporate entity trying to laugh off unanimous dislike of their bad decisions by memeing it. I guess all is forgiven now because that's how that works.
And on that note, the whole "ironic/self-aware meme" approach to Sonic this Twitter feed is trying to invoke? It's been done. The mainline games written by Pontac/Warren pioneered it. The Boom television show ran further with it. The Sonic Twitter has it down to a science. It even inspired Twitter feeds for other series/products to emulate its style. And now the Movie twitter's trying to jump on that bandwagon. I can't even tell if this is actually a secret offshoot of the main Sonic Twitter or a different PR group trying to play the same exact playbook. As with the silhouette posters, the concept has been beaten into the ground. At this point I feel like I can confidently predict every PR move they're going to do now. Will they post a zoomed-in screenshot from a new movie poster, accompanied by the words "Tomorrow." next? Upload a video that has less than 30-60 seconds of footage from the actual film? Or fall back on a good ol' "announcement of an announcement"?
you say this as if the official Sonic twitter isn't a corporate entity itself that's been laughing off all the bad decisions Sega and Sonic Team have made over the years.
except this is a corporate entity laughing off a bad decision they're making right now that they're still trying to sell
Exactly. We've yet to see the Sonic twitter make fun of Forces, for example. Meanwhile, the Sonic movie twitter page is making fun of a product that's NOT EVEN OUT YET. I'm no businessman, but that seems like a really stupid marketing strategy to me.
Aaron Webber Strikes Back - it seems. Or Sega of America that are now handling Sonic going on damage control. If this is official which I think it is. I mean I'm happy there's some kind of probably official response here but you're all right - this has been done to death already and it won't change the god-awful creative decisions steering the Sonic film that led to the storm of meme hilarity and hate in the first place, as in I don't think trying to make a joke about it is going to ease anyone's negative emotions on the film and the terrible design for Sonic himself here. At least there's an attempt at a response? Which is good I guess? Sega you need to rewind time and actually have attempted to produce a film fans would have liked, in all serious honesty. Fully CGI in the style of Sonic Unleashed's intro. Killer story that harkens back to Sonic's narrative glory days with the Classics. Something that actually respected Sonic's legacy and source material. The best writers and not these hacks. No meddling, tone deaf and money driven, disastrous studio interference. A decent design of Sonic. Something that shot for the quality of Pixar. I could go on - but everyone would have loved it and the response they're trying to mitigate here would be the opposite.
I think they're deliberately being cringy about this. They probably know this is going to be a failure anyway, so they're going for that cynical millenial hipster dollar to minimize losses. I mean, they sure have our attention, don't they? Would they have this much publicity if their response was different? I doubt it.
Social media guy's just trying to do his job. Imagine if your job was trying to get frothing fans back on board with this clusterfuck.
The children who's mothers and grandmothers who thought Minions were hilarious since the first Dispicable Me have children who are now in the Sonic movie's age bracket, and they are trying to appeal to them to take their kids to this movie so they can buy the games/comics/kids meals. There is nothing that doesn't reak of this. Prove me wrong.
Okay. Firstly, I wouldn't fan the flames of "I like this ironically" cause that flavor of hipster doesn't have any money. Secondly, I'd ignore the hatred and wait for it to burn out since the movie doesn't come out in a little less than a year (November 8th 2019) Lastly, because Sonic is completely CG there is a small chance they may alter the design after the backlash ergo it may not even be an issue which is again, why I wouldn't fan the flames. Posting a stupid meme won't "get frothing fans back on board with this clusterfuck.". The only thing that can do that is a kickass trailer which I know is several months away. That's when the media blitz of production pictures, interviews with the cast, and general positivity will put butts into the seats. Even if it's curiosity to see a trainwreck, you encourage them to do so. Hell, exploit the Sonic brand, there's a treasure trove of media to use in a "I like this about Sonic, maybe the movie will be good too". Sigh, realistically, the social media guy is probably some unpaid intern who doesn't give two shits about Sonic and is just copying the official sonic twitter.