Well yeah, it's very unlikely that's how Sonic is going to look now. I read around a bit and the supposedly new poster is from a year ago. As Casshern said: This is probably what it is. Does also mean the nightmare fuel that is Sonic's new design is going to blaze in all its glory when it's fully revealed. Going by the real poster we have. lol, yeah - all the casting choices are ridiculous but yeah that would have been the funniest one. Kind of wish they had gone with him just for the fun of it.
One of my movie buff friends on Facebook has informed me that in the "mock-up" poster, that's actually Patrick Wilson. Also, I would be totally on board for a Charlie Day Sonic as well. Too bad they didn't go that route.
Oh god, I just realized they just might make the fur around his eyes white to fudge the appearance of the cartoony eyes with a realistic design. I really hope this isn't the case. We need something more than what we already have from the official sources.
Oh how I wish that's what they would have made him look like, unlike the horror in the shadow of those teasers!
Ian Flynn typed up an article about the movie on The Escapist. I get where he's coming from, but it still feels like a weak defense. Cartoons from the 80s and 90s that were based on games hardly ever followed the games that well, and in some cases, the games didn't have that much material to work with so the cartoon had to get creative. Doesn't help that including the 3 Sonic cartoons, most of the adaptions came from DiC Entertainment. The one exception is probably the original pitch for the Ruby Spears' Mega Man cartoon before they "Americanized" it. Sonic X was close, but they added Chris in to give children a character to relate with (I think?). Think they did a similar thing with the Darkstalkers cartoon over here. Plus if we're talking about the designs of characters like Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, the cartoons didn't stray that far from the originals compared to Sonic in the movie.
A bad design is a bad design, Ian. None of the shows outside of Boom messed with his look to this extent, regardless of the writing in them.
Love Ian Flynn, but not sure what this essay is intended to get across. No one is arguing that Sonic hasn't been realized flawlessly in tv and film previously, but he's also not defending the design choice either. Just trying to say that some kids might consider the movie design the One True Sonic, I guess. While statistically I'm sure that probably has to be the case, I don't think anyone can argue this will probably end up like Bomberman Zero: ridiculed and largely forgotten in time. Boom was a departure, and I don't think many here would disagree that it was unnecessary. But it's certainly not vastly incongruent like the movie design will be. Boom's design was a marketing gimmick that was intended to cater to a demographic that didn't want it and/or a demographic never actually existed. The rationale behind it was flawed, but at the very least it's not Paramount's rationale where the design is considered a "solution" to a problem that A. Isn't real and B. has been PROVEN to not be real previously. That said, I'd be lying if I didn't say my dislike of the Boom redesigns hasn't been put squarely in perspective now that we've seen what the movie will look like.
Boom design got vitriol mostly because it appeared Sega was testing the waters for a brand new direction for the whole Sonic brand. And we know how great Sega is at talking the right lessons away from experiments. This is just hilariously wrong.
It just dawned on me that it's those weird hands in that poster that's churning my stomach. Good god they're like... Racoon's paws. Put the gloves back on him and cover his shame.
It doesn't really apply to those either. Regardless, the thing about Boom is that it's designs, while certainly different, were still justifiably Sonic in their nature, for just about every character that appeared in the series. At no point where most characters such a radical departure that the entire look of their face or limbs was wildly incongruous or broken compared to the regular series. Early-mid Archie was much worse with this, even. Sure, the tape on everything looked silly, but Sonic's face was the same. He still had basically the same hair, he still had white gloves and red shoes. Knuckles was buff, but he still had dreads, spiked fists and a nike swoosh on his chest. The strange choices made with the movie only make it different for the sake of being different and not the sake of being better in any way whatsoever. Ian seems to be taking the mindset he does with people angry because "Sonic" is different in the movie, but the reason people hate it is because it looks bad. Honestly, he should know this. I'm not even entirely convinced he doesn't, so I'm not sure why he wrote that article the way he did. It's a very different situation from the Boom designs, and saying "well Sonic Underground looked like shit too" doesn't justify a thing about this adaptation being as much of a colossal soulless wreck as it is.
Seriously, I really don't understand how Sonic can basically be so rudderless from Adventure onward. You'd think that after two decades they'd have an idea of what they want, yet all they've been doing is jumping from concept to concept and making mediocre to terrible games in the process (..mostly). It's downright bizarre, I can't think of a series that has gone on so long while doing the kinds of things that would get most series shelved after the second "we don't know what we're doing" attempt. I'd say that it's amazing that they haven't pulled anyone aside to put together a new vision, but then...yeah....Boom. Which Sega proceeded to completely self-sabotage by forcing the devs to move everything to a console that didn't support their engine and didn't give them enough time to rehabilitate it. And then on top of this, there's a prime retooling opportunity right there with Mania and Mania Adventures. You put money into it, people liked it, why on EARTH would you not immediately go "okay, change of plan, fuck everything that we're just kind of flitting around on and let's go with this for the next while". (A discussion on why I feel that the old-school/Mania surrealist pseudo-CG art concept is timeless and can be made to work virtually any time is not relevant to this topic) Also, a Sonic movie now? Literally the only reason why anyone outside of the Sonic communities was talking about Sonic was Mania and I'm not sure that game even existed as a concept when they initially signed the rights for this (it feels like this movie has been in development forever) - so like...in the situation where all we got was Boom and then Forces, on what planet did they feel that a live-action movie, especially one that looks as awful as this, would get people interested in him when 99% of his games for the past two decades were either barely playable or utter trash? This movie should've been conceptualized and released around Adventure, because that was when they first made the actual leap to "Sonic co-exists with humans in a more realistic-looking world now". Hell Adventure 2 even has pseudo San Fran in it... I'm still down for shooting myself in the face because of this.
Reading back my initial reaction sounds saltier than I intended it to be. Ultimately the success of the Sonic brand isn't something that affects my life in any significant way. This movie isn't going to "ruin my childhood", regardless of quality, because my childhood already happened and I had the privilage of playing four fantastic Sonic games during that time, along with some decent quality spin-offs. There's been so much rubbish in the Sonic brand over the past 20 years that despite writing this on a Sonic fan board, whilst wearing a Sonic Christmas jumper, I would hesitate to call myself a "Sonic fan", rather someone who loves five Sonic games and could probably list another ten that I enjoy but probably wouldn't recommend to anyone. It already feels like SEGA have run Sonic into the ground with mismanagement, a lack of development and marketing funding and rushed dev times to the point where their big Sonic game for 2017 was a worse version of a game from 2011 that only took 2 hours to see end-to-end and offered little reason to play beyond that, and their now 2019 game is a racing spin-off that seems to be vastly reduced in scope from the last one, but at least you get to play as Charmy The Fucking Bee. Yes, Mania was fantastic but that was also a smaller title, which Sonic Team seemed surprised that anyone beyond this forum actually liked. I don't think it's a stretch to posit that if this movie flops it will only instil the notion that "Sonic doesn't sell" to SEGA upper-management, and further reduce the chance for genuinely good Sonic games in the near future, because that investment will be seen as a risk. My main issue with the way they are treating the property for this film is that they are trying to squeeze Sonic into a (probably generic) film, when the film is called "Sonic The Hedgehog". It would actually make more sense to me if Disney changed Sonic's design for Wreck It Ralph, since that's a film about Wreck It Ralph. When you're making a movie based on source material, you should really go from there and design the movie to fit around that. It's like getting the license to Lord of The Rings, turning Frodo into an ordinary bloke and giving everyone a gun because "no one knows what a hobbit is and nobody uses swords these days." There's the chance that it could still be an enjoyable film, but at this rate I wish they had written a film about a generic washed-up 90s platformer mascot and gone Birdman with it.
Charmys actually not a playable character in TSR :v: don't mind me just being a smart ass. But I get what you mean.
Pre-order cancelled =P Nah, I thought this might be the case but I sadly care so little about the game that I couldn't be bothered to look it up. The other SEGA property characteers and locales were always the main draw for me with the other games.
I deem from this point forward that we refer to this disastrous design as “Sonic the Realhog” and “Realhog” or “real-hog” for short. Calling this “movie” version for what it is, as Sonic in movies in the past game the character more respect than what we have here with this official movie. Seeing him accurately portrayed in the Wreck it Ralph franchise as the most recent and most correct version of him shows that his overall design IS set. You don't see any other Mario designs (besides it's oen horrible movie) do you??
