Looking at the original trailer for the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie is like looking into a portal to a different timeline, one where the film itself likely doesn’t herald the arrival of a massively successful film franchise that eventually spawns a bad Paramount+ spin-off. At best, it results in a Morbius-level hate-watch campaign and goes down in history as a great affront to the titular blue blur. But it’s been five years since that first trailer, showing a hedgehog who looked more like a human child in cosplay than the beloved video game hero, broke the internet, and it’s fascinating to look back and remember just how disastrous that original look really was.
Funnily enough, you have to go looking through unofficial channels to find the trailer featuring “Ugly Sonic,” as Paramount has removed it from its official YouTube channel. But the internet is forever, so shoutout to KinoCheck for preserving this moment in Sonic history for us. Let’s revisit it, shall we?
Oh, god. I literally got shivers looking at his terrifying human-like silhouette. Outside of Sonic himself, a lot of the trailer still represents the movie we got in 2020. Jim Carrey is still eccentric as villain Doctor Robotnik, the use of Coolio’s “Gangster’s Paradise” is emblematic of the live-action series’ reliance on licensed needle drops over the Sonic series’ excellent OST, and Sonic still goes really fast and messes up the ol’ egghead’s robots. As my brain goes into survival mode and blots out Sonic from my vision, I’m reminded by this trailer that the first movie is still pretty fun. It doesn’t feel like a Sonic movie in the same way Sonic the Hedgehog 2 did in 2022, but it had some good gags in between the neverending pop culture references and Olive Garden product placement.
But for fuck’s sake, look at how they massacred my boy. The teeth, the human hands colored white to look somewhat like his white gloves, the awful, beady little eyes. Everything about Sonic’s original movie design screams a misguided desire to make something that looked “realistic” as opposed to the final, much more cartoony and game-accurate design. The negative reaction was so swift and so loud that movie director Jeff Fowler announced, on May 2, 2019, that the filmmakers would be going back to the drawing board to fix the blue blur’s live-action design. While this came as a relief to both Sonic fans and the innocent bystanders who would be subjected to this monstrosity on marketing signage every time they went to a theater, it spurred other conversations around creatives being “forced” to make changes based on fan outcry (Carrey even seemed conflicted on the turn of events), as well as conspiracy theories that the entire thing was a marketing ploy designed to generate buzz around the film.
The decision to redesign Sonic resulted in a three-month delay for the film, pushing it from November 2019 to February 2020. But when the new-and-improved Sonic was unveiled in a trailer around the time of that original November release date, fans were thrilled to see something that managed to balance the live-action world of the film and the character they know and love. Paramount also made sure to include some of the same shots that had been so heinous and off-putting in the first trailer, so the comparisons were incredibly flattering. Take, for instance, the scene where Sonic meets his cop friend Tom Wachowski and they both scream at each other. This was one of the worst shots of the old design, showcasing the awful human mouth they’d put on him. Now, Sonic looks like a character you can actually stand to look at for a 99-minute long movie. As an amusing aside, the Ugly Sonic design may not have gotten to star in the movie, but it did make an appearance in the Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers film in 2022.
Sonic the Hedgehog premiered in February 2020 to decent reviews and made over $319 million at the box office. Its success meant it got a sequel, which went on to be an even greater success in theaters bringing in over $400 million. Most recently, Paramount put out a spin-off series on Paramount+ for Idris Elba’s Knuckles. It hasn’t been going over very well, but it’s merely an appetizer for the next meal: Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The third movie is introducing Sonic’s rival, Shadow the Hedgehog, who will be voiced by Matrix and Cyberpunk 2077 star Keanu Reeves.
It’s wild to look back on that original trailer and think that, had Paramount not delayed the movie and pivoted, none of this might have happened. We’ve avoided the worst timeline, and the Sonic series has been undergoing a bit of a renaissance as a result. It feels like a distant memory now that we’re five years removed, but I can’t imagine anyone, from fans, to the creatives behind the movies, to even Paramount’s suits, isn’t glad that fan backlash changed the course of Sonic history.
Source link
