If you haven’t already seen the memes, watched the trailer, or heard the collective horrified gasps echoed throughout the internet, in reaction to the trailer for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, then, well, you still probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the reception to Sonic’s design was...less than stellar. In fact, the director of the movie, Jeff Fowler, made an official statement today regarding the look of the character.

Thank you for the support. And the criticism. The message is loud and clear... you aren't happy with the design & you want changes. It's going to happen. Everyone at Paramount & Sega are fully committed to making this character the BEST he can be...

Changes will apparently be made, though, what exactly those changes will entail is unknown at this point. Seeing as the film will be hitting theaters this November, that doesn’t leave too much time to fix things, but at least the criticism has been addressed. Sonic the Hedgehog will be released in cinemas worldwide this November 8th. If you want something a bit more traditional in the meantime, you can check out the recently uploaded part 2 of the official Team Sonic Racing: Overdrive animation.

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[skanimal]

this was all planned...

How to increase your ticket sales:
1 - Create an ugly character and release a trailer with it so that all the news and everybody is talking about it.
2 - Say that you are going to fix it because you are "listening to your audience".
3 - Just show the movie with the "fixed design" which has been the original hidden one since the beginning.

#marketingTactics

makes perfect sense

 

[Deleted User]

looks like they put someone that doesnt know who is sonic to draw him

 

[osaka35]

what's wrong with this?

i found this frame myself btw

why is his arm connected halfway down his torso? and his chest looks like it imploded? also, i wonder if they had a version with teeth that looked even worse.

 

[WhiteMaze]

They can do this easily. The character is all rigged at this point. Just redo the character apply the rigging done, render.
They have the firepower to do this.

I would actually love to see this being worked on. Must be one of those times that designers have a blast.

Firepower is not an issue here. The issue, is cost and time. The character might be rigged, however a redesign this dramatic on movie scenes with all their effects and renders finished, is a nightmare both time-wise and budget-wise.

The animators who will have to work on this have to be absolute experts at the job, understanding weight and movement mechanics, as well as take extra care not to ruin the interaction between the character and already done and set in stone environment around the character.

And to do this, requires a massive budget and time, most of all, time.

That being said they better do it, otherwise this movie will be an absolute disaster.


What baffles me, is the producers and CEO's who only see dollar signs in front of their eyes, and actively demand this movie to be more realistic than it should. Marketing to broader audiences (rather than just the Sonic niche market of a fan-base), is their only real concern here, which is why they won't mind butchering the characters design, if the look for it appeals to people outside the Sonic franchise as well as its fans.

Of course, rather than appeal to everyone, this has backfired massively, and the current result is a movie that appeals to no one. Not even their own fan-base.

 

[Deleted User]

He's shit in this movie. It's like "Hey guys, here's Jim Carrey! Remember how quirky he is? We do! Oh, and we didn't put him in a fat suit for some reason."

Probably cos having a comical fat villain called Eggman would crash twatter.

That being said, I'm sooooo offended they slimwashed a fat character! We can't have obese people represented in movies now? Ugh, the nerve of the Patriarchy! Just wait till I cuss outside the whitehouse about this! That'll learn em!

 

[Ev1l0rd]

Probably cos having a comical fat villain called Eggman would crash twatter.

That being said, I'm sooooo offended they slimwashed a fat character! We can't have obese people represented in movies now? Ugh, the nerve of the Patriarchy! Just wait till I cuss outside the whitehouse about this! That'll learn em!

It is a case of the facecasting Hollywood loves to do though, where an actors face being on screen a lot is more important than the character they play.

It's why every superhero movie ever has all of it's characters _outside_ the suits for like, 70% of the movie or why Iron Man has a facecam inside his suit.

That thing where Eggman looks kinda like Eggman is probably gonna be the post-credits scene, given how it was leaked beforehand that Eggman would get more comical and fatter as the movie progressed (you can kinda see a part of it in the trailer where he swaps his black coat for a red one.)

 

[KingVamp]

Much better.

 

[Rabbid4240]

why is his arm connected halfway down his torso? and his chest looks like it imploded? also, i wonder if they had a version with teeth that looked even worse.

Idk I didnt make the thing

 

[Joom]

Probably cos having a comical fat villain called Eggman would crash twatter.

That being said, I'm sooooo offended they slimwashed a fat character! We can't have obese people represented in movies now? Ugh, the nerve of the Patriarchy! Just wait till I cuss outside the whitehouse about this! That'll learn em!

But it's Robotnik's character. They could have at least put a bald cap on him, for fuck's sake.

 

[Pluupy]

God bless

 

[KyleHyde]

But it's Robotnik's character. They could have at least put a bald cap on him, for fuck's sake.

But he is bald at the end of the trailer (and also sporting a mustache closer to Eggman's actual design).

 

[extrablade]

Much better.

they even messed up the song

 

[eyeliner]

I believe this is kind of like a prequel. You know... How it all came to be. We have Jim Carrey now, only to have Gerard Depardieu in the sequel as a proper Eggman.

Curiously, I knew the character as Robotnick. Made more sense, because he always resources bots...

 

[Leqz]

They better not pull a Transformers in which 80% of the movie is just human and the other 20% is the actual thing in the movie title.

 

[chartube12]

I believe this is kind of like a prequel. You know... How it all came to be. We have Jim Carrey now, only to have Gerard Depardieu in the sequel as a proper Eggman.

Curiously, I knew the character as Robotnick. Made more sense, because he always resources bots...

Have you read the comics? Because Robotnick and Eggman are two different characters. Although after the mega man crossover, Eggman personality has become a mix of the two. Only without a shred of Dr. Robotnick’s humanity

 

[Rahkeesh]

They better not pull a Transformers in which 80% of the movie is just human and the other 20% is the actual thing in the movie title.

If the actual thing is gonna look like this, I'm 100% fine with 80/20.

 

[eyeliner]

Have you read the comics? Because Robotnick and Eggman are two different characters. Although after the mega man crossover, Eggman personality has become a mix of the two. Only without a shred of Dr. Robotnick’s humanity

Ah, then in that I am lacking. Much thanks for the clear up.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I haven't actually seen the trailer yet, but I've seen screenshots. To me, the biggest issue is the eyes. They're too small and shaped wrong and it looks weird.
Just changing that one thing would make a huge difference IMO. If they were to change just one thing it should be that, but they're probably going to take feedback into account and fix the most common complaints.
I guess that's a good thing about CGI, you can actually change things after the movie is filmed.

Have you read the comics? Because Robotnick and Eggman are two different characters. Although after the mega man crossover, Eggman personality has become a mix of the two. Only without a shred of Dr. Robotnick’s humanity

Did not know that. I always thought they were the same person and just changed name, like King Koopa was changed to Bowser.

They better not pull a Transformers in which 80% of the movie is just human and the other 20% is the actual thing in the movie title.

Transformers is a bit different because the main character is a human and most of the robots are sidekicks (except maybe Bumblebee). Now it might not be like that in the comics (haven't read them) but as I understand it the comics don't have a lot to do with the movies anyway. I guess the CGI would be too expensive if the robots were the main cast. It's not like the CGI wasn't already expensive enough. Avatar uses a lot of CGI, but much of the movie is just Na'vi talking and exploring and that could all be done with costumes. You can't really pull off Transformers with costumes, so the CGI for the robots has got to be extremely expensive.

Anyway, I digress. Sonic is clearly the main character of this movie so he should get a lot more screen time. CGI-wise it's much simpler than Transformers so if cost was the reason the Transformers didn't get more screen time that shouldn't be an issue here. I expect him to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/3 to 1/2 screen time (because obviously, there will be many other characters in the movie, it can't just be him all the time), and I would estimate about the same for Pikachu in Detective Pikachu since he's gonna be hanging around the human a lot of the time, but that movie has a lot of other Pokemon in it too which makes it more interesting.

 

[chartube12]

Well one is either a clone or from another universe. The comics go through a lot of reconnecting and it’s difficult to keep track!

 

[Rahkeesh]

He was always called Eggman in the Japanese game manuals and Robotnik in English game manuals. So there was always a good reason for the Death EGG. Sometime (SA1?) they finally bit the bullet and started calling him Eggman in English. Comics inventing their own explanation doesn't change how the division really started.