Oh yea, I was meaning to come back here and share my thoughts on this.
First time I saw it, it weirded me out. Not nearly as much as the initial poster drop, thankfully, but still pretty off.
Once again I’ve made my own edits:
Honestly the only things that really bothered me were the no socks and gloves and a bit of the proportions. Other than that, I honestly don’t hate this design. It’s weird to me that people are actually upset about the separate eyes, but to me that actually makes a lot more sense. It only looks weird because of the middle mouth, but the two eyes are much better with the side mouth that I gave him.
And to be even more honest, the design has actually grown on me quite a bit since I made this edit. The trailer screenshot still freaks me out, and I’m dreading how he’s going to actually move, but looking at the render I can tell it’s Sonic and I’m at the point where I can see some aesthetic appeal in it.
Don’t get me wrong, this still really isn’t Sonic, and his original design has much more appeal than this one, but surprisingly my opinion has swayed from “Kill it with fire,” to “This is alright.”
I can imagine expecting it to be bad, but why wanting?
Yes, I feared the worst on this project from the moment I heard it was a live action CG hybrid, but does the blue blur really need any further humiliation after all these years? Sega has been barely surviving on flukes for like a decade now, and they still have no clear business model for Sonic at all, they just seem to crap out whatever they think is gonna sell as fast as possible to get it ready for Christmas. It’s maddening to watch.
You are 100% right.
I was never a fan of Sonic, but looking at it’s veteran fans makes me want to see the franchise out of the trash dumpster it is now.
Well obviously, it was more your wording that confused me.
And honestly, that mentality annoys me - it doesn’t have to be that way. If someone who actually cared about the source material worked on something that had promise, you could make a great movie out of it.
Even Sonic for an example, has a solid cast of characters it could choose from, and building blocks for a solid plot (with a little imagination). Preferably it would break from the norm a little, but even one that played it straight with the Chaos Emeralds could be enjoyable if handled correctly.
Which supports Obsidian’s point; there’s no inherent reason they should fail. Good movie can be made from video games. We just have a movie industry that likes making products more than movies, so we get this.
Detective Pikachu does something crucially different, it’s not making Pokemon look more like animals, they look exactly as they do in all media. Sonic is making Sonic look “realistic” but not like the other depictions of sonic, his design has been changed to look realistic and sacrificing the look.
Because most movies are bad, in such a saturated market it’s inevitable, it’s just skewed in this particular example because it’s only a tiny sector of the greater industry. Not to mention most people working in the higher up parts of said industry barely understand the medium as it is today to begin with and so palm it off. It’s nothing to do with the idea, it’s just there’s no passion put into it.
I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to nostalgia
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…I think?
Which is sad, because Ludicolo is one of the few Pokemon I still like
There are still some character designs I don’t agree with. Most are made to look realistic, and some appear to be more animal-like than you’re saying.
I mean, Jigglypuff is the “Balloon Pokemon” and they gave her fur. They gave a balloonfur.
And then Charizard has scales, which just looks really weird to me.
In fact, I think the only character design I actually like more than the original is Gollurk’s, who’s seen for, like, two seconds.
So, back to Sonic, I want to see how this does. I want it to do well, of course, even though I don’t follow Sonic at all, and I’ve never played the games. As a kid, I was a huge fan of Sonic X, so I do hope that there will be some level of nostalgia here for me.
Well yeah, that’s my point. Detective Pikachu seems to have a grasp on how to successfully adapt a video game into a movie, from visual design to worldbuilding to (hopefully) story. The Sonic movie doesn’t seem to understand any of this, so it’s causing general audiences to cringe from the first promotional material we get to see. The problem isn’t inherent in the material used, it’s in the care and understanding of the people making it.
