Sonic’s Cinema Debut

For many years, it’s been known that movie adaptations of video games will always be bad, or at least much worse than the source material. Take for instance the movie Ratchet and Clank, a movie based off of the video game series of the same name. The series holds a special place in many people’s hearts. However, the 2016 movie has an astonishing 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Recently, the newest establishment on the list of “Movies that shouldn’t exist but do because live-action animated films give studios money” is the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. When the film was teased back in late last year, fans of the series and others alike unanimously agreed that no matter what happens, the movie would be awful. On April 30th, 2019, the Paramount Pictures YouTube channel uploaded the official “Sonic the Hedgehog” movie trailer, which immediately faced the backlash most expected. Not even a week after it was uploaded, the trailer has accumulated over 26 million views, with 585,000 dislikes.

The main issue that people have with the trailer is the design of Sonic. Compared to his original look, he has more human-like features, including his legs, which were first teased last year. When asked about her initial opinion of the trailer, Sophomore Katherine Dembowski explained, “You don’t wanna know…”, and unsurprisingly said, “…my first reaction was how disappointed I was in humanity for coming this far.”. Many fans expected the source material to be treated with care since it means so much to many people, but that was unfortunately not the case. Even the series’ main villain Doctor Eggman doesn’t have his iconic and comedic body shape most were expecting. Instead, he has a slim figure and tall in stature.

On May 2nd, the director of the movie took to Twitter to tell fans to “expect changes”. When asked about how they could make specific changes to Sonic’s design, junior Anjaleigha Ham says “Make him look like Sonic! In the trailer, he has 2 separate eyes, but in the games, he has connecting eyes. He also has Nikes”. One positive of the trailer is that if he pulls it off, Jim Carrey could definitely be a good Doctor Eggman based on his roles in past movies. Ultimately, this movie has been met with a great amount of criticism due to the realistic take on Sonic’s appearance which although the other qualities of his character remained the same like his abilities and chill persona. The fateful date of November 8th will truly determine what’s in store for this movie.