Movie Sonic’s model will be redesigned following two days of intense backlash

As a long-time, incredibly jaded fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, I really wasn’t surprised when the first official movie trailer dropped a few days ago and plunged us all head-first into the uncanny valley. I had no confidence that it would be anything less ever since the initial teaser, which was more than enough to set off fan anxiety in and of itself.

This is as far as I go with posting this design, because I’m not adding nightmare fuel to my own blog.

Even as a silhouette, it’s obvious the design is a total miss. The situation got only got worse when it was revealed that Sega themselves weren’t happy with what the movie had done to Sonic’s eyes. Nevermind the fact that Sonic’s eyes are unique and easy to mess up; the eyes of a character – any character – are perhaps the single most important physical feature. They’re how we connect and part of what helps us determine whether or not a person is trustworthy. If some of the earliest information coming out about this movie is that the pivotal facial feature is borked, then yeah, I really wasn’t expecting much from that point forward (although admittedly, nothing could’ve prepared me for those fucking teeth).

Unlike me, however, other fans have been much more vocal about their dissatisfaction with this design, going so far as to dub it “the gremlin.” We knew it would be bad, but we could never predict it would be this bad, and an enormous backlash has flooded the internet in the wake of Tuesday’s reveal. The feedback has been so incredibly bad, in fact, that Sonic is actually getting a redesign. It sounds way too good to be true, but apparently this is legit. Director Jeff Fowler personally confirmed it today on Twitter.

Look, I’ve been a Sonic fan for so long that I’m more or less resigned to never truly getting what I want anymore. Even when Sonic media comes really REALLY close to greatness, there’s still just enough wrong with it to stop me from completely enjoying it. I’m used to it, and I expected nothing less from this movie. The horrifying goblin design isn’t what shocks me, this is. Who knows how much this is going to cost Paramount, and who knows if they’ll even still hit their November release date anymore. That alone seems like reason enough for the studio to just ignore the backlash and shove the movie into theaters anyway, but they’re actually putting in the work to ensure that what they release is good and do right by their audience. Maybe there really is some humanity left in this world.

 

Obligatory Legal Crap

I am not affiliated with Sega, Paramount, or the Sonic the Hedgehog movie in any capacity. I may be a lifelong Sonic fan, but there’s not enough money in the world to have convinced me that spending all day every day with that fucking gremlin would’ve been worth it. I’m going to have horrible teeth dreams as it is just from watching that trailer.