When news broke that there would be a live action Sonic the hedgehog game we all collectively side-eyed the hell out of this. How would this work? How 'bout they get the games right first? How's it gon' look? Then the teaser poster leaked and we all cracked up. He looks like a human in an outfit. He looks like Sanic. It's probably fake tho.
Now we have the trailer and...
I'm fortunate enough to have a fellow geek colleague at work, with whom I'm cool with. He told me the trailer to the Sonic movie had dropped and pulled me into a meeting room to watch it on his laptop.
This is basically what happened in that moment.
I don't hate the Sonic movie trailer as much as I feel I should. But was this ever going to look good though?
Let's be real.
Sonic's design looks awful, which is one of the worst things about this trailer aside from the questionable use of "Gangsta's paradise". Which honestly felt like an attempt to try and completely switch and subvert the tone of a Hip-Hop song for the sake of a movie trailer, just as Us did with Luniz's "I got 5 on it". Everything else in the trailer looks kinda okay. Even if the best part of this mess was the rings in the Paramount logo and nothing else.
Sure. This looks fucking awful. But it's the movie that Sonic and the fans deserve.
Sonic has had a hard knock life. Far more than Super Mario. If Super Mario was Britney Spears in her hey day, then Sonic was Christina Aguilera. Always getting a hard time, sometimes unfairly and always being judged to a harsher standard than the one that came before, despite doing a decent enough job. Super Mario always seemed to get it right, when Sonic didn't.
Whilst it's easy to shit on Sonic, call him a flop comparatively and say that his games aren't popular, a video game franchise has to be some-what popular for it to even get a film in the first place. The legacy of Sonic's good games is so untouchable that it affords SEGA to play Russian roulette with the franchise and not really affect it. The fact that SEGA are still able to put Sonic games out now says something. Plus, not every single Sonic game post Mega Drive era has been terrible. I genuinely believe that those who 'hate' on Sonic don't do so because they genuinely hate Sonic. It's because they're rooting for him. This is coming from somebody who shits on Sonic all the time. I don't want bad Sonic games. I don't even want good ones. I want great ones.
But the quality of Sonic's games is irrelevant, because the film will be shit no matter what. History has proven that popular video game franchises do not translate into solid films.
Exhibit A.
Super Mario games were critically acclaimed and couldn't have become a bigger success if Nintendo wanted it to. Super Mario software, sold Nintendo's hardware. Yet it got the worst film it could have possibly gotten. This film would follow Bob Hoskins to his grave and have his afterlife look like World 1-2.
Exhibit B.
Street Fighter was THE most popular beat 'em up of the 90s. Yet it got a film so bad that it put Jean-Claude Van Damme's career in the toilet, killed Raul Julia and gave Kylie Minogue cancer. And then when Street Fighter got real popular again in the 00s, somebody decided to give Chun-Li her own film featuring that woman that played Lana in Smallville. And once Smallville wrapped, we never saw her again.
So the real ones that we should be praying for aren't SEGA or Sonic, but the actors who signed up for this mess. Cyclops and Jim Carrey need y'alls prayers.
Oh. And I'm obviously going to watch the Sonic movie day of release. I'm cynical as hell, but I'm still going to see it. It could actually turn out to be...okay. Or so bad that it's actually amazing; as was the case with Street Fighter.