Film of the Week: Sonic the Hedgehog

This review is going to be a little different, mainly because I haven’t actually seen the film. I know what you’re thinking already, how can I comment on a film I haven’t seen? Surely, that’d be a silly thing to do. But hear me out.

Sonic the Hedgehog hasn’t had the smoothest of developments, which started to become a very bumpy ride when the first trailer was released. Sonic’s design was hideous. Panned by critics and fans of Sonic alike, the trailer was instantly disliked. Tim Miller tried to defend Sonic’s design by stating that they had to make him look like he would fit in the real world. That doesn’t make much sense considering Sonic is a walking talking blue hedgehog – strictly speaking there’s nothing “real world” about him. In fact, but redesigning the character, they’ve made it less “real world” than he would be if he just remained the way we all know him to look like.

But, the filmmakers did something most do not, and that’s listened to the out pour of negativity and did something about it; they changed Sonic’s look by reverting back to how we know him. In a way, the filmmakers didn’t have much choice. Too many people would have boycotted the film and made it a flop, resulting in the studio losing money. They pushed back the release of the film by a few months whilst they worked on making Sonic look like Sonic the Hedgehog. When the trailer was released featuring the redesign, it was clear there was plenty of praise.

I am writing this article because we owe it to those who listened to go and give this film a chance. We also owe it to the people who’ve lost their jobs, which is absolutely absurd. A special effects studio which only followed the orders of one Tim Miller and created that abomination, and then worked tirelessly to fix the problem, shut down. Why? All the information we have explaining why, is practically contradicting itself. We owe it to them to watch the film.

There was what can be regarded as a tradition when it comes to film adaptations of video games, and that it did poorly. That tradition seemed to have been finally broken when Pokemon: Detective Pikachu came out. A decent video game movie was finally made, and as I stated in that article, I believed it was down to the fact Pokemon was more than just a game series, it was an anime and film series as well, with each media outlet following different stories, so it was easy enough to make a film, because you’re not really adapting a game, but instead adapting the brand into a live-action film. That’s what I see in Sonic the Hedgehog. They’re adapting the brand, not one singular game.

All that leaves me to do is go and watch the film and pay my respects to the company which shouldn’t have shut down by following orders.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)