Today is the day anticipated by many Sonic fans all over the world. The new trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog the movie has dropped – and what a difference to the first one. After the train wreck that was aired back in May, the backlash against the studios was on an unprecedented scale. Sonics god awful design was the stuff of nightmares, while ‘Gangsters Paradise’ playing in the background did not sound right for a cute, fun video game character many fans grew up with. Such was the negativity surrounding the design that director Jeff Fowler pushed back the release date from November 15th 2019 to February 14th 2020 promising the audience they would use the time to improve Sonics look… and he was true to his word.
Looks pretty different right? The most prominent difference is Sonics eyes. The original was quite frankly horrifying and actually a bit scary. That, at the freakishly human like teeth really did look wrong. The colour on our blue hero has also been altered slightly, the tan on his muzzle and tummy are darker. Another big difference is the shoes and gloves we know and love – the white hands freaked me out.
I could go on about all the other more subtle changes made but I want to focus more on the trailer itself. It has a totally different vibe to it. Sonic is cute and kid friendly, he is a hyperactive ball of energy with a little goofball thrown in. The trailer emphasises this, I don’t know if this was made before the re-design but if they had kept with the original I think it would have felt wrong and unnatural. We also spotted a little Easter egg on the headband – did you see it? It will be interesting to see if there are any others hidden away.
Another throwback to the original games, is we get to see (what I suspect) is Greenhill Zone with a brief explanation as to how Sonic came into our world. Also, the rings functioning as warp gates? Okay I’ll buy it, it was after all a feature to the ‘special stages’ in the early games.
I will say this trailer seems to show a more emotional side to Sonic – one we can actually care about as we see various moods from anger, to sadness to happy. It delivers a much more sincere tone that wasn’t seen in the original. In the video games Sonic is very sure of himself, his worse trait is that his confidence borders on conceitedness with the speed and wit to back it up. This trailer seems to hint at a more vulnerable side – he knows his ability is all he’s got and he’s anxious to keep it from his enemy Dr. Robotnik.
Speaking of which:
I genuinely feel Jim Carrey will steal this movie. The few clips I’ve seen him in show him at his famous crazy best and I am also keen to see the transition from this:
To this:
We don’t know if a redesign is enough to save this movie. I mean it’s far more visually pleasing and it now looks and feels like a Sonic movie. Undoubtedly there will be haters. The sonic fan-base is almost as famous as the blue blur himself for being extremely divided and sometimes difficult to please. Some people have already complained about sonic having blue arms whereas his video game counterpart famously sports tan. Either way this argument is both old and irrelevant. It worked for ‘Boom’ Sonic and I think the redesign has been really well worked on given their timescale.
I’m saving my final opinion of course for the full movie once it hits the screen but after seeing this I’m feeling a lot more confident in this icons first outing on the big screen and we’ll right behind him when he races into theatres next year.
