The “New” Sonic the Hedgehog Movie Designs
While it’s not as scary as the first Sonic the Hedgehog teaser poster it’s still a little jarring.
It’s been almost a year and the designs for “Sonic” The Hedgehog gave Modern and Retro Gamers a reason to collectively groan and hang their heads. While Hollywood does not get Video Games like they did back in the 90s (yes, we liked Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Brothers, and the campy Street Fighter movies) some modern “versions” of “Game Movies” like Assassin’s Creed and Tomb Raider serve as middling “Pop Corn” flicks but not quite rip-roaring, laugh inducing, action packed blockbusters that they were.
As a kid who played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Genesis we were hamstrung with a game that was more action packed than it was complex (like Super Mario World was for the SNES) which would draw us to peer hard at the sprites that were our avatars. All things considered this is pretty close if we’re going for “Realism” however an anthropomorphic cartoon hedgehog with a colossal forehead in the image to the left may work alongside living actors. However, will it be a dynamic character? Will the interaction be more than stilted “One Liners” and berating the world about not having a “Chilly-dog”?
We know “Jim Carry” is going to play Doctor Robotnik. We’ve got a bunch of “Main Cast” characters that are human which will probably interact with Sonic just like the Human cast did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. None of the other “Archie Comics” or “Sat AM” characters have been revealed but we have seen some “Principal Photography” of a large Billboard describing the town of “Green Hill” which is a nice nod despite the fact that the Sheriff patrol car in the background is not a Mobius Flying Patrol Vehicle but a Modern Day police-car.
Will it blend? We don’t know yet. However, character designs aside we’ve seen Hollywood do worse to “Video Game Based Films”. I remember the atrocity that was Doom with the “Genetic Tampering BAD” narrative and the whole “Demons from Hell” getting gutted from the story or the convoluted Uwe Boll “House of the Dead” and “Alone in the Dark” abominations that tarnished the solid horror of the original works. The clock is ticking on Sonic and it will require a solid viewing to tell weather or not Sega has gathered the Chaos Emeralds and produced a worthy product or they’ve run headfirst into a spike trap and lost all their rings.
-R. Rankin