I know what you’re expecting — you came here wanting to read what I have to say about the trailer, as a Sonic The Hedgehog fan. You want me to watch it and get mad at what they’ve done; you want me to flip out over every little detail that’s wrong or odd or otherwise stupid, and to tear it apart in a way that only I can.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that’s not going to happen.
From the moment I woke up today until now I’ve been seeing the trailer discussed, seen memes made of it, and everyone has just been tearing it to shreds.
What I want to know from everyone is, what the hell were you expecting? No, really, what were you actually expecting the film to be?
Video game based films have a notorious track record for being considered poor. Some have been better than others, namely when done as passion projects, but those seem to never be the big-budget projects like this. Street Fighter? Meh. Dead or Alive? Meh. Super Mario Bros.? The original “Meh” gaming movie. Mortal Kombat? Well, the less we say about those films, the better…
That’s not to say these films are bad on their own – hell, I kind of like Super Mario Bros.. The problem comes in that they are films based on known franchises with established worlds, people expect them to perfectly match those games and those worlds, but that’s rarely, if ever done. Liberties are taken, plots are adjusted, sometimes heavily so, and on a whole things get so twisted that you wonder, in some cases, how it’s at all related to the source material beyond some elements being shoehorned in!
So, when the film was first announced and that first theatrical posters were shown with the infamous “fuzzy Sonic,” I had no reaction other than apathy. I’m not even going to bother getting invested in the hype or anti-hype (I don’t care much for movies anyway, at least in theaters, if at all) because I know it’s just going to be, well, whatever it is – a film that in many ways could have been anything, but will have whatever elements of Sonic that the people behind it felt were worth running with but otherwise will be it’s own thing.
That’s fine. Let them do that. Like I said, it may turn out of the like the other films – possibly okay on its own, if you take it for what it is, but nothing superb. Then again it could be the best fucking film ever, but I kind of doubt that. Terrible? Probably not, but it could go any way, but the odds are stacked at “average” in my opinion.
So, as it stands, I haven’t watched the trailer yet, but for the hell of it, I will now – after this, I’ll watch the trailer and let you know what I think, given the above acting as a kind of disclaimer.
Ready? Let’s do this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvvZaBf9QQI (this was the original trailer link. The video has since been removed, but is being kept here for archival sake.)
So, that’s it? That’s what everyone has been tearing into?
Okay, you’re not going to believe this, but… I actually like what I see!
Seriously, while Gangsta’s Paradise (amazing song, by the way) playing the background makes zero sense and it opens with the ultimate in meme-generation pandering ( “Gotta Go Fast” ) what’s actually shown kind of works.
I mentioned above that the thing with all these films is that they seem to never be fully true to the source material. and this is no exception. That being said, Jim Carrey seems to be pulling off a good Robotnik for what role the character has here, and I see where they took his “mechanical genius and owner of a never-ending source of gadgets and weapons” motif seriously, so, that looks good. Sonic could be worse – I can stand it, at least. It works. That’s all I can say on that, it works well enough.
I don’t think this is as bad as people are making it out to be, but then again, I’m just taking it for what it is and, more importantly, not taking it too seriously. Don’t read that wrong – I’m not saying this is great by any means, but I’ll give it a chance sometime, maybe, as it doesn’t look terrible to me.
I’ll leave it at that. If you don’t like it, I totally get it. I just am not as repulsed by it as others, it would seem… or maybe, like so many things, it’s being talked about so badly because it’s “cool to hate” it right now? I don’t know, and I don’t care.
Gotta Go Fast!
UPDATE: Apparently they are changing the way Sonic looks due to negative commentary online. Alrighty then…