The upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog movie promised gritty realism with its first design of the character. Now, after his makeover, I fear I won’t be able to suspend my disbelief.
When I was four-years-old I found a hedgehog on the side of the road, took it home, painted it blue and called it Ian – because it was Ians faster than my other pets. At least I pretended it was as I swooshed it through the air and made it run vertical loops on my Hot Wheels track.
Ian was a legend, and I wouldn’t have changed a single thing about him. So you can probably understand why I’m slightly upset about Sonic The Hedgehog’s recent redesign for his upcoming film.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when the first trailer was released, revealing a sort of photorealistic imagining of the character, complete with life-like blue fur, two wide-apart eyes, human teeth and knee joints. While the voices of reason on Twitter weren’t too keen, I was immediately filled with joy as memories of Ian and I crushing eggs with moustaches painted on them came flooding back to me. “Take that, Dr. Robotnik, you fat bastard!” Ian would say in his adorable little red shoes. Oh how we laughed.
But then they gave Sonic a digital makeover, toned down the fur, swapped his eyes for two massive ones and did away with the knee joints. To everyone’s satisfaction, he now actually looks like Sonic, but no longer does he resemble the childhood pet I acquired whilst stuck in a traffic jam on the A1(M).
He’s simply too cartoony, which is going to make all of the rolling balls of blue electricity and jumping through golden ring portals to other dimensions look really unrealistic.
I could have believed all of that with the previous design. The gritty realism of it was reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s alternative take on The Batman. And that’s exactly what I’d mentally prepared myself for: a dark, sociopolitical analysis of technology-assisted hedgehog culls, with James Marsden starring as me.
It’s for that reason that I think they should now revert back to the first Sonic design and give us the cult classic it originally promised to be. Otherwise, I fear the film may actually turn out to be quite good.