Paramount Pictures just released a trailer that has been precision-engineered to demolish your childhood in a thermonuclear detonation of suck:

I don’t usually do this, but it’s reaction time:

If this trailer did as most trailers do and showed us the most exciting parts of a movie, this one is a pretty safe skip. It didn’t do a single thing right.

Did they really just make Sonic a hairy monstrosity? Did they really just have Jim Carrey do Dr. Eggman? Did they really just unfuse Sonic’s stylized eyes and made his arms blue? Did they really just labor a child abduction joke? Did they really just use a song over two decades too old to use for movie trailers?

What I really want to know is what the film industry has against anime style. It’s not like hand-drawn animation would kill the budget, especially if millions can be spent on overly-hairly CG models. Detective Pikachu could have been hand-drawn, but instead they made the pokemon have ugly scales and fur. Dragonball Evolution could have been hand-drawn, but instead they brought in actors to proceed to disgrace the source material.

Hey film industry, we actually watch this.

Here’s the thing: we really do want anime movie adaptations to be done in the anime style. When characters are done in the anime style to begin with, that’s how to do them justice. But it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, because when movies like Pokemon and Spirited Away aren’t watched in theaters, the film industry takes this to mean that people aren’t interested in traditional animation. Not only that, the film industry is really proud of its ability to throw tons of money at CG models.

At any point during this movie’s production, a person familiar with Sonic the Hedgehog could have piped up and said, “Look, this isn’t what Sonic the Hedgehog is supposed to be. I know this because I actually played the games, and watched some of the cartoons.” The reason I doubt this happened is because the film industry is packed with directors and producers who think they’re right about everything, and they’re surrounded by inefficacious suck-ups who are afraid to question them.

If they would have made the movie look like this:

Viewers would have loved it. Instead, someone threw up, decided to sprinkle dog hair on it, colored it blue, and called it Sonic the Hedgehog:

As you could imagine, this film’s creative direction was made without Sonic producer Yuji Naka’s knowledge or permission. When he was introduced to Sonic’s new style from a leak earlier this year, his reaction was “This is a Sonic the Hedgehog movie?”

Well said, man. Very well said.

EDIT (5 May 2019): The director of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie has since come forward saying that he’s taking fan input and will change Sonic’s design. What he comes up with remains to be seen. It’s refreshing to see someone in the film industry listening to feedback.