Sonic Live Action Movie Thread (Read OP for topic rules) "Trailer 2 on Page 482)

[Heckboy]

Honestly none of the fan edits look much better except the ones that just straight up use the game design.

[Failinhearts]

Giving my full thoughts on the Sonic Movie trailer and all the aspects about it, both what I like and dislike. I spoke on it through text earlier, but this has more input.

[CaptainRobo]

Found an good example of an design change. The left is the original one, and the other one is the final one. Notice the differences between the King Kong's faces seen on both posters.:

 

[Razule]

53 minutes ago, Heckboy said:

Honestly none of the fan edits look much better except the ones that just straight up use the game design.

Yeah, cyclops Sonic with mostly the same appearance would probably look even worse.

[Wittymations]

37 minutes ago, CaptainRobo said:

Found an good example of an design change. The left is the original one, and the other one is the final one. Notice the differences between the King Kong's faces seen on both posters.:

 

To be fair, aside from being a really, really big ape, King Kong's design isn't that important. If he's just a big ass ape, well... there you go. Good design. Him having a tooth sticking out isn't really that noteworthy. You'd have to try to screw that up.

Sonic is a different case, there's a lot of things noteworthy about his design, ranging from his color scheme to his shoes. There's a lot less freedom to go with than King Kong -- this isn't to say King Kong isn't iconic by any stretch, he is. Definitely. But his design isn't as important as the novelty of him.

Certainly, in both cases, there's a boundaries. King Kong wearing clothing wouldn't go well. King Kong being purple wouldn't either.

I suppose you can say there's an argument to be made about minimalist changes working well -- and I'd ultimately agree. Green eyes and blue arms are examples of this. Sure, there's this weird shitstorm that starts off, but they faded out. Besides Buffles, who really cares anymore?

[CaptainRobo]

Well, this pop out.:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Rubies-Costume-Sonic-Hedgehog-Deluxe/dp/B07PX42FGP

[Blueknight V2.0]

Well guys Canadian Guy Eh in about the last 15-minutes or so of CGE's livestream tonight. He gave a more detailed insight about the amount of crunch time that would happen for this film to match the release date. So I'm hoping it does get delayed by a few months, just to avoid crunch time alone that the animators would go through because the design was the way it was.

 

[CaptainRobo]

The costume seem to be based on this.:

 

 

 

[Razule]

Ah, then whether they actually make significant changes to his design or not, the merchandise will still be off from what's in the movie.

[CaptainRobo]

Apparently, the Detective Pikachu movie's Director of Photography was offered a job for the Sonic movie, which he probably turn down the job. He was glad that Pikachu doesn't look like Sonic. Can't blame him for that.

 

[KHCast]

 

I'm with Jim on this tbh. It just seems a bit much to give paramount that much credit when considering the factors like the posters and such.

[StaticMania]

Well, it seems the understanding is that some amount of people actually believed that.

Isn't that just the darnedest thing, all this time one would come to think that was a joke.

Sad days.

[Salamander]

9 hours ago, Myst said:

I think the movie will end in San Fransisco. Sonic will get his ring back, and while fighting Robotnik, warp himself to several different locations. (The desert, france, while he warps Marsden & Sumpter to a farm somewhere) It will be a crazy scene with Sonic warping across the world in seconds.

I'm in agreement with this, and that's actually what the Eiffel Tower poster is directly implying, since it's seen through a warp ring in the poster in question.  I imagine the grand finale of the film will be a warpfest as much as a speedfest.

This gets me wondering about something.  Why on Earth, in the trailer, does Sonic think he needs to save the world?  Maybe Robotnik gets his hands on the warp ring, and Sonic fears its power in the wrong hands?  I'm also going to propose that Sonic's super-speed feats are actually in part to power up the warp ring - giving him a motivation from the start of the film, and explaining why he didn't just warp back to his home planet before.

...Thinking about it, warping kind of defeats the point of super-speed.

[Tarnish]

Just now, CaptainRobo said:

Apparently, the Detective Pikachu movie's Director of Photography was offered a job for the Sonic movie, which he probably turn down the job. He was glad that Pikachu doesn't look like Sonic. Can't blame him for that.

 

Sonic's fast..but not fast enough to dodge burns like that.

(Hell, he can't even dodge a tranquillizer dart..)

[Alexios31]

If changed to Sonic's design are significant then there is no way the movie will be released this year. 

[Myst]

1 hour ago, Alexios31 said:

If changed to Sonic's design are significant then there is no way the movie will be released this year. 

If the changes are significant, then yes, most definitely it will be delayed. But I think Paramount wants to keep that November slot, as Paramount wants kids to be asking their parents for Sonic movie toys and other merch for the Christmas season. The movie will likely get a marketing blitz on Nickelodeon.

I'm concerned the staff might spend too much time reworking Sonic and other effects will end up looking bad because of it. This is going to be an effects-heavy movie, especially during the climax of the film, and I want all of the robots, explosions, and other visual effects to look their best. 

[Mega]

To be frank, I think their first mistake was using mocap for Sonic. It's obviously the root cause of nearly all of the design problems here. They used the mocap WAY too heavily as a crutch.

[BaronGrackle]

On 5/3/2019 at 4:23 AM, Ming Ming Hatsune said:

I saw this and I bursted out laughing.

Sorry if this was posted, but I just realized: they were going for the Sonic CD model!

[PeterPancake]

1 minute ago, Mega said:

To be frank, I think their first mistake was using mocap for Sonic. It's obviously the root cause of nearly all of the design problems here. They used the mocap WAY too heavily as a crutch.

Well, most movies like this don't use keyframe animation anymore. Mocap has taken the industry by storm

[Mega]

What about studios like Pixar and Dreamworks? I'm p. sure those don't rely on mocap.

At the very least, Paramount should've stylized more instead of trying to keep Sonic as creepily human as possible.

[PeterPancake]

1 minute ago, Mega said:

What about studios like Pixar and Dreamworks? I'm p. sure those don't rely on mocap.

At the very least, Paramount should've stylized more instead of trying to keep Sonic as creepily human as possible.

Not sure about animated features but I know every major live action studio film uses motion capture for humanoid characters.

 

The face being the way it is so Schwartz could perform as Sonic

[Mega]

But that's the problem. Sonic is a very cartoony, stylized character. His proportions, his face, everything is distinctly different. And while I get that they were trying to go for a "realistic" approach, the end result looks like a tiny human in a costume.

And maybe they shouldn't have kept the face that way? They could still use his voice, but it's obvious the mo-cap face being left so close to a human structure did NOT end well.

Hell, I'm pretty sure detective pikachu used some mocap, and his face looks infinitely more stylized and likable.

[PeterPancake]

I think they could have definitely went for something more stylized/carcaturized if they really wanted to (see my avatar). Reynolds does do mocap for Pikachu. But Miller was dead set on realism, he specifically didn't want him looking like a Pixar character... And well, now he has to pay the consequences. 

[Scritch the Cat]

54 minutes ago, PeterPancake said:

I think they could have definitely went for something more stylized/carcaturized if they really wanted to (see my avatar). Reynolds does do mocap for Pikachu. But Miller was dead set on realism, he specifically didn't want him looking like a Pixar character... And well, now he has to pay the consequences. 

The difference is that Reynolds' lip-syncing is being transferred to a character that already was designed over two decades ago.  Both his motions and the design were taken into consideration.  And incidentally, even in 2D animation, it isn't rare for them to film the actors talking and draw the characters' mouths moving the same way, but they still have a unique design.

Sonic's mouth in those shed scenes doesn't even look motion captured and transferred to a model.  It looks like they rendered the model without a mouth and spliced in footage of a human mouth talking; all the more so because there even seem to be hints of a mustache.

[Indigo Rush]

Good morning.

I have opinions on the trailer I saw.

 

Y'know I was starting to warm up to the idea of a live action Sonic movie being it's own little thing. I thought to myself, "kids are going to watch this and get into Sonic, much like how I watched the cartoons back in the 90s and that was my favorite thing to watch while I played the games." No biggie. Sonic might look off, but it'll certainly have it's charm. Sonic and some cop go across the country to find Sonic's rings. Robotnik is chasing them. Action scenes will be cool. They learn the power of friendship. Whatever. Nothing special, but nothing offensive. I had made peace with it, logged onto the group chat with a couple other ex-SSMB members and said, "ya know what, I'm okay with this."

Then the trailer dropped.

I am not okay with this.

I don't think it bears repeating how awful this looks, but holy dick this looks ugly. I've gone on a few Twitter rants when the silhouette was revealed, and I explained to everyone the risk that this film had falling into the "uncanny valley." We're going to put a pin in that and extrapolate what's going on later, but here's the abridged thread if you're curious to take a gander at what I wrote: 

 

So, going off of the trailer and merchandise listings, we know that the alleged leak from Reddit was, in fact, legitimate. This means that we're going to have a baby Sonic (oh no) who'll be raised by an owl (a deep cut nobody asked for) and it's going to have every bottom rung joke you'd expect.

Actually, let's analyze one of them:

This is all wrong. Let's set aside the subject matter for now (they make a breast-feeding joke at another point, so there's no point in calling this one out for being inappropriate) and talk about why this doesn't work, and what could've been done better, because this really frustrated me. 

Woman: "Do you have your child in your bag?"

Tom: "No... I mean yes it's a child, but it's not mine."

Man: "It's not your child?"

Then they awkwardly walk away.

Abomination: "It smells like body spray and old ham sandwich..."

NO. NO. NO. Do these hacks not know how to write a joke? The flow is off, the punchline is weak and it lingers longer than anyone would have ever wanted. They overexplain the joke.

Let's try a different take:

Woman: "Do you have your child in that bag?"

Tom: "Oh, no... it's not my child."

Woman: "Oh, I see."

*she immediately, inconspicuously pulls out her phone to call the local police, and Tom's phone rings (y'know, since he's a cop?)*

...and you could make a whole gag with this setup. This works better, because they don't overexplain the setup. When Tom says "It's a child, but it's not mine", he's overexplaining. It's funnier when you leave the audience to do a little work to get the context. With "No, it's not my child," that already presumes that he's admitting to having a child in the bag, despite how reassuringly he's saying it. The bearded man saying "...it's not your child?" is further lingering on the punchline. No, we already had our weak punchline. Then they awkwardly walk away... like...? Hello? Child kidnapper? Maybe don't make a joke focused on child abduction in the first place.

My point is that the writers are hacks. Jim Carrey's performance is, well, Jim Carrey, but the stuff they're going to have him saying is not going to reflect well on him. Everything I've seen and read regarding this film is simply not funny.

Ben Schwartz disappointed me. He doesn't sound like a Sonic. Sonic doesn't look like Sonic. So remember that pin we placed a few paragraphs up? Let's look at this again; there are actually two things at play here, and that's brand recognition and basic human psychology. The first one is the reason why Jeff Fowler is even bothering to tell us they're going to "fix" the design (I don't believe this any more, I think it's a PR stunt). They are expecting the cathexis of Sonic fans, general audiences who grew up in the 90s, and literally anybody who knows what Sonic is (this is a LOT of people) to see their film on the merits that Sonic is in it. Some people saw Wreck-it Ralph solely because Sonic would be on the screen for a few seconds. That's the power of brand recognition. 

They botched it. They botched it in ways that makes me feel bad for giving the Sonic Boom designs such a hard time a few years back. This character resembles Sonic in the most rudimentary of levels: blue walking talking hedgehog with red sneakers. That's about it. You got that much right. Yep. Sure is a blue talking hedgehog with red sneakers.

So, this is Sonic the Hedgehog, in case you're joining us: 

This is what I like to call a "CARTOON CHARACTER."

This design is famous and is one of the very few things that keeps this character relevant. It's an amazing design, beautiful colors and expressive eyes. This is a true cartoon character. This is a Mickey Mouse. This is a Bugs Bunny. This is a Spongebob Squarepants. 

This is not a realistic animal creature that's supposed to interact with real people. Sonic 2006 got thrashed for many reasons, and putting a cartoon character in a non-cartoony real world unironically is one of those reasons; and even then, Sonic largely looked on-model with his traditional design. They pulled him through a taffy machine, yes, but it was still Sonic.

This sort of reminds me of those old threads on Sonic Retro or around here, where the topic was to make your own Sonic redesign? And remember how a number of people interpreted Sonic as a funny fantasy animal not too unlike something from Disney's Robin Hood or some of the... furry art from the more sexually depraved corners of the Internet? See, this Sonic looks like those. And it's getting about the response I got whenever I saw that fan art way back: disgust and disturbance; only this time, it's felt by a large majority of the population, and I feel a sense of vindication there. No one in their right minds wants a realistic furry Sonic, and shame on them for going with this.

And because they went with "Furry Sonic" (I'm calling this disaster "Furry Sonic" now) now they're in danger of the Uncanny Valley, and boy do they fall right into it. 

The theory of the Uncanny Valley assert that when you create a character, the closer it resembles humanity in real life, the more we're likely to identify it as human. This sort of applies to animals as well, but not to that great of an extent. This is part of why Detective Pikachu can get away with realistic Pokemon; they're definitely detailed in such a way that they look alive, but they aren't human enough, it's like coming across a new animal, except many of us have seen characterized versions of them. It's a video game franchise, this is a forum where most of us have played Pokemon at some point, so it's not going to be a shock. They stay largely on model and don't go too far out of line.

Furry Sonic on the other hand is too detailed. Sonic is known as being a bunch of circles with noodles as limbs. Hardly realistic. Well, now we're seeing him with a human-like body, complete with muscle detail, glutes, buns and thighs. His hands look human. He has a human mouth... and this is the biggest sin, his eyes. His eyes look like slightly larger human eyes. This is the big one. Sonic's face. NO ONE. LIKES. SONIC'S. FACE. NO ONE. If you think you like Sonic's face, you're wrong. Why is this upsetting so many people? It's because the face is largely how humans communicate with one another. We look at one another's eyes for cues for emotion and intent. This is how we're designed, and it's basic human psychology.

Now we have Furry Sonic. Real human face, except the nose is like a dog's nose. We have enough visual information for our brain to parse Sonic as human-like, but the blue and tan fuzz and nose and animal ears are adding static to our process. We're unsettled. We're repulsed. This is the Uncanny Valley at work. If Sonic is less human-like (as a cartoon character, like he should've been), his human-like characteristics stand out to us and become appealing in that context. People like cartoon Sonic's eyes because they're more expressive than a human's eyes can be. We like how he moves because he moves faster and more fluidly than a human can. He does human things better than humans, and that's appealing. And the non-human things (proportions, colors, etc) are seen as details that identify him as a non-human. Sonic is a perfect cartoon character. But now we're on the side of the Valley where realistic human robots and awkward motion-captured CG films like Polar Express are. They look human, but don't behave human. Furry Sonic isn't exactly like this, but he's close enough that it unsettles us. And judging by how the internet reacted, I would say it's in support of the theory.

So, Furry Sonic is uncanny. I hate it. The jokes are unfunny. I hate it. Gangster's Paradise is uncool. I hate it. 

I hate everything about this. 

I hate that people are even giving this a chance any more. At this point, I'm even considering cancelling my plans of seeing it with friends. My intent was to watch it with some friends who weren't quite as familiar with Sonic as I was, so we could all have a fun time talking about how ridiculous the movie is, but after stewing it over, I'm actually offended by this. The entire thing is an insult not just to people who like Sonic, but to children who they're expecting to love this. It's insulting to the intelligence of it's audiences and I think Paramount should be ashamed of themselves for letting it get to the point to where they're claiming they'll "fix" Sonic.

Want to fix Sonic? Cancel the movie and start over.