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For many, when the original trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog premiered, Sonic seemed like he was designed from someone's nightmares. The internet exploded with harsh criticism over Sonic's almost human-hybrid design. The studio heard the fan's complaints and went into a total redesign before the final film was released. Fans were much happier with the new version of Sonic the Hedgehog.
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Meow
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This was wrong in almost every way. This was a film and animation studio
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that took an established design and created a reduction that took away all of the cute and all the cool
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and created an almost terrifying version of an instantly recognizable figure. The Sonic movie has somehow become at once
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the biggest, most public failure in modern film history and also one of the greatest media redemption stories
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of the past decade. There is literally nothing else like it. Movies that receive a seemingly unfettered amount of negative attention from the moment they're revealed rarely, if ever, recover
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But I guess rules don't apply to this guy because this is pure, unfiltered, accidental genius
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Sonic is not some random video game character. Sonic is a near-cultural ubiquity
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He, like Homer or SpongeBob, is so instantly recognizable that a mere shape or silhouette is all that's needed
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for most people to identify the character. And this version of Sonic was a failure in every way
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And weirdly, it was one of Sega's executives that predicted almost two decades earlier
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that something like this would happen. A Sonic movie adaptation began production
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way back in 1994 at MGM. Sonic the Hedgehog, Wonders of the World
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It was a film that was supposed to come out not long after the infamous Super Mario movie
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That movie from 1994 is essentially what today's movie became. It had a very rocky production, eventually making its way to DreamWorks before finally being cancelled entirely
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And then five years ago, the process repeated itself. The movie rights to Sonic will be picked up by Sony in 2014
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and four years later, the film would basically be scrapped and handed to Paramount
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After a process of turnaround as the studio put it who alongside five animation and effects houses would create this monstrosity A realistic Sonic as they put it by using Ted as a reference point for
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applying an animated character into a real life space. People did not respond well
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And then something kind of crazy happened. This disaster became international news
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There's been a lot of controversy about the Sonic character. When the first trailer for
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this movie came out earlier this year. Did you know this? The internet freaked out
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The world's entertainment media picked up this story and ran with it. Sonic the Hedgehog would
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become a trending topic on Twitter almost a dozen times over the course of a single month. It wasn't
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just fans that were talking about this. It was everyone who had ever touched a Sonic game or
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watched a Sonic cartoon or read a Sonic comic or simply wanted to be in the conversation
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It was gamers. It was movie fans, comic fans. It was everyone. And this wasn't really a
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debate. This meme would make its way across the web, and there was a surprising and very rare
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consensus amongst the entire internet. This didn't work. Despite a few conspiracies, it probably
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wasn't intentional. People didn't spend hundreds of hours working on something, sinking millions into a design only so the world over could despise it. This was a giant mistake
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It wasn't on purpose, but for once, there was a positive light hiding underneath the negativity
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People were fixing it. They were changing the design. There became this passion for making it better, and they were sharing that passion
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It became a group project for the entire internet to take part in. Suddenly, the Sonic movie was this weird collaborative fixer-upper
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Images were being shared. New designs would be trending, and it created this strange community
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But this is where most stories like this take a wrong turn. Studios pick release dates for a reason and delaying a film can cost them millions of dollars In reshooting or reanimating a film is equally expensive and time So most studios would let it live and hope the negativity might actually drive some ticket sales
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You know, watching a movie out of resentment, I guess. Yet this trailer accidentally created
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the greatest marketing opportunity in film history. I'm wet. I'm cold. There's a fish on my head
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and clearly I'm not going to be able to do this on my own
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Very rarely does a film, which is a one-off piece of entertainment to begin with
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ever have a chance to make its fans, of which before release there are rarely any
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feel like they helped shape or mold the movie. You rarely get an opportunity to create a marketing pitch
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that your ticket buyers genuinely feel like they were a part of
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This was a mistake, an accident, but the genius that followed was calculated
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Paramount delayed the film from its holiday November release date to a much less favorable Valentine's Day release
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a period of time in which blockbuster films rarely hit theaters, but the one day of the year when seats might still be full in slower seasons
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And then they came out and publicly admitted that this didn't work at all. They spoke directly to their fans, to the web that had enveloped their message
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and said, we messed up and we know it's going to cost us money, but we're going to fix this
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Not for us, but for you. They actually bit the bullet, and to the surprise of basically everyone committed to righting
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the wrong. But how practical was that? See you've accidentally created a microscope, pointed directly at your film in a way that
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almost no other film ever has. You accidentally built a marketing campaign that put your movie in front of eyes that
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probably never would have otherwise seen it. Now it has to not suck
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But please McCaffrey, go on about how amazing I am. Paramount brought in Tyson Hess, illustrator and artist for Sonic comic adaptations
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They handed Marza Animation Planet the job and sunk million into redesigning the character They enlarged and redesigned his eyes to make them more cartoony and more in line
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with his actual design. They redesigned and fixed his shoes and gloves. And most importantly, they redesigned
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Sonic's humanoid body into a much more recognizable contour that actually resembled Sonic's shape and body form
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So now the studio could confidently say that he no longer looked like Ace Ventura in a Sonic
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Halloween costume. And then they re-marketed the movie from scratch, almost as to reintroduce it
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They actually learned from their other marketing mistakes as well. They showed more of Jim Carrey's Robotnik
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They left some of the cringe on the table and introduced more humor in their trailers
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And then they introduced the world to a completed film that was actually quite good
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A film that would make hundreds of millions of dollars that would engender actual goodwill
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and a film that should feasibly spawn a franchise. There's really no way to intentionally recreate the accidental genius of Paramount's Sonic
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movie rollout. They couldn't have known that their catastrophic mistake would lead to the creation of a community
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to a trending rallying cry across the web. They could not have known that one trailer would ignite the love and public acknowledgement
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of a franchise and a mascot that no longer tops public interest
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But once they did, they managed to play the internet in a way we rarely see marketing companies successfully do
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They took mass negativity and acknowledged it. Played the role of a friend, they accepted the intervention and fixed their problem for the sake of their loved ones
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Well, for lack of a better ogy. The accidental genius of the Sonic movie made them more money than we'll ever know
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It likely renewed interest in the games, future games, future films, comics
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The blue blur is back, even if it was a rocky road and honestly he's in pretty good shape
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