No one has quite known what to make of the upcoming live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie, from the release of the first details, through the casting of James Marsden and Ben Schwartz, and on to getting our first looks at Sonic and Robotnik. Now we’ve finally got a trailer, and it’s not really helping clear anything up.
What exactly is this movie supposed to be? We’ve got Sonic delivering a line that has long since become a meme (“gotta go fast” from the Sonic X animated series theme song) while … “Gangsta’s Paradise” plays in the background (and takes some awkward pauses that don’t really work)? Then there’s Jim Carrey, as Dr. Robotnik, doing an excellent job being even more cartoonish than the computer-animated Sonic himself, but even though there’s kind of a jokey tone to everything, he seems like he’s in a whole different movie.
Overall, the most noticeable thing is that none of it seems like it goes together or knows what it wants to be—oh, and Sonic’s terrifyingly human teeth.
Sonic and his human teeth as he screams at the horror of his very existence.
In a weird way, it all feels kind of like how the recent Venom movie harkened back to an era when adapted movies like this took weird and sometimes wonderful liberties with their source material, but I can’t help feeling like this one won’t enjoy the same goodwill and popularity, with a less Venom and more Super Mario Bros. (the movie) vibe.
I’d love to be wrong, though, and there’s certainly a chance that it all works better together than the trailer indicates. It seems like we’re going to get a kind of Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner situation, and I’m guessing Robotnik’s eventual hair loss and increasingly bushy, frazzled mustache will come about through that dynamic, which could be fun if the deliberate zaniness doesn’t get grating. (But I’m not optimistic.)
We’ll all find out on November 8.
Oh, and in case you weren’t weirded out enough by this movie, those certainly appear to be giant mushrooms behind Robotnik at the end of the trailer. Is that Sonic & Knuckles’ Mushroom Hill Zone? Are they secretly planning to “& Knuckles” this movie and give us a horrifying CGI Knuckles, too? That could go so much worse than even Sonic has so far. Enjoy your mental image of what that could be like.
(image: Paramount Pictures)
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