Behind the redesign of 'Sonic the hedgehog'

by Katherine Simon I’m sure by now you’ve already heard about the backlash the Sonic the Hedgehog movie has been receiving lately, most notably for Sonic’s uncanny design. Ever since the design was initially leaked, everyone and their mother has been tearing this naked man-hog apart. The mockery only increased when the trailer dropped just a few days ago and we finally saw Sonic with realistic human teeth and the proportions of a weird toddler-adult hybrid. Even Byte’s own Tanner Kinney couldn't help but join in on the Roast of Sonic, and we’ll be following up on his thoughts with this feature. It’s clear that an overwhelming majority of viewers were not too keen Sonic’s live-action design, enough for the production team at Paramount Pictures to take notice. Only two days after the trailer dropped, director Jeff Fowler announced that due to overwhelming criticism, the team will be going back and redesigning Sonic. Now at first glance, this sounds like fantastic news! The production team is actually listening to criticisms from the fans and applying it to their own work to hopefully deliver a better product, which is rare to see from a major Hollywood production. However, once you take a step back to think about the implications of this change and what this mean for the film’s production schedule, especially if they’re still aiming for that November 2019 release date, things start to look a lot less sunshine and rainbows for the people working on the film.

the Sonic the Hedgehog movie will be getting a day one patch https://t.co/C9hUXLxC0y

— 9 V O L T (@9_volt_) May 2, 2019

Fast isn’t always better

i feel so sorry for the animators on the sonic movie who were probably already telling them their focus test approved design looked weird and bad and are now being forced to fix it this late in production. honestly i'm prepared for it to look extremely similar or somehow worse

— Bobby Schroeder (@ponettplus) May 2, 2019

Sausage Party situation Sonic

Debunking the conspiracy theory

some of the stuff people have come up with for The Shining

I keep wanting to believe the Sonic movie purposely made an awful design, animated just what we saw in the trailers while the real movie would have a normal looking Sonic all along.

— Pan-Pizza (@RebelTaxi) May 2, 2019

in the form of this horrifying Halloween costume

Y'all the conspiracy theory that they intentionally designed the worst Sonic they could and released months of posters teasing the fake design only to incite backlash and stage a "redesign" with the animation they had all along is better than the illuminati

— Jentective Nikachu (@JennyENicholson) May 3, 2019

somehow Sonic

A better looking Sonic won’t save this film

Sonic Sonic this franchise is infamous for spawning some of the worst pieces of media under rushed production schedules

I know there's more than just "fixing" something. There's thousands of handshakes and contracts that go into a production like this. Nonetheless, I still believe it should be delayed for the health of the team. Six months is not long enough.#gottafixfast #nottoofast #SonicMovie pic.twitter.com/nw18z8zdnr

— Travis [ThatGomuGuy] (@TheUpbringer) May 3, 2019

The Smurfs Even Sonic’s original creator Yuji Naka was highly critical of the design when it was first leaked

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