Sonic The Hedgehog: The Movie

First things first.  I'm really glad that they spent all that money fixing Sonic's appearance, because the charming visuals are about the only thing that made this movie enjoyable.  If they'd kept his original design, Sonic would have been the next "Cats".  

Okay, so I was never a Sega fan.  And the Sonic games, while beautiful, never really did it for me.  The controls just weren't as tight as Mario, and therefore the games just weren't as fun.  I know basically nothing about Sonic's personality, so I have no idea how faithful this movie was to the original media.  So in case that's not clear enough: I am not this movie's target audience.

So anyway, Sonic has your basic "E.T." plot.  A creature comes from another planet or dimension or exotic location, befriends a human, and the human has to hide them from the rest of society, while they try to find a way to get back home.  There's really more movies that fit this format than you might think.  It's not just E.T. and Mac & Me, and it's not always a space alien.  It could be a sasquatch or a fugitive robot, basically any creature you'd want to keep away from the FBI.

Garbage Pail Kids, Masters of the Universe, Beastmaster 2, Howard the Duck, The Smurfs... Most of these movies could have taken place in the title character's home planet/dimension/environment, but they had them come to Earth and meet a human instead.  Maybe it was for budget reasons, maybe the writers wanted a human connection to make you care more, or maybe it's just easier than writing a real plot.  

I mean, who knows how to write a Sonic movie that takes place on Sonic's own homeworld?  I guess it's too much trouble to pick up a Sonic comic book and find out what kind of plotlines they have there.  Instead, let's just throw Sonic at Earth and have a standard "fish out of water" story.

There's nothing wrong with the Sonic movie (except the scene with the obligatory fart joke - I know kids love that stuff, but I hate easy humor).  It moves at a solid pace, it has a few cute jokes, and the cast seems to have fun with it.  Like I said in my blog about "The Stand", James Marsden is the perfect everyman.  Jim Carrey leaves no scenery unchewed, as expected.  The other actors... exist, I'm almost sure of it.

Anyway, Sonic is an okay movie, but nothing you haven't seen before.  When compared to other E.T. movies, it's one of the better ones, but that's a low bar.  When compared to other video game movies, it's still one of the better ones, but that's an even lower bar.  It runs rings around the Mario Bros movie, but that's the lowest bar of all.

 

Gotta Go Fast

I woke up this morning to a scene of unimaginable horror, a monstrous mess so unfathomably nauseating that I questioned my own sanity.  I am, of course, referring to the Sonic the Hedgehog trailer.

 Admittedly, as a Nintendo fanboy, I was never into Sonic.  Still, I really tried to like the Sonic games.  The graphics were beautiful at the time, but the gameplay just didn’t do it for me.  It was just Mario with more difficult controls.  The parts where you go really fast were cool to look at, but you’re not really controlling your character while he goes through all the loops and stuff, so it was just as fun watching someone else play it.  The whole concept was just flawed.  Human reflexes just aren’t fast enough to control the character at the speeds Sega wanted to show off, so they had to put safe areas of track in each level so you could basically hold right and watch your avatar move really fast.  Cute gimmick, but it just didn’t mesh well with the “jumping platformer” genre.  But that is just me; if you enjoyed them, I’m happy for you.

 So I’m not this movie’s target audience.  But true Sonic fans are also put off by Sonic’s bizarre character design.  Maybe it will be funny and well-written, and maybe the action and special effects will be dazzling enough to keep audiences awake.  Personally I doubt it.  So far it looks like it’s relying on Jim Carrey to save it, and I’m not sure he’s still funny enough to keep the movie afloat.  I feel bad for James Marsden.  He’s not a great actor, but he’s better than the roles he’s been getting.

 The plot also triggers another one of my personal prejudices.  I’m not a fan of the whole “human befriends exotic creature” genre.  Examples include E.T., Gremlins, Garbage Pail Kids, Detective Pikachu, Howard the Duck, Mac & Me, ALF, Pod People, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Obviously some of those movies are better than others, and I love some of them despite the plot.  But the genre as a whole just feels lazy.  Sometime I bet it starts with a special effect – a prop maker creates a really good creature puppet, and some director thinks it would look good in a movie.  But they can’t afford to make a bunch more puppets and sets, so the movie can’t take place on the creature’s home planet.  So they decide it will be a “fish out of water” story where the creature finds itself on Earth.  It befriends a human (usually a child, but not always), and the human either has to hide it from everyone else (so scientists won’t dissect it), or the human tries to convince other people the creature is real (but the creature keeps hiding or can only be seen/heard by that one human).  It usually ends with the creature going back home.

 Sometimes these movies bother me because I wanted to see the character’s own universe.  For example, the live action “Masters of the Universe” movie had the characters coming to Earth and befriending some teens here.  I would have preferred they stayed on Eternia and used more established characters rather than making up new ones.  There’s a ton of story potential on Eternia, but I guess it was too expensive to film there.  So instead, we were stuck with a movie about He-Man cosplayers running around on Earth.  Meh.

 The Sonic universe is not lacking in content.  The comics and cartoons are full of characters and plot hooks.  Okay, I haven’t actually read the comics, but I’ve heard good things about them.  So why not pull source material from there?  I doubt the budget was the issue.  How this plot and this character design made it this far is amazing to me.  It’s like they used the Super Mario Bros movie as a benchmark.  “Oh, that’s how good video game movies are supposed to be?  Great, I can top that!”

 Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit.  Maybe it won’t be that bad.  But yeesh, it sure doesn’t look good.

Update:
And now the director has responded, and says they will redesign the character before releasing the movie.  I’m still amazed that the first version got so far without anyone in the studio realizing how gross it was.  But I’m impressed that the director had the courage to admit they made a mistake and make it right.  I bet the final design still gets some hate though; you just can’t please everyone.