Paramount Pictures broke the internet in all the wrong ways on Tuesday with the first trailer for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie. While director Jeff Fowler’s feature debut didn’t have the best buzz behind it already, the first footage of the classic video game character’s live-action outing brought the backlash to a whole other level.
The recent preview gave fans plenty to complain about, from the unfunny humor to the perplexing use of “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio on the soundtrack. The most frequent point of criticism, however, was surely the new design for Sonic himself, which came complete with creepy human teeth. After the character received widespread condemnation on social media, Fowler announced via Twitter that the team had taken note of the response, and will make some changes to Sonic’s design prior to release.
This latest development caught the attention of original Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka, who’d previously voiced his own objections to the movie’s design. In a recent tweet, the former Sonic Team head asserted that Fowler’s announcement marked a step in the right direction, and gave credit to the fans for letting their opinions be known:
“The power of sonic fans is amazing. It is good to go in a good direction. Thank you so much for loving Sonic.”
A redesign certainly won’t fix every problem we saw in the new trailer, but it’s a start. That being said, creating a new look for Sonic this late in the game will presumably eat up a lot of time and money. And at this point, you have to imagine that the bosses at Paramount are starting to get nervous about the movie’s commercial prospects.
We’ll find out if Sonic the Hedgehog can overcome its bad buzz when the film hits theaters on November 8th. In the meantime, for an example of a video game movie that’s actually managed to win over skeptics, Detective Pikachu arrives in cinemas on May 10th.