Hacker Cinema
Sonic the Hedgehog
2020 · Film · 99 min
Part of Sonic the Hedgehog Collection
Directed by Jeff Fowler
ActionScience FictionComedyFamily
Powered with incredible speed, Sonic The Hedgehog embraces his new home on Earth. That is, until Sonic sparks the attention of super-uncool evil genius Dr. Robotnik. Now it’s super-villain vs. super-sonic in an all-out race across the globe to stop Robotnik from using Sonic’s unique power for world domination.
3 positive4 negative8 neutralfrom 15 commenters
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15 comments on Hacker News
The FUN part is, if you just happen to have the same name as one of the crew, you can get a credit without being involved at all!
Funny story: I usually sit through the full end credits when I go to the movies, just in case something interesting happens afterward. So I'm doing the usual thing at the end of Sonic the Hedgehog, and suddenly, there's MY REAL NAME jumping RIGHT out at me! It wasn't even on its own line, just in with a bunch of other folks working in the same group (I presume), but there it was, and I SPOTTED it!
Maybe it's just me, or maybe we just tend to take notice when our own names pop up, even in a crowd.
Anyone else have that experience?
Of course they would. The internet spent a solid month laughing at the Sonic the Hedgehog movie because Sonic had weird-looking teeth.
https://vgdensetsu.tumblr.com/post/179656817318/designing-2d-graphics-in-the-japanese-industry
> Once the industry switched from hexadecimal to graphic editors, it wasn’t rare for graphic designers to have not one but two screens on their desk: a computer monitor and a CRT, the second one being used to display the result of the work made on the first one. It’s hard to tell whether this was a standardized practice or not, but we know that many developers, graphic designers as well as programmers, used that technique, from Kazuko Shibuya (Square) and Akira Yasuda (Capcom) to the developers behind Thunder Force IV (1992) who used many CRTs to take into account the specifities of each kind of screen. Masato Nishimura, graphic designer in charge of the backgrounds from Sonic CD, mentioned something he had been told about the first Sonic the Hedgehog (1991): the developers used up to 3 CRTs to previsualize the game and see how were rendered the scrolling and blur effects.
> This practice can be explained by at least 3 reasons. The first one is related to the differences in rendering between a computer screen and a CRT, the pixels look generally sharper on a monitor. The second one lies in the specificities of each machine: display resolution, shape of the pixels (rarely as square as one would expect), rendering of the colors -the red color bleeded on the others on Mega Drive, it was recommanded to add neutral colors around to compensate. The third reason is related to the second one but also concerns programmers: a workstation doesn’t necessary simulate every aspect of the machine for which a game is being developed. For example, the parallax scrolling effect featured in the Mega Drive game Thunder Force IV couldn’t be tested on X68000.
> Tatsuro Iwamoto, graphic designer on the first episodes of the Phoenix Wright / Gyakuten Saiban series released on Game Boy Advance, explained that he took account of that (sometimes unwanted) effect on Nintendo’s portable console.
They made some of it from the Sonic movies, both of which I personally enjoyed. Jim Carrey plays a legendary villain.
https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2021/11/07/sega-talks-sonic-movie-success/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2022/04/28/box-office-sonic-the-hedgehog-2-becomes-top-grossing-video-game-movie/
A third movie is on the way.
Something I learned when working on the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is that SEGA doesn’t own that ring sound. They have a license to use it in video games but it’s owned by a 3rd party. It had to be relicensed for use in the movie.
"A series based on “The Last of Us”, a post-apocalyptic game, seems to be a critical success. Sonic the Hedgehog was among last year’s biggest films and Mario is likely to be among this year’s. Nintendo is opening a new Mario theme park next month—in Hollywood, no less."
For a second, I just imagined how bad would be the Disney version of Mario or Rocky Balboa. Disney is one company that probably few of us were going to miss if they go broke... unfortunately.
I mean, rounding out the top 10 of 2022 are the latest Minions, Batman, Harry Potter, Sonic the Hedgehog (for some reason) and a sequel to a Chinese movie which was in the top 10 in 2021. Nothing original at all in 2022, and the big things that may still break into the top 10 (e.g. Avatar 2) are also sequels.
In 2021, the only original things were the highest production cost Chinese movie in history that glorified the Chinese army vanquishing their enemies (South Korea, the US) in the Korean War (this is the one that got a sequel) and a Chinese comedy. The western movies were the latest Bond, Fast and Furious, Kong vs. Godzilla, and Sing 2.
(A Chinese movie series also was in the top 10 in 2021)
The only other movie I really wanted to see on the silver screen this year besides Maverick... had frickin' Sonic the Hedgehog in it.
People don't like the art style. There's even precedent for this in gaming, remember what happened to Mass Effect: Andromeda? Or in broader media, there was a redesign of Sonic the Hedgehog for the movie.
Monkey Island is a very old game with lots of fans which was previously renowned for highly detailed art. People don't enjoy the corporate memphis skewed proportions of this new style, simple as.
Personal attacks are always wrong.
A lot of creatives have a hard time understanding the product side of art. Games are far more products like movies than they are "art".
There have been a bunch of recent examples lately that showcases the minds of masses. Spiderman No Way Home did supremely well by giving the masses what they wanted, and not straying too far from the marvel formula.
Sonic the Hedgehog Movie had a awful original art direction. The fans complained and the director reversed course, and now its a beloved and highly rated movie.
Top Gun 2 is another great example. The tone, direction, spirit of the original movie is captured supremely well and is on track for a billion dollars.
Pixar's Lightyear is a disappointment at the box office. Honestly who wanted a "realistic" version of Buzz from Toy Story. The tone, spirit, and art direction are too different.
I think Ron made a horrible directorial mistake, and while he shouldn't be attacked for it. He does deserve criticism, and people should be allowed to voice their dislike for a product and its direction.
As people on other sites have mentioned, this whole project has the feeling of the George Lucas Star Wars Prequels. George Lucas needed some honest feedback, and collaboration with other people like Kasdan. Ron Gilbert should have gotten some opinions from the original Monkey Island artists/Lucas Arts Crew.
The best thing a person can do is not be naive. Two good recent examples are the sonic the hedgehog movie where the director and sega was basically bullied to fix their 3d models and the top gun sequel. The Top Gun sequel is fascinating as Tom Cruise put a lot of work capturing the spirit and look of the first movie even 30 years later and its a huge billion dollar hit. If Top Gun 2 suddenly changed visual styles or tone, im sure people would have been upset.
> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not,
It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020:
* Bad Boys for Life (sequel) * Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame) * Birds of Prey (comic book) * Dolittle (book) * The Invisible Man (book) * The Call of the Wild (book) * Onward (original) * The Croods: A New Age (sequel) * Tenet (original) * Wonder Woman 1984 (sequal, comic book)
Two originals. Now go back 20 years:
* Mission: Impossible 2 (sequel) * Gladiator (book) * Cast Away (original) * What Women Want (original) * Dinosaur (original) * How the Grinch Stole Christmas (book) * Meet the Parents (remake) * The Perfect Storm (book) * X-Men (comic book) * What Lies Beneath (original)
Four originals. Go back another 10 years:
* Ghost (original) * Home Alone (original) * Pretty Woman (original) * Dances with Wolves (book) * Total Recall (short story) * Back to the Future Part III (sequel) * Die Hard 2 (sequel) * Presumed Innocent (book) * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (comic book) * Kindergarten Cop (original)
Five originals. Another ten years to 1980:
* The Empire Strikes Back (sequel) * 9 to 5 (original) * Stir Crazy (original) * Airplane! (original) * Any Which Way You Can (sequel) * Private Benjamin (original) * Coal Miner's Daughter (original) * Smokey and the Bandit II (sequel) * The Blue Lagoon (book) * The Blues Brothers (SNL sketch)
Five originals again. I'm going by top box-office gross here because I think that's a good proxy for what is successful. You can look at other years, but there is a very clear (but not overwhelming) trend towards movies based on familiar content. It's not clear whether studios are leading audiences or vice versa. Probably some iterative process of both.
There's also a clear trend away from dramas. I think that's because drama (and non-slapstick comedies) tend to rely heavily on specific cultural norms for their effect which makes them translate poorly. There is a very clear trend especially in the last decade or so of Hollywood focusing on movies that will also do well in China in particular.
Blackkklansman was a relatively big budged film starring popular actors and made by an established director back in 2018, Spike Lee, and oh boy did he take risks. Despite being a historic drama/comedy the movie ends with the horrors of the Trump presidency. Just like Mel Brooks, the message is pretty obvious. Despite these risks this movie was aired in most big cinemas throughout the USA for several weeks (just like any other big budged drama/comedy would).
Casting: I don’t remember a time when casting didn’t cause the hate mobs to go haywire. When Noma Dumezweni was cast as Hermione Granger people went nuts. Some historians raised issue with the fact that Xerxes II was acted by a black man in the movie 300 despite being Persian. And I’m sure casting a black man as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar was equally controversial. Now in the era of people realizing how much representation matters, of course it is going to cause controversy if you hire an actor to play a role of a underrepresented group while the actor does not belong to said group. This didn’t used to be the case, but it is today. However this has such an obvious solution that I doubt it has hindered the production of a single movie.
> "It’s been a decade since any comedy launched a blockbuster franchise."
The times change. At one point hiring a white actor to play a black role did not stir a huge controversy, now it does. Franchises come into fashion, people get tired of them, creators move on. Just because comedy franchises aren’t big today, it doesn’t mean they are not possible. More likely is that people have seen enough sequels in other genres that they don’t want to see Baby Driver 2 no more then they like to see Dump and Dumber 5. And I think for a reason, comedy sequels tend to be pretty shitty (and I guess it makes sense, how often can you tell the same joke before it stops being funny).
I think you are over-reading into the twitter mobs. I don’t think they have as much power as you give them credit for. I think the biggest achievement of the twitter mob in the film industry was to give Sonic the Hedgehog a makeover. I don’t know of a single example where a comedy was cancelled because twitter didn’t like it. And I think comedies get made today just like they did yesteryear. And I think producers of comedies had to be careful about the subject matter before just like today. And I think they stirred controversies before, and they will continue to do so, irregardless of the political climate.
It'll be interesting to see how this effects a culture/mindset shift among large movie producers and directors. Putting aside their artistic concerns that their films are best experienced on the massive widescreen, having a big box office haul seems to be a key part of Hollywood braqfests.
If simultaneous theater+streaming becomes the norm, it would seem the days of multi-hundred-million box office gross will be past. In 2020, the highest grossing film (domestically) so far is the Bad Boys sequel, which released in January and got $204M. The only other 2020 release to break $100M is the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. And many of 2020's top grossing movies were released in late 2019, e.g. "1917" and Star Wars. Even worse, Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" – released in September by Warner Bros – basically bombed at under $60M [0].
Given the huge movies that WB is planning to put on HBO (Matrix 4, Wonder Woman, Dune), I wonder if that'll spur Disney to throw Black Widow onto streaming. Apparently its Mulan release (which required a premium subscription) didn't do so well, but seems risky for Disney to sit on its hands while WB goes all in.
[0] https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2020/?grossesOption=calendarGrosses
Interesting that no one has mentioned Sonic the Hedgehog movie.
The first trailer came out and everyone thought it was terrible: https://youtu.be/4mW9FE5ILJs
It had to be taken back to the drawing boards, and they pushed back the release date. The new one is much better. This must be the first case of movie trailer A/B test