by BRINLEE VUOLA
Staff Writer
Many people remember watching the “Sonic: The Hedgehog” trailer released on April 30, 2019. It was a movie no one really expected but were pleasantly surprised to see on their YouTube recommended. However, it received lots of backlash and negative comments about multiple things. But the main thing was Sonic’s character design. He had small hands, eyes, feet — pretty much everything was small except for his head. He also had disturbing human-like teeth, an odd body shape, and his dialogue was milked and childish throughout the whole trailer. People constantly complained in the comments and on other social media platforms like Twitter, begging for this movie to either be canceled or for change to come to Sonic’s design.
And surprisingly, they listened. Sega had tweeted not long after the release of the first trailer that everyone in the studio had read all the criticism, and that the animators were working very hard to make it so much better. And after almost half a year (specifically on November 12, 2019), a new trailer for the Sonic movie was released, and the change is exceedingly distinguishable.
The new trailer received a lot of positive feedback, and now, fans are feeling excited to go to the theaters on Valentine’s Day (February 14, 2020) to watch the film.
Now, not only was Sonic’s design changed, but many clips shown in the trailer were also different from the first ones shown in the very first trailer, and it all looked genuinely entertaining. This leads some fans to speculate that the entire first trailer and the terrifyingly haunting character design was all a marketing stunt to get people invested in the movie. Now that the animators had spent their precious time and studio money to redo the design completely, fans will feel obligated to see how much was improved on the big screen; overall, they’ll want to support the studio even more. Whatever the case may be, the change was undeniably for the better, and we’re all hoping the movie is as great as we’re expecting it to be.