You’re all talking about Sonic’s teeth and Jim Carrey’s head, but it’s James Marsden we feel sorry for.
The first full trailer for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is an absolute horror show. If Detective Pikachu gets (most) things right with bringing cartoon rodents to life, then Sonic the Hedgehog gets everything wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvvZaBf9QQI
He’s muscular! He glows! He has human teeth! He has weird eyes! He can slow time somehow? And the rings are… portals? He has human teeth! (Yes, we know we mentioned the teeth already, but they’re really flipping creepy.)
Sonic, you deserved better than this.
Then there’s Jim Carrey as Doctor Robotnik, who is basically just being Jim Carrey on any given Tuesday. No harm done to his reputation, then, and at least the trailer reveals he’s bald by the end of it. (Is this a Robotnik origin story? Is Sonic the bad guy?)
And Gangsta’s Paradise, while we’re at it. What on Earth is going on here? You can’t imagine that Coolio signed off on this one. (Was this movie created by a machine learning algorithm that hasn’t been fed any new data since 1996?)
But it’s James Marsden you really feel for.
When Ryan Reynolds got Detective Pikachu, and the internet went loopy for it, Marsden probably thought a Sonic the Hedgehog movie would be a safe bet. Someone probably told him it was going to be bigger than X-Men.
But he’s had some tough times. From Teddy being torn apart (metaphorically) by Dolores in Westworld to Scott ‘Cyclops’ Summers being torn apart (literally) by Jean Grey in X-Men: The Last Stand, poor Marsden gets the short end of the stick more than most.
But this? This has to be the worst of it.
And have you seen Sonic’s teeth?
Assorted other thoughts:
- All of those “Whoops! We leaked some posters!” antics before the reveal didn’t really do the horror justice, did they?
- It also goes to prove that you can’t just slap some CG on anything and it’ll be a success. (As if that ever needed proving. Again.)
- At the time of writing, Dwayne Johnson’s Rampage is currently the highest rated video game movie on Rotten Tomatoes. Detective Pikachu might topple that next week, but don’t expect Sonic the Hedgehog to score well with critics.
- That opening bit, with Marsden and the speed camera? That’s lifted wholesale from classic British sitcom, Last of the Summer Wine. (And in that context, Sonic should be three elderly gentlemen in a shopping trolley.)
- Seriously, those teeth. It’s like they’ve never seen Sonic the Hedgehog – or indeed an actual hedgehog – before. This is like one of those dinner party games where you have to draw something based only on vague descriptions from your inebriated other half.
