Haven’t done a lot of Praise4Media this year, though I haven’t done a lot non-retrospective long reviews period. Chalk that down to a very busy year. Maybe the day will come when I retire Rage4Media and Praise4Media reviews entirely to focus on retrospectives and shorter reviews but that day is not today.
I don’t have any real history with Sonic. He’s that blue
hedgehog who likes to collect rings in 2D and later 3D platformers and some
other sh*t. I only really got into Crash Bandicoot with the n-sane trilogy and
Jak and Daxter I got into much later than the more combat oriented Ratchet
series.
But I am not unaware of the reputation of video game movies being dire trash. From the abysmal attempt at a Super-Mario bros movie to the mediocrity that was the Ratchet and Clank movie. Still, there have been some good ones of late. The Tomb Raider movie felt faithful, Detective Pikachu was a blast and Rampage, I still like Rampage too.
Then we have the idea of transforming characters from a
cartoon aesthetic into the modern world, a trend I don’t really understand.
Alvin and the Chipmunks wasn’t bothered by it because it was just an aesthetic
change, but the Smurfs and more recently the Tom and Jerry Movie (apparently, I
haven’t seen it) suffer from putting focus on human characters not from the
original source material.
Sonic the Hedgehog follows a similar format, putting Sonic
in a human world and having half the focus being on a human character. There
was controversy pretty quickly with his design which had a complete and
expensive overhaul following fan backlash. And I’ve seen the trailer, I do see
why. When you have a CG character not bound by the laws of looking realistic,
find a way to make it expressive.
Made on around a $90m budget, the film grossed around $320m. Not bad as it released in February 2020, weeks before everything went nuts with Covid. The film has received a moderate critical praise with a 62% Rotten Tomatoes rating, but rated highly with audiences giving it a 92% RT rating.
