Detective Pikachu Director Comments On Sonic's Movie Makeover

The 7th Sonic article.

The 7th article about something you all hate.

Seven.

“We studied a lot of animals and how they behave and how they interact to ensure we got it right...Bulldogs, in particular, for Bulbasaur and how they act in packs or how they get you to pay attention."

These guys know what they're doing

@HatosBlack Should news sites about real world issues stop reporting a politician's actions, if they hate him/her?

@Galarian_Lassie yes.

Next question.

@HatosBlack It's all about 'em clicks!

Sorry, Rob, fans know best. Altering designs and animations late into the production is what the movie industry has a dedicated button for - based on the same revolutionary tech as the game industry's "port to Switch" one.

I wonder how much the Sonic movie crew collaborated with Sonic Team or even Yuji Naka or Naoto Oshima. Because I feel like at some point during production one of them would have been like "nah, this ain't it, chief".

Seems like perhaps the Sonic team already has a better looking Sonic finished, and the version in the trailer was purposely made to look absurd to drum up internet buzz. Then they can thank the fans for input "make it better" and get more buzz right when the film drops.

@HatosBlack

If you don't like them, there's a really, really simple solution.

@HatosBlack your point?

@HatosBlack Just because we hate it doesn't make it any less juicy

@HatosBlack Well, let's all be grateful you don't run a thing.

@Wanjia As long as they report on the politician in an unbiased fashion e.g. they report on the good and bad stuff they do (similar to the sonic movies director deciding to alter the design) then it should be ok for the site to continue posting articles relating to the topic

@kepsux That is an excellent conspiracy theory. I love it. And I wouldn’t put it past “Hollywood”.

Odd that they looked at Bulldog behaviour for Bulbasaur, when Snubbull is in the movie

Or maybe Jim Carrey had the idea to make sonic look ridiculous just in the trailers for marketing reasons. We all are talking about it. Best publicity ever. He of course will look right in the final movie.

@kepsux May be, its possible...

My conspiracy theory is that they have the 'proper' Sonic design in place already and they dropped the recent trailer to drum up attention. Then they 'fix' the design (in record time) and the fans are supposedly overjoyed come November.

@RetiredR you know as well as anyone that Sonic is still relevant.

I don’t understand why people feel the need to hate on characters just because they prefer another franchise or whatever.

Sonic’s existence and success are not a threat to you. Let the hedgehog be.

@HatosBlack The answer is No. Politicians need to be held to accountability.

@RetiredR Sonic still can be revived. Sonic Mania has proven that much. Stop kidding yourself.

We're comparing Sonic to politicians? Well I live in America, so the 30 articles about the same hatred isn't getting anything done here.

Apples to Car Tires.

@RetiredR @MegaVel91 Sonic is far from dead. Even if (gaming wise) his glory days are in the past. He still lives on in the memories of those who played the game.

The character still sells. You can still by kids clothes with his face on. He has TV series that are still being made and of course this movie. Not to mention millions of people buying games with Sonic in every year. Even this year.

He has always been relevant. And continues to be more relevant than 90% of characters out there. Bad games or not.

I will be very surprised if they can radically change Sonic's design in less than six months, more likely we will see a small change like perhaps with the eyes. I wouldn't go around expecting a miracle though, and really if it requires the studio to have to enforce crazy crunch hours to get it done I would rather they didn't bother anyway, it isn't worth the health of their employees.

Whoever is working on the editing right now... after the film’s release please go anonymous in a forum and let it all out about the drama and everything that went on during the making of this movie. We need to know what happened and who was the culprit for that original design lol

The reality is pretty close to what Letterman mentions. There isn't going to be a lot Fowler can actually do. The expense to redesign and re-render their main character is going to be huge, and some scenes might not work with a simple re-render. Even if that was technically possible, the expense to do so would almost certainly put the film way over budget. I just don't see the studio allowing that. However, only a fully incompetent exec would turn a blind eye to the internet rage.

I absolutely do not think they should have promised to change it. It's quite frankly a waste of everybody's time, money, and life.

When the end result is enevitably still awful, they will still have had to reduce the total amount of scenes in which Somic can appear in full figure to make it happen, and will have given upards of a hundred mocap cleaners, fur technicians, render wranglers, roto artists, and compositors chronic ulcers.
Two pipeline managers will have died from stress induced heart attack.

Not worth it.

@HatosBlack you do know that thanks to this hatred Sonic’s design is being changed in the first place right?

THATS THE POINT OF IT!!!

Maybe half the scenes sonic is in he is just a blue blue anyway?

@Daggot
In the case of Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze filmed most of the whole thing and realized himself that the animatronic heads just didn't cut the mustard, considering how close and personal he and Eggers had written and directed the film.

They painstakingly had to hand-track animated 3D faces on top of quite the amount of footage, and in some scenes decided to just distort the pictures in post to get stronger emotions. It delayed the film tremendously, and Tom Hanks personally stepped in with a bajillion in cash to make it happen and save the project.

Don't know how much money Paramount and Sega are ready to pour into this film to make it less horrifying, but I'm glad I don't have to pay for this party.

@Dpishere I totally agree. I would rather accept the movie how it is. It isn't that bad anyway. People on the internet tend to be drama queens at times.

I'm kinda worried about the animators for the Sonic movie. Say what you want about how bad it is, but the truth is making any kind of animation requires a lot time and effort and the animators are doing the best they can with what they've got. But with the news of the redesign, I'm hoping the movie at least gets delayed a few more months because if not, then I'd imagine the animators would have to crunch and stay behind in bad conditions to do a lot more work within a short period of time

That's what happens when you work in a vacuum with a beloved IP and think you can do better than the original creative team. Letterman and team got it right by working closely with the creative team of the IP to portray a story that remains faithful to the spirit of the original property.

This re-design will MOST DEFINITELY result in much higher revenues for the studio - IF done right. Films like Wreck it Ralph were a smash success in part because of the faithful representation of not only his supporting characters and cameos but the amount of care they put into the faithful representation of the genre of that period of gaming as well. Because they needed to nail a feeling we all have invested on these properties and periods of time when we revisit them. NOT a fresh (different) take on them.

As it was, the Sonic film was DOA. The character design obviously caused a lot of backlash from fans, which would motivate movie goers / fans to just wait for home video, if at all. Which is a death knell for the entire project. Now, they may be able to recoup costs depending on the expense of the redesign. A $10m investment may result in a difference in $m by factors of 10 globally. IF done right. They should strive to get stamp of approval from Naka san and team on redesigns before going into production.

Movie makers dealing with gaming characters (or any property with a devoted following) need to realize that they are not creating something new. That's not what their charge is. They do not have a blank canvas. They are only extending the story of characters who have a devoted following that expect the characters to act and look a certain way. I worked at Sega back on 1991 and I remember the "Sonic Bible". It was a tome the thickness of a small phonebook. Contained within were the rules, conditions, art styles, poses, environments, etc. That needed to be followed when creating content involving Sonic. They should probably try to dig that book up of Sega cares about the integrity of this IP anymore. But you know... they might not!

My guess would be that they'll focus on changing the eyes and teeth. That will be an obscene amount of work, but probably won't change the "physical location" of the model compared to the real actors much, and those are what most people thought looked ugly.

@Timsworld2 in say, Guardians of the Galaxy, the director is going to be giving Chris Pratt directions on where Groot and Rocket Raccoon "are" in any given shoot and how to act like they're actually there. If they then change where Rocket "is" in the scene after they've recorded Chris Pratt, they need to reshoot Chris Pratt's scenes too or it will look funny on the screen. Same with Justice. It would look weird if he was acting as if Pikachu was two feet away if Pikachu on the screen was 1 foot away.

I’m still surprised that design got as far as it did. I just hope they delay it if needed, work their crew respectfully, and give us something our inner child can enjoy. Maybe even add a few scenes and really iron it out. I thought it was interesting, what the other director had to say. It could easily evolve into another Sega VS Nintendo war if things are misspoken. Which, my 33 year old heart may or may not be able to take.

Am disappointed that the Japanese dub of Detective Pikachu will not have Ikue Ōtani voicing Pikachu.

@Pod How about instead of poopooing it, we let them give it a shot. We've only seen bits of the movie, not even the climax either.

As bad as it's first showing was. Let them have their shot.

I've seem the trailer of detective pikachu and the mouth movement seems on point. And i always seem the trailer for sonic the mouth movement seems always on point. So i believe that both director did any glamorous amazing job. Can't wait to see both of my all time favorite goods come to life. I always a tips thats nintendo always should still the movies in 3ds eshop detective pikachu and sonic.

@MegaVel91 thx someone being positive

@MegaVel91
I'm not poopooing the film, just Sonic's design, and the decision to change it this late in production, while sticking to the release date. I'll be watching this movie, preferably in some theatre that lets me eat a chilidog during the screening.

Changing the design just seems like a weird decision so late. It's not like Sonic is a side character in the movie, he's the main character they're probably going to edit the majority of the movie.

Considering the date hasn't changed they're going to have to come up with a new design really quickly. They likely had more time to come up with the bad design, can they really come up with a good one in a fraction of the time?

Interesting to have more insight as I find Detective Pikachu's designs to be half and half between really good representations that actually work and plain uncanny valley stuff, not that we'll see too much of them in action besides the titular Pikachu. As for Sonic, I still question why producers were deadset on going the live action route instead of doing 3D animation that could stay close to the original designs as seen on Wreck it Ralph, made even worse by the fact people from Sega had zero involvement. Don't think his design will change drastically, most likely it'll be a mix and match of whatever scrapped designs they have considering the movie is only six months away

It helps that Pickachu looks like Pickachu with fur.