Yuji Naka Thanks Sonic Fans For Encouraging Movie Director To Change Controversial Design

The fans have spoken, and for once, they were listened to.

Now I feel like I need to watch the movie, of only to support directors who are willing to listen to the fans.

I'm not a Sonic fan and even I knew it just didn't look right. Looks like a Dr Seuss character to me.

They should make him look more like he's supposed to look, westernising the hell out of him was bound to cause a massive backlash. I imagine he started off looking like the Sonic we know, but whatever studio was in charge decided to meddle.

I get the feeling the new design will be much more appealing, i just hope is a well worth upgrade, though now i can't help but wonder how the entire movie would have looked with the first design lol i rather not find out though 😅

I eagerly await Sonic’s redesign of a redesign.

Don’t know why they’re wasting money on changing it this late in the game, all of the noisy people screaming about the design aren’t going to watch it regardless.

That original design had to go. Fast.

So, 6 months from now we will expect some positive changes.
Good luck, SEGA.

I can but respect any creator's patient benevolence towards audiences and the fanship ulcer among them, no matter how naive and rose-tinted it may be, yet "encourage" is the very last verb that can sanely come to mind in this situation. Even euphemisms have their limits, and it's always an oxymoron to put "fans" and "loving" in the same sentence as well. A fan loves nothing but itself and whatever part of the work is the drug to it. Yuji Naka is a natural example of someone who loves Sonic, and it's consulting him that should have ever encouraged the team to change anything much earlier. If we glorify audience opinions, then it can get hard to overlook comparatively more informed ones like this, too: https://mobile.twitter.com/MattyMcDee/status/1123278000722776066

One doesn't have to like the trailer's designs to see where the situation really went south here. Again, fingers crossed for the team, but a release date delay seems like the only remotely good news that could balance it now. Until then, please lend us some of your optimism, Naka-sensei.

Yuji Naka and Ohshima getting in on this is one of the best parts of the whole story. I hadn’t seen that drawing from the latter, it’s certainly not so bad.

Thanks fans because Sega was.....too busy to care? It really shows the state of affairs with Sega leadership. They don’t curate the IP. They aren’t guided by anything the fans care about. Fans have to make the games, remind Sega of it’s past hardware and software, and now, apparently, manage the quality of their licensing!

This whole endeavour is such a train wreck. There must have been at least dozens of people who have worked on and/or approved the design.

Are these people blind and stupid?

@Racthet916 on the contrary, the people who care enough to complain about sonic's look are definitely the ones who will be wanting to spend their money on a sonic movie they consider "good"

For once, I am going to go all conspiracy theory. It is very late in the game to completely redesign a CGI character for a film. What if they never intended the film to be released with this version of Sonic. They designed a horrible character that they knew would be dreadful and the fans would hate for the trailer. The fans would then backlash and the director would then decide to redesign the character. They would then bring out the design that they had intended to release that was more appealing to the fans and they get tons of publicity and it seems like the fans had won the day.

This theory does lose a bit of credibility as they are not going to recast Jim Carrey and his face pulling style of comedy.

Does it matter though? This movie has so much negative press already that it's going to bomb anyway.

I have consulted with my underlings and have concluded:

1) Sonic hasn’t been relevant since the 90s
2) 3D Sonic doesn’t work
3) Nobody cares about Sonic the Hedgehog
4) You can never have enough hats, gloves and shoes.

@Racthet916 i was one of those that vocally expressed hate for it, if the new design closer resembles the sonic we all love i will go see it

@WiltonRoots Listen to Raven, don’t fiddle with it!

@mauhlin12 Take your damn heart

@Mqblank That.... Actually makes sense!

@Chibi_Manny Probably will release it as a pre-director’s cut in 2025 =P

So basically, the fans wanted changes, and the company listened to them. Amazing. Now, if only Nintendo would listen to their fans when it comes to NSO.

Naoto's illustration makes me think - they really could have started out with a pretty-fast Cryptid known as "Needlemouse" causing minor havoc but mostly wanting to be captured by the military and studied by Robotnik. Then, energy from the blue Chaos Emerald (which he holds in Smash's victory screens) morphs him into the current and super-fast game design. Better than a played-out alien plot.
Edit: And with Sonic's newfound knowledge of Chaos power, Sonic hops through a giant ring and into a dimension of animals similar to himself after trashing Robotnik on Earth. Robotnik follows him to the new dimension in the after-credits scene.
Hollywood: Done, did in 30 minutes while driving, you're welcome, pay me millions. Lol

I just hope the redesign isn't worse...

If that were even possible.

@Racthet916 I disagree. The vocal detractors are die hard or ex-Sonic fans. They're infinitely more likely to watch it with a likeable design.

@Spoony_Tech Maybe the design change is to put a hat on Sonic. 😁

"The power of Sonic fans is amazing"

I don't know if I'd go that far.

I'm still not going to support this film.

Going into the trailer, I had the mindset that this is a movie based off a game and they're rarely faithful to the source material. With that in mind, I like what the movie has going for it, but Sonic could look better than what was revealed in the trailer. If the director can pull it off, that would be awesome.

@rjejr That's exactly what it looks like to me. Or thing 1 or 2.

After seeing the trailer, I've been calling it the Sonic the Rat movie.

If a realistic Sonic the Hedgehog was the actual goal for this movie it would look like this.

It's too bad it's just a CGI cartoon character mix with live action which too much reminds me of crap like Howard the Duck.

@Racthet916 people will find a way to bash the film regardless tbh, it's known as the way of the sheep.

Anyone else a little disappointed? The whole fun of the movie was how badly Sonic was designed. Otherwise it's just going to be a cheesy poorly written attempt to translate a video game to the big screen.

Also the reaction and outrage makes me laugh really because we'd all already seen his design in the original poster, and the leaked image of Sonic's face.

In other news can we outrage our way into making Sega give Nintendo the reigns for developing a decent Sonic game please.

You would think they just use one of the tons of cartoon episodes as reference.

@Mqblank This is EXACTLY what I was thinking the other day. Just a PR stunt with the real model already in the final version of the film.

I find humor that Yuji Naka crawled out of what ever hole he was in to thank 'fans'. Mostly everything he made after Sonic was less then a success. This stinks of him trying to latch on to something to be relevant still. I also find a lot of anger to 'fans' of Sonic that this level of rage happened. Where was this anger when Sega craps out subpar Sonic game after Sonic game. How come no one is writing about how Sonic Dark Chronicles ended on a cliff hanger and nothing coming out for that. The fact Sega proper can't release a good Sonic game to save their lives. That a group of fans put more care and effort to make some amazing. A redesign won't fix the more then likely subpar story that this movie will follow. It's easy for 30+ year old man children to whine about a movie they could have chosen to not watch (you know vote with your damn wallet). I honestly was going to check out what someone elses take on Sonic would be. However since the director decided he will bend to the man children I guess I can skip it now. So thanks man children you saved me the cost of a movie ticket.

The design of Sonic was terrible ... it also wasn’t the worst thing in the trailer. So if they recast Dr Robotnic and rewrite the script, then I’ll give it a go

Haha, that's cute, Naka!

Jim Carrey was unfunny too the entire thing just stinks. Gangsta's Paradise lol...

You know, Sonic actually had a great design that wasn't horrible to look at and was close to sonics original design. Quote unquote

@retro_player_22 That thing looks scary.