The Sonic the Hedgehog movie trailer is a 200mph slap in the face
Is it possible to unsee a movie trailer? To longtime fans, this first look at the forthcoming film points to it being the worst video game tie-in of all time
For someone who has spent the better part of their adult life arguing the merits of Sonic the Hedgehog, the platforming hero of the Sega Mega Drive era, the trailer for the character’s forthcoming movie is like a 200mph slap in the face. What is so bad about the three-minute teaser unleashed on Tuesday afternoon by Paramount Studios? Where to begin?
Is it that Sonic resembles a cheap knock-off Sonic toy your child might win at a fairground stand and then be terrified of (“Daddy, please get it out of my room!”)? Is it that Jim Carrey as Dr Robotnik looks like Hercule Poirot crossed with Neo from The Matrix? Is it the laboured idiocy of the whole “save Sonic, save the world” set-up, in which the ratty-looking hedgehog arrives on Earth, sends the US government into a panic, and is befriended by a San Francisco cop played by X-Men actor James Marsden? Why does he have human teeth and nails?