Was changing Sonics character design a good idea?
Hi everyone! My name is SneakySam and today I want to discuss a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while. The announcement via Twitter by Sonic movie director Jeff Fowler stating that Sonic’s character design was going to be changed due to major public outrage is one that I didn’t expect. Normally when us as the audience see a trailer for either a film, a video game or a TV show what we see is largely what we get. There isn’t normally a scenario in which a finished movie by a big film company is subject to the opinion of the general public before it is released. At least not in a situation quite like this, where there is a big decision to change the design of something major such as the main character of all things in the middle of production for the movie. That costs a lot of time and money to make that happen. It’s not clear whether the entire film had been finished by the time that the Sonic trailer dropped in late April. It could be that only some of the movies CGI was completed and this wasn’t that big of a deal from a money perspective. In the end, it turns out it was not impossible for something like this to happen and it’s a pretty huge deal considering that this is Sonic the Hedgehog we’re talking about here, one of the most infamous and beloved video game characters of all time.
What is surprising to me about this situation is the willingness to throw out whole design concepts in favor of fan expectations. To me, a creator’s instincts are special, and they shouldn’t be ignored. When I saw the Sonic trailer when it first released, while I felt that I didn’t exactly agree with the design for Sonic, I wasn’t all that taken aback by the trailer overall. For me, there was something about the way Sonic was depicted that made me think it looked kind of cool at times – this lean, lanky creature limbering up for a morning jog like it was a dewy 6am in the suburbs. It made a connection with me at least, even if there were some weird elements that I had to watch in order to get to the good stuff. I even got excited about the idea that Sonic moved so fast that the rest of the world around him stands still, which is something I wish the games would do in some capacity such as the way it works in the game Vanquish.
This whole situation surrounding the trailer and the movie made me think of times in the past where video game creators took both of their own original works or those of others in completely different directions than what was originally envisioned artistically for various purposes. It’s felt like a necessary and natural part of the video game industry to see change because it allows room for growth and experimentation and we as gamers can tell when a series is resting on its laurels, when it’s totally out there and being weird for weirds sake and when it’s new ideas are pushing it forward into something that everyone can get behind. A new developer can add new ideas to an established name and the idea of the series can evolve from there. We can look at various video games and see how different directions both good and bad ultimately added new ideas to different franchises. I feel it’s appropriate, even though we are talking about a movie, because both video games and movies have very long production cycles, they are each expected to make millions of dollars, and after all, the movie in question is based around none other than a famous video game series. The people who wanted these changes the most are video game fans and fans of Sonic.
To start things off, we can look at the Devil May Cry series, a very important franchise for Capcom and a fan favourite. It popularized a stylish action genre in games with the protagonist Dante swinging his sword and shooting bullets artfully at enemies. In 2010 at the Tokyo Game Show it was announced that a new game in the series was to be developed by Ninja Theory who notably developed the Ninja Gaiden series. The new game was to be titled DmC: Devil May Cry. It was advertised as a series reboot and while much of the gameplay would mostly stay the same with some differences here and there, fans were outraged that one of the most notable things to change in that game was the design of Dante. Dante is normally this happy, goofy muscular guy with white hair brandishing a red hood, a sword, some guns, and occasionally some pizza. In this game it’s the opposite, with Dante portrayed as an angry, swearing, scrawny dark-haired teen, leaving only the red cloak, sword and guns alone from the original design. The pizza is still there too.
From my perspective, when this design change was announced, I wasn’t particularly bothered. I didn’t have any attachment to the original games because I had not played them, though I was able to appreciate the fresh take on the property from a design perspective. This was an attempt by Capcom to shake up the franchise and do something different to try to capture a younger western audience. It allowed for the addition of new ideas into the series, even if most of the ideas didn’t sit well with fans of the original games. Despite death threats levelled at Ninja Theory and criticism from fans regarding the direction the series was taking, the game was largely well received, and Capcom was satisfied financially. 6 years later, Capcom released Devil May Cry 5, a game that has received wide acclaim from fans of the series new and old. Director for Devil May Cry 5 Hideaki Itsuno, who was the supervising director of DmC: Devil May Cry and director of DMC’s 2, 3 and 4, said this of the 2013 Ninja Theory game “With DmC this time, we wanted to avoid the problem that befalls some series where you keep making it with the same team, same hardware, and (excitement) tends to decrease and fans move away from it... We don’t want the series to die."
I find it very interesting that Capcom largely went back to its roots in Devil May Cry 5 with even better reviews from fans and critics alike than that of Devil May Cry 4, a mostly safe entry into the series often compared to its predecessor Devil May Cry 3, after diving headfirst into the different direction Ninja Theory was taking the series. While the game shares many design traits with previous series entries, there are more differences in DMC 5 vs 4 than there were from 4 vs 3. The games look outwardly very different and where you could confuse the 3rd and 4th game if you aren’t paying enough attention, the design changes in 5, let alone the graphics, are enough to let you know that this is not Devil May Cry 4 and is in fact a new addition to the series. They learned what worked and what didn’t work when it came to adding new ideas and changing old ones in the series when they made DmC: Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 5 is better for it. Without DmC doing stuff even a little bit differently, and without Itsuna gaining some experience from that games development cycle and release, it’s hard to say if Devil May Cry 5 would have been able evolve from the 3rd and 4th titles with changes that make it a notable release in 2019. It could have ended up being more of the same in every way.
Ninja Theory didn’t stop there when it came to infusing new concepts into older more traditional franchises with some backlash from fans. The studio also took a crack at the Metroid series with their game Metroid: Other M. The game plays as a 3D action platformer based on the formula used in Super Metroid and Metroid Zero Mission with some God of War esque== action thrown into the mix for some added dynamic flair. The game again was viewed as a very decent entry into the Metroid series from a gameplay perspective, but the studio once again received criticism from fans due to the artistic choices they went with. Namely, many people found the fact that Samus was fully voiced jarring. There is a narrative built into the game in the form of some pretty cheesy cutscenes that tended to break up the great gameplay too much. In the end however, I think it’s interesting that Nintendo allowed Ninja Theory to go so far into a new direction with the franchise for better or for worse, much like Sega let Paramount try some new things with Sonics design.
This is not the first time that Nintendo has been lenient with allowing the Metroid series to go into new directions. It’s very interesting that Metroid could go the way of Metroid: Other M, and it could be that Nintendo and Ninja Theory for that matter looked at their own track record of trying to mix things up and wanted to see what was possible to get away with. It had already been proven with the Metroid Prime series that a new direction for a game can be exactly what a series needs to breathe new life into it and inspire new fans. With Metroid Prime, Retro Studios received critical acclaim for their dramatically different spin on the traditional Metroid formula, with Metroid Prime now considered to be one of the greatest games of all time. The game literally brought the franchise into the 3rd dimension, allowing again for the creation and addition of new ideas into the games. I know for myself in particular, I was never interested in the Metroid series or what it had to offer before the creation of Metroid Prime, where it instantly became one of my favourite games ever made and it turned me into a lifelong fan of the series. It was 2002 when that game released, in a much different gaming landscape from what we have now 2019 where things are far more subject to the opinions of others due to the internet. If for some reason it was revealed early on in the development cycle that the game was going to shift to a first person perspective, and longtime fans had a big problem with that and created enough problems for the publicity of the game to have that design change revoked, I probably wouldn’t fondly remember Metroid Prime because the series would continue to be too samey and revolve around the traditional Castlevania approach of staying a 2D action platformer.
Comparing Metroid: Other M to Metroid Prime isn’t exactly a fair comparison. Other M isn’t nearly as fondly remembered as Prime is. Even if Prime had some issues when it comes to the backtracking it forced upon you, severely hampering the flow of the game, Prime is considered a classic and a staple of the GameCube’s library. Other M is hit or miss, having difficulty attracting new fans and only remembered fondly from some of the franchise’s longtime fans. Let’s look at two very different Nintendo games that are both considered to be modern classics and have each earned critical acclaim of their own accord. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild. The Wind Waker received a lot of negative criticism right off the bat when it was revealed. Where fans of Ocarina of Time were expecting a darker, realistic interpretation of the Zelda formula because of a concept trailer revealed at Nintendo Space World, what we ended up getting was the now famous cartoon style of Zelda with cell shaded art and a design overhaul of Link, now known as Toon Link.
This Toon Link is very expressive and adorable, but it was exactly these qualities that everyone hated about the new Link that made a lot of people upset about the overall design changes. They wanted something epic, something realistic that would follow directly in the footsteps of Ocarina and Majoras Mask. I feel if Ocarina of Time was somehow released in 2017 and then this year in 2019 we got a trailer for Wind Waker, and this was the first time anyone had ever seen the more cartoonish art style, I would be hard pressed to think otherwise that people wouldn’t be outraged and demand changes. All the DS titles, including the newest portable game a Link Between Worlds are all based off the Toon Link design. Were we just more willing to accept changes to the design back in 2002 or were we less able to do anything about it? Do producers for large scale productions such as these have less artistic integrity than they did back in the early 2000’s or is the age of the internet causing those same producers to become more scared of losing out on profits, making them more willing to bend to the will of the fans? I really don’t know the answer but we’ve already seen that film companies in particular are less willing to take risks on coming out of the gate with a brand new IP or a new take on a genre or property, which is why we see so many sequels and reboots.
Innovating concepts such as the design of a character can evolve different aspects of our entertainment outside of just that subject. It’s arguable that what the console Zelda games were always having a hard time with, more-so in games such as Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, was being able to push the boundaries outside of what the tried and true formula allowed. Change had to start somewhere and the first step in the console games was with Wind Waker allowing people to start looking at Zelda from a different perspective. Along with the new art style, the game introduced the boating mechanic and the ability to travel between several islands on a vast sea. Once that had been established, Nintendo continued the trend of change by bringing Zelda not only to handheld devices, but ones with 2 screens, allowing further exploration into different gameplay concepts. The iconic Toon Link became the focal point of the handheld games Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks and a Link Between Worlds. By the time a Link Between Worlds had released, people were already willing to accept more abstract concepts being inserted into the Zelda formula without batting an eye, because the target audience had already been introduced to various nuanced ideas at that point.
This all came to a head with the release of Breath of the Wild, a game that has received universal acclaim, some of the greatest in Nintendo’s history, by not only borrowing and further developing art styles from its previous console iterations but also by continuing the trend of allowing the gameplay to evolve past what Ocarina of Time or Majoras Mask offered. By flipping different concepts on its head over the years one at a time, Nintendo gave themselves breathing room to nourish entirely different ideas and these fundamentals are fully explored in Breath of the Wilds open world nature. The open World and art I feel is an evolution of what made Wind Wakers art style and ocean gameplay so memorable. I also believe that these ideas could not have been discovered and developed without all those previous steps in between. Breath of the Wild is a very fun game, one that probably would have done well if it were released as a sequel to Majora or Ocarina, but the designers of these games were only able to achieve this by fully fleshing out new ideas that had been previously introduced and decide what sort of gameplay works in a Zelda title from the ground up. Some of the ideas from Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass doesn’t make much of a resurgence but again without coming up with and trying to implement these ideas, evolution in the franchise could not have taken place. It really makes sense in the long run when you look at the franchise’s history that the branching out and eyebrow raising that the previous games did was essential exploration for the creators and the series is far better off because of it. If the publishers were too scared of not making money or too nervous about pushback then we might not have ever gotten Toon Link or Breath of the Wild or anything else that defies standards in Zelda.
We’re more used to seeing sweeping changes in a franchise over a longer period, through a cycle of creation and critique. Developer of the thing makes something, we get it, and we tell them what we think about it, and then they go ahead and make a new thing based off the positive and negative criticisms. Let’s look at Sony’s Spider-Man movies. Sony went through 2 of The Amazing Spider-Man movies before the franchise had to be refreshed and recast with Marvel’s cinematic universe. It can be argued that those movies needed to come out from Sony so that they Marvel could learn what worked and didn’t work about their movies, allowing them to come back stronger with Spider-Man: Homecoming and recently Spiderman: Far from Home. These later movies thought more outside of the box as to what makes superhero movies great in the first place and each bear less of the characteristics of what made their predecessors become lackluster at the box office and in the eyes of critics and fans.
This time with Paramount and the Sonic trailer it feels different because they are essentially cutting out the middleman of making a movie that might be good but hated by fans (or the other way around) into the fans curating their experience right off the bat before it goes to the box office. We’ll know based off audience reactions if they eventually are able to strike a chord with the fans based off the design of Sonic. I feel that fans hope that if Paramount and Sega can nail the look of the movie more squarely right off the bat then the rest of the dominos could fall into place, but why stop with Sonic’s design if that’s the argument? Why not change the protagonist? Many fans seem pretty “meh” when it comes to James Marsden’s casting so why not bring in a name as big as Jim Carrey’s to carry the roll? (hahahaha funny stuff) even if his casting did resonate with some fans, doesn’t it make more sense to just recast the dude if you are going to go all in on the fans expectations by changing the design of Sonic, which is arguably more expensive than changing a cast member? How about the plot? Could that become any tighter? If this movie turns out to be a success at the box office, are other directors or studios going to look at this new precedent in the future and decide that this is the approach they want to take?
If it is, we might end up with some less mediocre movies but at the same time we might end up with less movies of the caliber of Spider-Man: Homecoming. If the fans decided right off the bat that something with the Simon Garfield movies could have been fixed with just the appearance of the trailer, could it have been Garfield going into space with Robert Downey Junior instead of him. Would that really have happened? Probably not that exact scenario, but things would likely be different. Even though Garfield being in Captain America: Civil War, Spiderman Homecoming, The Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame might have been impossible due to copyright law, if Sony’s amazing Spiderman movies didn’t fail then things would be different no matter what. There were 4 Amazing Spiderman movies planned under the contract Garfield signed, with only 2 being made and released. The reason this series of movies was scrapped by Sony in the first place was because they underperformed at the box office. If they didn’t, they could have changed the entire superhero movie landscape for both Sony and Marvel. Because these movies were scrapped, Marvel didn’t really have a choice since they wanted Spiderman in the MCU one way or another, and so they were forced to reboot the character. The best creative decision that Marvel landed on at the time was to cast a younger version of Spiderman, the one Tom Holland eventually ended up becoming. If the Andrew Garfield version was still popular and fans wanted to see it in the MCU, then the future could have been different and the movies we got would have, in this instance, certainly changed to accommodate this.
Movie studios, like game studios, might require the trial and error that they so disdain because as far as we know it’s the only way to make truly great movies. If fans are going to decide everything from now on and they get a first pass at reviewing the movie before it even comes out and that makes studios worried, we’re going to end up with a lot more movies that feel the same or are generally more homogeneous than their predecessors. Studios need to freely wield their creative license and use it wisely. This is what causes writers, directors, vfx artists and other industry professionals to not become complacent and always strive for originality, creativity and success. At the same time, they can look to the past to discover what worked and didn’t work instead of letting the fans decide for them before they even get a chance to fail or succeed. Movies and video games are artforms, and no one sat around and watched Picasso paint and point out all his flaws. They just let him create whatever he desired and then admired his work after he was finished. With all that said, I am in fact very excited about what the design change of Sonic will bring to the table. I think Universal put a lot of life into the original look that was created for the movie with lots of interesting ideas. This has only raised expectations for me as to what they are able to achieve now, which is both good and bad, I think. I only hope that fans in the future can be patient and not resort instantly demanding changes now that a precedent such as this has been set.