Thread by @Richmond_Lee

Wanna know why #Sonic looks so terrible in the Hollywood adaptation? It's because people in positions of power & influence genuinely think the new look is a better, more globally appealing design than the classic Sonic that we know and love. This is a thread on why that's dumb✌️

Throughout my career in videogames and animation in general, I often hear this hoary old chestnut:

"Only Western style art is mass market. Anime and everything else is niche"

It's this out of touch attitude that results in the butchering of something as iconic as Sonic.

Certain forces behind the film (and it's most likely from up top, not from the individual artists--don't go blaming them so fast!) are so arrogant that they believe their arbitrary meddling will result in improvements to classic time tested franchises.

And this IS arrogance. This myth that Hollywood is the only global mainstream. Because the truth is that is no longer true.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_h…

The highest grossing franchise of all time is Pokemon. By a huge margin. The second highest is Hello Kitty. The third is Disney's Winnie the Pooh. If you go down the rest of the top thirty, 47% of the list are Japanese cartoons or games.

Pokemon and Hello Kitty have globally generated more money than Star Wars, Harry Potter and Mickey Mouse and Friends

Anpanman (!!!), Mario and Shonen Jump are worth more globally than Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Batman and the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Dragon Ball is worth more than Barbie and Pixar's Cars (their highest grossing franchise when you take merchandising into account)

Fist of the North Star has globally generated more revenue than Toy Story, James Bond and the Lord of the Rings franchises!

Note that most of these world conquering Japanese cartoons are also a lot younger than the majority of the Western franchises that they are outpacing

Anime and Manga became globally mainstream a long time ago. But there are so many institutions that just don't want to admit it. The Sonic live action film feels like the last gasp of this stubbornly outdated thinking.

Here's another interesting data point. They keep billing the Sonic movie as "From the Producer of Fast and the Furious" but guess what? Sonic The Hedgehog has generated more revenue than all the Fast and the Furious movies combined.

Of course, money isn't everything. Just because something makes money doesn't mean it's actually good. But money IS what motivates these decisions. So if they just looked at the data/money it would clearly tell them "don't mess with Sonic's design. It already works"

But they just couldn't resist, because someone honestly thought that their own bizarrely out of touch tastes were more mainstream than that of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who actually like Sonic already!

I'm glad to see the blowback against such a terrible design. It's not even bad because it's different. It simply fails as an engaging standalone design.

If Sonic had started off looking like this, he would have never grown into the beloved multi-million dollar franchise that he is today.

Perhaps more than any other videogame character, Sonic is carried by the inherent strength of his core design. He is one of the all time great cartoon characters

They took the beautiful bubbly look of old timey cartoons, but gave it a cool manga twist. The result is a character that kids all over the world instantly get. He's such an immediately fun and COOL character!

Ultimately Sonic is so strong that he will survive this live action setback. 20 years from now it will be a bizarre footnote in history as everyone's fav blue Hedgehog continues to speed into the future evolving but never losing his core design and spirit.

I also want to reiterate. Don't blame the art team or even the director too hastily. Jeff Fowler had previously worked at Blur Studios doing cinematics for Shadow The Hedgehog. Say what you will about that game, but it at least has a competent grasp of the Sonic aesthetic ✌️

Thank you for reading this far. Please follow me if you like long meandering informative gif filled threads about beautiful animation

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