Earlier this week, Paramount Pictures revealed the first poster for its upcoming live-action Sonic the Hedgehog film. However, it left fans with mixed feelings. But one interesting opinion comes from the man that gave Sonic life, Yuji Naka.
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Naka served as the lead programmer for the original Sonic the Hedgehog and several sequels on the Genesis and has since moved on to other projects. But he had a unique opinion after seeing the poster on Twitter.
In his post, Naka-san said (in loose translation), “Reading this comment is a pretty unpopular feeling. Is it really good to see it? It’s a lot of tough anime and game movies. Why is this going to happen?”
This comes after sharing a tweet from the official Sega of Japan Twitter account, which reads, “The ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’, a Hollywood live-action movie, the original title, the Hedgehog, has been released. ‘Sonic the Movie’ will be released in November 2019, and the Japan will be released soon. Please look forward to the sequel!” (Again, loose translation from Twitter.)
The fans’ reactions are interesting, to say the least. Some are willing to give the movie a chance, but most are unsure about how they feel when it comes to Sonic’s redesign.
I believe what I got from the translation is that we should see the movie first before being negative. Am I correct? If that’s the case then yes Mr. Naka I would normally agree, but sadly I feel like the character design is so drastically different that it’s too distracting. 1/2
— Sam’s Naughty or Nice Station 🎁🎅🏼🎄 (@SamsProStation) December 11, 2018
Secondly I feel like the reasons they came up with in the article for changing the design is so forced and out of touch. They are too focused on realism but forget that the movie is about a blue talking hedgehog that runs fast. Realism shouldn’t be a point of concern.
— Sam’s Naughty or Nice Station 🎁🎅🏼🎄 (@SamsProStation) December 11, 2018
Mr. Naka-san. To be perfectly honest, SEGA further prove themselves that they are the World’s number one worst gaming company of all time. It’s the truth.
— SethM. (@sethmitch1999) December 11, 2018
What I can gather, from Google’s translation of this tweet, is that Mr. Naka is feeling at least some of the reservations that the fan community has been expressing.
— Chester Thompson (@Skye_Flyer1) December 11, 2018
I have not seen this many fans agreeing on something in years. The teaser was bad. They could fix this by showing a real teaser of a non blacked out image
— Darkvizardberrytan (@DVberrytan) December 11, 2018
Anime and Game adaptations suck, because they took too many liberties with the idea of the word “adaptation”.
— Robert Walker (@THiN_CRUST_1992) December 11, 2018
Naka-san… I don’t mean any disrespect at all when saying this, but I feel like this franchise is really lacking your influence, with the questionable direction it’s currently heading. It’s quite disappointing 🙁
— Spider (@StrawHatLuffy34) December 11, 2018
It’s too soon to tell just how the adaptation will be. Once a trailer shows up, which should be sometime early next year, we may have a better idea.
In the meantime, Naka has been keeping busy between the late 2017 release of the Prope mobile game Legend of Coin overseas and joining Square Enix earlier this year for an unannounced project.
Sonic the Hedgehog opens in theaters on November 8, 2019.
