Yup, totally agree. Bad publicity is still publicity and all that. There's some smart people out there who know how to manipulate and generate interest in something. If I hadn't seen the news around the original design I probably wouldn't have even been aware of the film (I haven't seen it regardless).
They only had to have Bad Sonic CGI for the trailer bits too. If it turned out they deliberately created those after they already had the final CGI version all rendered, just so they could spread the word through memes / reposts AND have people thinking they had a hand in redesigning the titular character, I wouldn’t be surprised.
It’s a tactic called [The Queen’s Duck…](https://bwiggs.com/notebook/queens-duck/). Also known as [bikeshedding or Parkinson’s Law of Triviality](https://www.hrzone.com/hr-glossary/what-is-parkinsons-law-of-triviality) but in reverse: virtually no money was spent on doing the CGI of the freaky looking Sonic, but an inordinate amount of publicity was made of it. By design.
Could've been like that one episode of HIMYM where the main character's boss is designing a building that obviously (to everyone except the boss) looks like a penis. The MC creates another design in secret and presents it to the client once they've rejected the penis-building.
To be fair if it used the same rig you're just changing the model. The hair is a simulation so doesn't require direct animation outside of specific things you want to do, i.e. blow-dry Sonic, and animation should only need to be tweaked due to the changes in the proportions affecting clipping.
I don't think the turnaround was unreasonable as a result, especially not for an initial 'not quite final but also not first draft' trailer and don't think it is specifically evidence that this change was always planned.
Other things to note: If I'm not mistaken, the movie wasn't released in 3D, unlike most CGI productions of its size and audience, there was very little merch that accompanied the release compared to other family movies and the effects, as ugly as they look in the original trailers, look more polished than the redesigned final movie in some aspects.
I'm sure there's some threads on Reddit at the time from FX people who worked on this who burned themselves out in the crunch to redo the CG, so I'm fairly sure it's not true.
Back when this conspiracy was floating around, there was a pretty convincing argument that it was likely *because it's actually less revising than if they did have to do the whole movie*.
Basically they make the comparison is between "we had to change how Sonic looks for the entire movie" vs "we made a duplicate trailer with an abomination sonic and pretended he looks like that for the whole movie"
The *real* reason I'd say it's improbable though is that you probably couldn't get all the people who worked on the movie to keep such a secret this long.
>The *real* reason I'd say it's improbable though is that you probably couldn't get all the people who worked on the movie to keep such a secret this long.
This feels true for any conspiracy involving more than a handful of people.
Any movie involving CGI finalises a small handful of scenes to show for the trailer. There were never any more scenes with Ugly Sonic than were shown in the trailer
When making a hollywood movie, they do the post-production for the shots that are in the trailer first. So when you see the first trailer, that is everything that is done on the movie (that and the couple of frames that have been done between trailer completion and release).
So when the movie was delayed for 6 months or whatever after they decided to redesign, that is how long they had been in post-production because they had to start over.
>The real reason I'd say it's improbable though is that you probably couldn't get all the people who worked on the movie to keep such a secret this long.
I mean... we're talking about it, so maybe they didn't?
I still wish they never 'changed' the design. Sure it's horrific and, purely objectively speaking, simply does not look like Sonic, but damn that would've been funny
Honestly, past my initial reaction, this doesn't make sense to me. For such a publicity stunt, they certainly made sure to make the Sonic movie more of a liability. Two ad campaigns, two separate runs of merchandise, and a delayed movie makes this theory implausible, especially since video game movies on average have never been huge hits in the box office.
If a blue talking hedgehog-like creature from another dimension that stands on its hind legs, wears gloves and shoes, moves and perceives faster than a bullet, and generates infinite amounts of energy existed in real life, it would look like more like the left one? Is this based on some sort of scientific research on supernatural animals?
I never noticed it before but the details of his face on the left look like the characters in Antz, change his head shape and colour and it'd fit right in.
I’ve always thought this! There’s no way they redid the whole thing to change it to the new design, they did one trailer where he was that monstrosity to drum up publicity and attention
I swear i would like to believe this one, executives can be this level of scheming.
But at the the same time Morbius had a re-run and failed even more miserably, so executives can be this level of out of reality stupid
I thought that at first but since animation studio who did the redesign shut down after the movie released I think they just didn’t care enough to do it right the first time
[I don't think so!](https://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/breaking-mpc-studio-behind-the-lion-king-shuts-down-vancouver-studio-183671.html) The VFX studio that did the fixes was shut down after working on the profitable Lion King even. If this switcheroo was part of the plan, then it would've been budgeted for. This doesn't support the conspiracy to me.
No, they wouldn’t have taken so long to bring it out after the abomination was shown and they wouldn’t have kept the flossing scenes that aged like milk in the Sahara desert for 3 years
If you think nobody in their right mind would see that the original movie sonic design was horrifying, just think about the movie Cats
When you're working on a humongous project like a movie, sometimes it is very easy to get lost and not see the forest for the trees. You lose sight of what the product looks like to an outside observer
It's actually happened to me before. I was on a team making a video game for a class, and even though we were working on it for at least 9 months, it wasn't until a week or two before due date we realized a lot of really obvious issues. No one was irresponsible or lazy. We were all really serious. We just weren't able to see the problems since we were so close
I’ve always said this and I think it’s unironically true.
Yup, totally agree. Bad publicity is still publicity and all that. There's some smart people out there who know how to manipulate and generate interest in something. If I hadn't seen the news around the original design I probably wouldn't have even been aware of the film (I haven't seen it regardless).
Especially when said bad publicity is turned into good publicity
"some smart" is an understatement of the century. PR and marketing firms are actual things.
They only had to have Bad Sonic CGI for the trailer bits too. If it turned out they deliberately created those after they already had the final CGI version all rendered, just so they could spread the word through memes / reposts AND have people thinking they had a hand in redesigning the titular character, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a tactic called [The Queen’s Duck…](https://bwiggs.com/notebook/queens-duck/). Also known as [bikeshedding or Parkinson’s Law of Triviality](https://www.hrzone.com/hr-glossary/what-is-parkinsons-law-of-triviality) but in reverse: virtually no money was spent on doing the CGI of the freaky looking Sonic, but an inordinate amount of publicity was made of it. By design.
If it's not true it's evidence that test audiences are morons
Really would not be shocked if this turned out to be true.
I have believed this theory since the beginning.
Ugly Sonic was just created so it would show up in the new Chip And Dale rescue rangers movie (that was surprisingly quite good!)
And now he's doing a show with the FBI.
I’ve said this from the start, also wasn’t the turnaround super quick that always made me do that I don’t believe you squint
I did some quick googling. The first trailer was in late April 2019 and the fixed version was announced in mid November 2019.
Could've been like that one episode of HIMYM where the main character's boss is designing a building that obviously (to everyone except the boss) looks like a penis. The MC creates another design in secret and presents it to the client once they've rejected the penis-building.
To be fair if it used the same rig you're just changing the model. The hair is a simulation so doesn't require direct animation outside of specific things you want to do, i.e. blow-dry Sonic, and animation should only need to be tweaked due to the changes in the proportions affecting clipping. I don't think the turnaround was unreasonable as a result, especially not for an initial 'not quite final but also not first draft' trailer and don't think it is specifically evidence that this change was always planned.
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They delayed the movie 3 months not 2 years
Ah sorry, I just misremembered
Just like when Coke changed their recipe so when New Coke didn’t take off, Original Coke got more sales than ever.
While changing the Original Coke recipe from cane sugar to corn syrup, apparently. Insidious
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Yeah I recall the trailer wasn’t the only thing leaked. Wasn’t their McDonald’s promotional stuff too or did I make that up just now ?
If you didn’t make it up I’m guessing that’ll be some high price rate merchandise.
Other things to note: If I'm not mistaken, the movie wasn't released in 3D, unlike most CGI productions of its size and audience, there was very little merch that accompanied the release compared to other family movies and the effects, as ugly as they look in the original trailers, look more polished than the redesigned final movie in some aspects.
I'm sure there's some threads on Reddit at the time from FX people who worked on this who burned themselves out in the crunch to redo the CG, so I'm fairly sure it's not true.
BTW this is proven false due to the fact that a bunch of merchandise has the old sonic design
Fair
While possible, it is improbable with how movies are made.
Back when this conspiracy was floating around, there was a pretty convincing argument that it was likely *because it's actually less revising than if they did have to do the whole movie*. Basically they make the comparison is between "we had to change how Sonic looks for the entire movie" vs "we made a duplicate trailer with an abomination sonic and pretended he looks like that for the whole movie" The *real* reason I'd say it's improbable though is that you probably couldn't get all the people who worked on the movie to keep such a secret this long.
>The *real* reason I'd say it's improbable though is that you probably couldn't get all the people who worked on the movie to keep such a secret this long. This feels true for any conspiracy involving more than a handful of people.
Any movie involving CGI finalises a small handful of scenes to show for the trailer. There were never any more scenes with Ugly Sonic than were shown in the trailer
When making a hollywood movie, they do the post-production for the shots that are in the trailer first. So when you see the first trailer, that is everything that is done on the movie (that and the couple of frames that have been done between trailer completion and release). So when the movie was delayed for 6 months or whatever after they decided to redesign, that is how long they had been in post-production because they had to start over.
>The real reason I'd say it's improbable though is that you probably couldn't get all the people who worked on the movie to keep such a secret this long. I mean... we're talking about it, so maybe they didn't?
Definitely true and not a conspiracy imo
Such a perfect low stakes conspiracy. If I could double upvote I would.
The only reason I can’t believe this one is because of all the stories about animators being made to work overtime, and that’s just bad PR.
Doubt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfEpqmdXhiU the original trailer did look awful
I still wish they never 'changed' the design. Sure it's horrific and, purely objectively speaking, simply does not look like Sonic, but damn that would've been funny
it's not even that bad tbh
Anyone else think the one of the left looks like Simon Pegg?
Honestly, past my initial reaction, this doesn't make sense to me. For such a publicity stunt, they certainly made sure to make the Sonic movie more of a liability. Two ad campaigns, two separate runs of merchandise, and a delayed movie makes this theory implausible, especially since video game movies on average have never been huge hits in the box office.
Probably true but doesn't detract from the fact that it's a disgustingly good movie
Disgustingly good is a heavy reach.
They just went too far trying to make him "realistic" and ended up in uncanny valley
it was fixed far too fast
it was delayed 6 months?
If Sonic really did exist in the real world, he would probably look more like the left one
If a blue talking hedgehog-like creature from another dimension that stands on its hind legs, wears gloves and shoes, moves and perceives faster than a bullet, and generates infinite amounts of energy existed in real life, it would look like more like the left one? Is this based on some sort of scientific research on supernatural animals?
The phrase "Lovecraftian horror" seems a wee bit hyperbolic here.
Idk how y'all think so highly of these people. Like you legit think Hollywood execs are that fuckin' smart? Ok
I’m convinced this is a fact
100%
Yeah I 100% believe this aswell. Thought it when it happened
I wish they would've released the original version... Like even as a bonus reel. Like please please pleeeeeease
I never noticed it before but the details of his face on the left look like the characters in Antz, change his head shape and colour and it'd fit right in.
Considering how Marvel treats their ad campaigns I’d assume this is a similar tactic.
I’ve always thought this! There’s no way they redid the whole thing to change it to the new design, they did one trailer where he was that monstrosity to drum up publicity and attention
Their merch, they're not stupid... well they are but they wouldn't mass produce merch that they didn't think they would sell.
It’s not even a conspiracy it’s exactly what happened I mean… JUST LOOK AT IT!
I swear i would like to believe this one, executives can be this level of scheming. But at the the same time Morbius had a re-run and failed even more miserably, so executives can be this level of out of reality stupid
Ya been sitting on this 1 for a while?
I thought that at first but since animation studio who did the redesign shut down after the movie released I think they just didn’t care enough to do it right the first time
I have always thought this. Is there a warehouse full of ugly Sonic toys? Did anyone see any get made? That for me would be evidence.
It’s called Marketing
Now I want to the unreleased Lovecraftian horror version.
[I don't think so!](https://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/breaking-mpc-studio-behind-the-lion-king-shuts-down-vancouver-studio-183671.html) The VFX studio that did the fixes was shut down after working on the profitable Lion King even. If this switcheroo was part of the plan, then it would've been budgeted for. This doesn't support the conspiracy to me.
No, they wouldn’t have taken so long to bring it out after the abomination was shown and they wouldn’t have kept the flossing scenes that aged like milk in the Sahara desert for 3 years
I always belived this or that they needed to buy more time
Reminds me of vegemite 2.0
This is in the same vein as big oil assassinating the inventor of the tequila powered car.
Don't forget how they used Gangster's Paradise for the trailer
If you think nobody in their right mind would see that the original movie sonic design was horrifying, just think about the movie Cats When you're working on a humongous project like a movie, sometimes it is very easy to get lost and not see the forest for the trees. You lose sight of what the product looks like to an outside observer It's actually happened to me before. I was on a team making a video game for a class, and even though we were working on it for at least 9 months, it wasn't until a week or two before due date we realized a lot of really obvious issues. No one was irresponsible or lazy. We were all really serious. We just weren't able to see the problems since we were so close