Culture News

Celebrate 30 Years of Sonic the Hedgehog (with Deeply Disturbing Fan Art)

After 30 years in video games, television, and film, Sonic the Hedgehog's most enduring legacy is in the world of creepy fan art.

On June 23rd, 1991, Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog, a fast-paced side-scrolling platformer for the Sega Genesis console, and the character took the world by storm.

Sonic has since spawned dozens of games, five different animated series, with a sixth in the work for Netflix, and, of course, the 2020 live-action movie starring Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, and Jim Carrey, with a sequel set for 2022.

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Culture Feature

Matthew McConaughey: A Hero to Himself and a Governor for Texas?

Is a possible governor run part of the actor's effort to be his own hero?

Actor Matthew McConaughey walks the field before before an NCAA college football game between Texas and Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas

LM Otero/AP/Shutterstock

In 2014, Matthew McConaughey was at his peak — or so we thought.

The so-called "McConaissance" was in full swing. With starring roles in indie-darling Mud, oscar-bait Dallas Buyers'Club, Nolan's Interstellar, and the acclaimed first season of HBO's True Detective, he had successfully reformed his brand.

He was no longer just a handsome, shirtless goofball to be plugged into one romantic comedy after another. Suddenly he was one of the most respected actors working in Hollywood, capable of bringing an intense energy and originality to every role he touched.

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FILM

The New "Sonic the Hedgehog" Trailer Is Actually Fire

They fixed it. They actually fixed it.

Sega/ Paramount Pictures

After the Internet at large rightly condemned the original Sonic the Hedgehog movie design as an utter abomination, the animators went back to the drawing board.

Now they've returned with a whole new trailer and...damn, Sonic's actually looking fresh.

Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) - New Official Trailer - Paramount Pictureswww.youtube.com

It's hard to overemphasize how much better the new Sonic design looks compared to the previous one. For those of you who forcibly removed the original trailer from your mind, perhaps through intentional brain injury, here's a side-by-side comparison.

Sonic movie before and afterNew (left) and old (right)Sega/ Paramount Pictures

The new design actually resembles the Sonic we've always known and loved, with his big cartoon eyes and lack of over-sized nightmare human teeth. The old one is an actual war crime.

But Sonic's updated design isn't the only spot where the new trailer shines. From the opening shot set in the immediately recognizable Green Hill Zone (the first level of the original Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega Genesis) to the clip of Sonic dashing along the Great Wall of China, the new trailer makes a convincing argument for how fun Sonic could be in the real world.

With the exception of Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik, the original Sonic trailer failed on every conceivable front. As a lifelong Sonic fan, I was dreading the movie's inevitable release which, I was sure, would completely bastardize a character I grew up with. I'm happy to say that my opinion has done a total 180. The new trailer made me feel hopeful in the same way I felt when I watched the first trailer for Detective Pikachu (I ultimately thought the movie was just okay, but the real-life Pokemon designs were fantastic), and it's great to see Ben Schwartz's excellent Sonic voice acting come through, too.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm really looking forward to the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie.

Acting is a strange trade.

By nature of the profession, an actor is supposed to don various masks, completely immerse themselves in a role to the point that they can convince audiences that they're someone else entirely, then discard it all as soon as the show or movie is done—only to start up again as a different character.

Many actors do this effortlessly, but others have dived too deep into their roles, losing touch with their real selves in the process. These actors have taken character acting a bit too far.

1. Joaquin Phoenix — Joker

Joaquin Phoenix confessed that preparing himself for Joker was no easy task. He lost 52 pounds in six months, which is incredibly dangerous, and he found himself fatigued and socially ostracized and on the verge of going "mad." Of course, the Joker is a famously destructive and all-consuming part. For his role as the Clown Prince of Crime in The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger locked himself in a hotel room for a month; and for the same role in Suicide Squad, Jared Leto adopted the Joker's twisted personality, sending bizarre gifts and playing strange pranks on the film's cast and crew.

FILM

Why Sonic the Hedgehog's Movie Design is Genuinely Amazing

What if Sonic looks horrifying on purpose?

What if we've been looking at this whole “Sonic the Hedgehog has teeth and human legs" debacle the wrong way?

From lackluster games to lackluster spin-offs, from Knuckles' weirdly broad shoulders in Sonic Boom to everything else about Sonic Boom, Sonic fans have been shafted since at least the mid-2000s. So it's inevitable that, upon seeing Sonic's grotesque new design in the upcoming live-action movie, everyone would write it off as yet another stab into the bloated carcass of a once great franchise. After all, why the hell would they make Sonic so hideous? The design flaws seem extra strange considering how well they nailed the design of Sonic's arch-nemesis, Dr. Eggman.

Except, maybe it's not so baffling after all. Yes, it's true, if Sonic the Hedgehog is the protagonist of this movie and, somehow, a full team of concept artists and graphic designers and SEGA executives approved his design, then it would stand to reason that there is a legitimate conspiracy to kill the franchise for good. But what if this isn't just another terrible video game movie nobody asked for or wanted? What if this is a deconstruction of terrible video game movies?

As far as video game villains go, Dr. Eggman has never been particularly deep. He's simply a rotund, middle-aged megalomaniac who's partial to robotics and hell-bent on world domination. Put simply, he's a big douchebag. That's always been Dr. Eggman's motivation.

But the Sonic the Hedgehog trailer paints a different picture. In the first scene with Dr. Eggman, played like an asshole Ace Ventura by Jim Carrey, he looks exceedingly normal. Aside from his goofy mustache, this Dr. Eggman isn't the fat, red-suited lunatic from the video games––at least not until the final shot of the trailer. Here, Dr. Eggman is a dead-ringer for his in-game counterpart. This suggests that during the course of the movie, the initial Dr. Eggman we meet will grow into the character we've always known. What if this isn't Sonic's story at all––what if it's Dr. Eggman's?

Through Dr. Eggman's lens, Sonic's horrendous design makes perfect sense. Dr. Eggman isn't a big douchebag trying to exterminate some dumb, blue hedgehog for no reason. He's a top government scientist attempting to capture a fascinating creature with the potential to change the course of science. Consider this version of Sonic as some sort of animal abomination that managed to grow human teeth: how does its DNA relate to the human genome? Does this creature have the potential to grow other human body parts? Could there be an alternative to stem cell research? These are all questions that Dr. Eggman would have certainly considered and, as a top scientist, he clearly realizes that capturing this monster is the best option for the betterment of humanity. (As a side note, the monster is clearly disgusting and a menace to society, so removing it from the public benefits humanity in myriad ways.)

If Dr. Eggman is the protagonist, a human genius at the height of his career who's attempting to revolutionize science and robotics, it makes sense that his antagonist would be a godless blue monster. And if that's the case, Dr. Eggman's motivations––and his fall into obesity––would be all the more compelling.

Hold out hope for the new Sonic the Hedgehog movie. While it certainly looks terrible in every capacity so far, it just might prove to be the greatest video game movie of all time.


Dan Kahan is a writer & screenwriter from Brooklyn, usually rocking a man bun. Find more at dankahanwriter.com


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FILM & TV

THE REAL REEL | Showtime's 'I'm Dying Up Here' is Everything

This Show Asks Us to Embrace Our Humanity and to Look Ahead with Hope. It Also Shows Us Just How Hard This is to Do.

http://www.tracking-board.com/im-dying-up-here-review-the-unbelievable-power-of-believing/

By "everything," I mean it checks all the boxes of an addictive, binge-worthy show.

Boxes like great characters, great writing, great set, beautifully captured '70s era, a plot you are excited about and engaged with…but several episodes in realize you don't really care about the plot because you could watch these characters do nothing all… day… long. Sadly you can't watch them do nothing all day long…but you can watch them for a solid hour, one episode at a time, and I can't get enough of them. The fact that this show also checks my "Real Reel" boxes of incorporating aspects of race, class, and gender struggles is just heaven.

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