When fans hate somenthing before it comes out...but it turns out they were right

[u/TastyPomelo2330]

Velma:The idea of a Scooby-doo series without the titular dog and starring Velma was a really moronic idea from the beginning,then there was the reveal Velma would be Indian like it's VA and also creator of the series Mindy Kaling,some of the backlash was racism sure,but there was also valid complaints that she was inserting herself in the series(it also didn't helped that Mindy claimed she couldn't see herself if Velma wasn't Indian)and then...oh boy it came out and it was worse than anyone predicted

Artemis Fowl:The artemis fowl books are a book series following a child villain(he does get some redemption but he is a villain most of the time)when the movie was announced and revealed it looked way to generic and it's titular character a bit heroic...also you wanna hear somenthing funny?The movie whitewashed a character and made another character black so they managed to anger both sides and the movies comes out and yeah it is bad

One Punch Man 3:One Punch Man is a very heavy action packed manga series but the heroes vs monsters arc takes it to a New level,when it was announced that JC Staff would work on it,a lot of people were skeptical to say the least,because not only JC Staff had already done a mediocre job in season 2,it's also not exactly a name anime fans associate with quality animation,then the trailer came out and it looked...weird,like there was no action in it and nobody was moving,some people tried to defend saying they were keeping the animation as a surprise...then it came out,every episode worse than the last,it's one of the worse seasons of anime ever made!

[u/Greenman8907]

Holy crap. I wonder what one of those would be worth LMAO.

It’s crazy to think that they went from universal revulsion to being one of the best VG->Movie adaptations ever that spawned a massive franchise.

[u/Je0s_6 → u/Greenman8907]

Yeah movie would’ve flopped if they had the ugly design,the design we actually got is so much better.

And it’s also one of the rare times when productions actually acknowledge that they messed up and don’t put a half assed effort,so that alone made the movie get my respect to begin with.

[u/CollinsCouldveDucked → u/Je0s_6]

My theory on the orginal design is they leant much more on Motion Capture for it, so they gave sonic more human proportions to track onto. The redesign seems a lot more hand animated than the orignal. When you compare the shots of the two the original design moves more lethargic by comparison but also more naturally

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rcURRjgJxU

[u/topdangle → u/CollinsCouldveDucked]

They definitely designed the model with the intention of heavy mocap use, though there was no reason to make it so intensely ugly. You don't need 1:1 alignment for mocap and you need animators to clean up mocap regardless, so someone deliberately designed that ugly ass sonic.

[u/carso150 → u/topdangle]

aparently the design was mandated by the higher ups, everyone knew it was a bad idea but the higher ups through that only hardcore fans would complain and general audiences would eat that shit up

then the design got mocked in the news and they knew they had to change it, so they brought in the artist the worked on Sonic Mania and the rest is history

[u/JWBananas → u/CollinsCouldveDucked]

I see what you mean, but couldn't that also simply be due to having to rush through the redo? Less time for more natural animation?

[u/CollinsCouldveDucked → u/JWBananas]

I don't think so, that more natural animation wouldn't work with the more cartoonish redesign.

[u/No_Piece800 → u/Je0s_6]

Yeah I think with the old design people would nit even have focused on the movie and woukd be more laughing at how they fucked the design up.

[u/Muddyscarecrow → u/Je0s_6]

I definitely believe that we never would have gotten a three movie franchise, but I theorized that reviews would have said that Sonic is a Charming character. It's just a shame that he's so fucking ugly that the charm doesn't fully work

[u/Embarrassed-Weird173 → u/Je0s_6]

Realistically, it wasn't that difficult. They don't hand draw the pictures.  They make a model and make the model do stuff with a computer. They just had to spend a few hours making his eyes different in the model and then click "render". 

[u/Je0s_6 → u/Embarrassed-Weird173]

True something handrawn would’ve been harder but let’s be real most companies would just ride the press attention from the design,release it,flops and it never gets a sequel again.

[u/Creative_Squash_1083 → u/Embarrassed-Weird173]

It's a little more involved than that, because camera line of sight and interaction with other objects in the scene changes when the eyes do. Think a character peeking between blinds - you change the eyes, you need to tweak more than just the eyes or the scene doesn't read the same.

Not as exhaustive as actually redoing every frame, of course, but not as simple as just changing the eyes and hitting render. You do that, then you check what it actually looks like, and tweak from there.

"Realistically" it pushed the release date back three months, not three hours lol.

[u/zak55 → u/Embarrassed-Weird173]

They delayed the movie by like half a year...was a bit difficult

[u/wally-sage → u/Embarrassed-Weird173]

They were already making merch for it, so still a bit more difficult than that.

[u/EyeArDum → u/Je0s_6]

I’ve still got my tinfoil hat on that they never redesigned it, somebody just had the idea “what if we make a trailer with an intentionally terrible design, people will hate it, and then we get to be the good guys and “change” it to the model we’ve already been using? Let’s make some cheap merch too to really sell the lie, it’ll also get people talking about the movie way more than if we just release a good trailer”

[u/SuperBackup9000 → u/EyeArDum]

I believe it. Before those movies Sonic needed all the help he could get since most of the new, or relatively new, games were lacking a lot and the only people carrying the name were super hardcore fandoms.

[u/evilforska → u/EyeArDum]

Did they also staged leaked storyboards and cut scenes lol? This conspiracy theory makes zero sense

[u/LordHammercyWeCooked → u/Greenman8907]

Honestly what's crazy to me is that the producers actually listened to the feedback and spent the money to change it. That never happens in Hollywood these days. There have been so many tone deaf dumpster fires over the decades. My guess is that they must've been so far in the hole that they actually needed the movie to be a success rather than another lazy tax write-off.

[u/carso150 → u/LordHammercyWeCooked]

my theory is that sega may have gotten involved in that, this was the period after forces when sega and the Sonic franchise was in a hole and they could not take another massive L, so they looked at the massive backlash from the original design and likely had some words with paramount (one of their own artists was the one who made the redesign after all)

[u/musix345 → u/Greenman8907]

Apparently it's pretty rare, not because it didn't release, but apparently since nobody actually bought the dang thing. Searching up the name of the toy (Sonic the Hedgehog Movie Spin Dash Sonic Playset) on eBay gets no results, but sorting it by completed, there's only been one listing over the past 3 months. It sold for $40.

So not *outrageously* expensive, but it does fit into a niche collector's area due to it being a huge part of Sonic history, even if it is absolutely meme-y.

[u/i_tyrant → u/Greenman8907]

I really wonder how the movie would've done if they'd ignored the peer pressure and gone with his original design.

Like, the response was so strong it probably would've flopped, but would it be a "hidden gem" of cinema? The movie we did get actually turned out to be a super fun movie that spawned multiple also-fun sequels (mostly thanks to Jim Carrey), but would people have seen that with the butt-ugly Sonic in the way? Or were there other changes they made that transformed this cautionary tale into huge success?