Sonic The Hedgehog Film Announced. In Cinemas From 15 November 2019

 
Sega and Paramount Pictures have announced a Sonic The Hedgehog film scheduled to be previewed in American cinemas then be released across the rest of the world.  It mixes computer generated animation and live action similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and the upcoming Super Mario film, which this seems to be a response to.  All these years later and Sonic can’t let Mario get one up on him eh?  Well unless anyone is counting the awful original Super Mario Bros film with Bob Hoskins.  No?  Thought not.
 
 

 
 
Video game films are traditionally terrible so I will remain skeptically until both the new Sonic and Mario films are out but there has been a few notable exceptions such as Wreck It Ralph, which was fantastic, and Assassin’s Creed plus both the previous Tomb Raider films wth Angelina Jolie were not too bad in my humble opinion.  Speaking of Tomb Raider the new film is looking rather good, but again I remain unconvinced until it is out.  Such are my low expectations of video game films at this point.  Hopefully these new upcoming efforts will buck that trend though.  Although I can’t really see Sonic having a very deep and compelling narrative to carry over a 2 hour film and one of the problems with modern Sonic games, Mania excluded, was the god awful ensemble of friends they decided to give him to beef out the character rosters which didn’t have an ounce of personality or likability between them.  And don’t even get me started on any of the cartoon series’.
 
 

 
 
Ever the optimist I’m hoping the new Sonic film turns out to be decent.  But actually I’d rather Sega put their money into Sonic Mania 2 and think that  a follow up to the stellar Sonic Mania last year would go far further to win back jaded Sonic fans and sell him to the younger generations who were spared the decades of woe that followed the Megadrive Sonics.  Also with the money saved from this film and Mania 2 being pretty cheap to make they could make Golden Axe Mania, Streets Of Rage Mania and Outrun Mania too to name but a few old Sega games I’d like to see brought back in a similar fashion.  But that would be too good to be true, sadly.

Martin McCurdie

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