Posted in: Cinemacon, Movies, Paramount Pictures | Tagged: bleeding cool, film, movies, Paramount Pictures, sonic the hedgehog, video games

[CinemaCon 2019] 'Sonic the Hedgehog': The Blue Blur, Robotnik Debut at Paramount Presentation

Published Thu, 04 Apr 2019 16:08:59 -0500

by Kaitlyn Booth

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Paramount Pictures may have brought Elton John and Terminator to their show at CinemaCon, but they had something else. There has been a lot of discussion about the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. The first poster got a weird reaction as people pointed out how weirdly muscular Sonic's legs were. There have been some leaks about what Sonic was going to look like but nothing officially released. Paramount introduced stars James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, and Tika Sumpter – who took the stage and had a rather awkward exchange that included two Fyre Festival jokes and premiered the first footage of the upcoming movie.

We see Marsden's Tom Wachowski sitting in a cop car when a blue blur goes by that clocks in at 750 miles per hour. Tom goes out to see what it was and finds a blue electrified spike. We see various shots of something moving very fast and a nest with a whole pile of sneakers. Tom finds the nest and pulls out his gun and we get a look at Sonic. He looks interesting. The special effects for him might not be finished just yet. He's small – maybe coming up to Tom's knees, with a thin body and a moderately sized head. The eyes aren't huge so they aren't really trying to make him look cute.

We see some other footage, including Tom in a car with Sonic being chased by a giant robot car that Sonic destroys. It turns into a smaller robot car and continues the chase. We see Sonic and the various human characters surrounded by tons of rockets – all coming to a standstill to demonstrate how fast Sonic is moving. Sonic says that he needs to save the world – and then made a "Fitbit/how many steps I've taken today" joke. The footage ended with Sonic getting into a bag and being carried into a building with Tom and Sumpter's currently unnamed character. He speaks and someone asks if his kid is in the bag. Tom says it's not his kid and two people ease of the shot looking nervous. The footage ended with flashes of Jim Carrey Dr. Robotnik.

Once the footage ended, Carrey took to the stage. As he walked from one end to the other, he was throwing popcorn into his mouth and getting it everywhere. By the time he got to the podium, he threw half a container of popcorn on the first few rows of people and took over the mic. He declared that this movie is actually about Robotnik and we got the title wrong. After a brief exchange, they do a more Robotnik-focused set of footage.

This time, we see Carrey as Robotnik with a small but silly looking mustache. He has dark hair and wears black. He does not look like the character from the games at all. We see him interact with Neal McDonough as a member of the army – and who Carrey keeps cutting off. The performance we saw was exactly the performance you would expect from Carrey. Those of you familiar with Ace Ventura or The Mask know exactly what to expect. He's incredibly over the top as we see him with a few pieces of tech and confronting Tom. The footage ended with a Robotnik logo instead of Sonic… and a few brief seconds of Robotnik looking like he does in the games.

Sonic the Hedgehog isn't out until November 8th but Paramount Pictures could release some images very soon. As for when we are going to see footage? Possibly attached to a movie coming out sometime in the early to mid summer. As for whether or not the movie is going to be any good, it's a little early to tell – but the footage didn't instill much faith, in this writer's opinion.

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