It was a rocky road for the live-action adaptation of Sonic The Hedgehog. The titular character’s original design was horrific in every sense of the word and caused nightmares among the Blue Blur’s passionate fandom, as well as headaches for the filmmakers. But one hurried redesign and a months-long delay later, the movie ended up becoming a stunning success (despite being a pretty meh movie, save for the opening 10 minutes).
Sonic The Hedgehog going from surefire flop to box office king was quite the surprise, and this crazy – if not downright odd – turn of events has given birth to a wild conspiracy theory as to why that is.
Speaking of conspiracies, the GOAT team break down the wildest conspiracy theories on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
YouTuber and comedian Steve Clark thinks the whole Sonic The Hedgehog design debacle was nothing but a sinister conspiracy theory devised by the studio.
Prefacing his video with “I’m not a conspiracy theorist”, Clark proceeds to dive deep into tinfoil hat territory by claiming the filmmakers intentionally made CGI Sonic look like an open autopsy as a way to drum up buzz for the film via people on the internet getting really angry and tweeting about it.
Clark points to things like how the only shots of OG Sonic completed were the ones we saw in the original trailer, how the redesign didn’t add that much to the budget, how the marketing timelines all lined up, how the press were asking weird questions to Jim Carrey, and for some reason, Sonic’s sexiness.
It’s all actually pretty entertaining and clearly less of a conspiracy theory and more a pisstake into the behind-the-scenes debacle Sonic The Hedgehog endured. Check it out here.
But putting aside the clearly satirical basis of this video from Clark, is there actual substance behind this Sonic The Hedgehog conspiracy theory? To be honest, not really.
CGI takes a long time and the stuff you see in the first trailer of any blockbuster is usually the only thing that’s been finished to an acceptable quality at the time, which is exactly what happened with Sonic The Hedgehog. The likely reality is that the suits who greenlit Sonic had no clue about the source material or fan base and royally cooked it before frantically course-correcting.
Then again, Sonic The Hedgehog took the record for the biggest opening weekend for a video game movie so maybe there’s something to Clark’s conspiracy theory. Okay, maybe not.
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