Movies based on video games don’t exactly have the best track record, but maybe that’s because they’ve never had the right character on the track, someone who can lap the competition at the box office. Sorry, we didn’t mean to run with such a cheesy opening, but we were inspired by Jim Carrey’s mustache in the first trailer for Paramount Pictures’ new film based on Sega Genesis’s iconic blue mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog.
This first look at the film is not what we expected in terms of tone, story, and Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz). Rather than start off as the hero, the most famous hedgehog in pop culture and his 760-miles-per-hour running speed wipes out power grids in the U.S., making this strange new force enemy number one. In their desperation, the government turns to a brilliant, annoying man, Jim Carrey’s Doctor Robotnik, whose famous mustache is somehow both less ridiculous than it is in the video games and also a million times more absurd.
But as the new-to-Earth Sonic, who looks more like a traditional cartoon than a CGI-character, tells James Marsden, it’s the racing ball of blue fur who is really going to have to save the planet from the evil Robotnik, who wants to use Sonic’s powers for world domination.
Uh… we’re not even going to pretend we understand the use of Coolio’s “Gangster’s Paradise” in this trailer. Is it ironic? Is it sincere? Is it a reference to the ’90s, when Sonic the Hedgehog and Coolio were both at their most popular? Does it actually tell us something about the movie? We don’t know. All we are sure of is that is one of the weirdest song choices for a movie trailer ever.
But honestly, it’s not any stranger than the rest of the trailer, so maybe it won’t be weird at all in this movie.
Sonic the Hedgehog sprints into theaters, this fall, on November 8.
Images: Paramount Pictures
