Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Trailer

As someone who did a previous post on why the movie redesign for Sonic The Hedgehog was much needed, It amazes me how far the movie has come. This went from a film being widely hated due to the design and was being anticipated to be a complete failure as well another punch in the gut for Sonic's history to being one of the few good video game based movies and one of the few examples of the people behind a major movie actually listening to feedback from fans of the property. 

It's because of the fact that they listened that the film was as successful as it was at the box office and now has just released the trailer for the sequel that, in a big way, promises to give fans of Sonic what they want to see. 

While I liked the first Sonic movie and really appreciated the fact that the crew involved redesigned the character, I couldn't say that I "loved" the movie or consider it to be the high point for video game film adaptations. I felt that title still goes to Detective Pikachu for what that film not only managed to accomplish from a story standpoint with its world building, but also visually as well. How the CG Pokemon look in that movie are fantastic and it was all a group effort from multiple VFX studios. It helps that it was already determined what they were going to look like so the focus could be on making sure they look as good as they can so they can fit realistically next to the live action human characters. Whereas Sonic, because of the whole redesign fiasco, doesn't really look like a fully completed character throughout. He can go from looking great to looking like there was more work that could've been done but couldn't due to the hustle to get the movie out before its new release date. I also felt that the story, while made entertaining by Sonic and the other characters, was your standard "buddy cop/road trip" movie that a lot of family movies with a CG character do but it just happened to be better written. 

The trailer for Sonic 2 on the other hand? Wow. It looks like it is fixing both of those problems. The CG on Sonic as well as Tails and Knuckles look fantastic. It's much more defined because these are the designs they stuck with and worked on making those the best models they can be. 

THIS looks like CG and creature work on par with Detective Pikachu. I really love how great the designs are here. They touched up Sonic, gave Tails some tweaks, and Knuckles looks awesome for his debut in this semi realistic but still cartoony style. 

The story also looks much more invested into the wide lore that the Sonic franchise has at its disposal that it couldn't fully embrace in the first film due to budget. Here, since they now have the budget AND the trust from the studio, they're allowed to really go all out where they held back with the first film. There's a larger scope to that allows for bigger world building, a grander story, and what looks like bigger set pieces. Stuff which Detective Pikachu managed to do in only movie. 

Not only have I watched the trailer several times because it's THAT good, I mean it when I say that this is looking on the level of Detective Pikachu with really embracing the aspects of the video game and the lore fans love in order to make grand that can one up the original.