Jim Carrey: “I Don’t Know Quite How I Feel About The Audience Being In On The Creation Of [Movie Sonic’s Redesign]”

6 Comments

1. He really shouldn’t be saying anything since he doesn’t know what Sonic is about and his fanbase. If he did some research he would of found out about Sonic Mania and how that game was created by fans and it became very popular and well received… So basically his comment makes no sense.

2. With due respect to his acting prowess and massive clout…. I just don’t think Jim Carrey should be saying those kinds of things.

   The studio isn’t just changing sonic’s design for the fans, they’re doing it for money.

   It wasn’t just “the fans”… children, parents, normal everyday folks watching the commercials on tv HATED what they saw. It was seriously atrocious. They made the smart decision for their wallets by choosing to find a design that people would actually pay money to see.

   It’s so old fashioned and self-centered to say “ownership of anything is out the window”. It may be time to grow up a little bit and recognize that not everything you want will come smoothly and flow right into your hands. You’re not just going to instantly make money off a movie and poke arguments whenever somebody challenges the artistic integrity of the film you’re making.

3. I mean, is he wrong? Do you seriously think more than a fraction of the people who complained are actually going to go out and see the Sonic movie? lol

4. I get where Jim is coming from, but at the same time this is really one of those rare exceptional moments where the product literally would have suffered far worse if it was left the way it was. It was not just the fans who were displeased with the design, it was EVERYONE, and the goal of almost any movie is to net the widest audience possible. If a general audience feels uncomfortable looking at your main character in a trailer, they’re not going to want to see the movie. The fans aren’t even that involved in the creative process, they’ve just made some memes and fan art of what they would prefer but in the end it’s still up to the creative team to decide how to redesign Sonic in a way that they think will please most fans. Yeah, in a lot of cases people don’t know what they really want until they get it, but again, I think this is one of those rare exceptions where people are being very clear about what they do or don’t want here.

   Also…it’s weird, I can barely tell what he’s saying here based on how he phrased it. Like first he’s talking about how he doesn’t feel exactly comfortable about audience being “in on the creation of it.” But then later it turns into this whole “bandwagon” thing, as if people are only asking for a redesign because…it’s the popular thing to do? “Ownership of anything is going out the window for all of us”? What does that even have to do with anything? He can’t be talking about legal ownership, it’s clearly Sega who holds the character copyrights and Paramount (and in some ways Sony) who owns the movie rights to this picture.

   So what does he mean, like, creative ownership of the vision for how the movie looks or something? Like, artistic integrity? If he is, I guess I can see where he’s coming from, the whole idea that the final version of the painting you see should be what the artist intended for you to see, and by that point what you make of it is up to you. In that scenario, if you didn’t like the painting, the artist likely wouldn’t go through the effort to rework the painting just to suit one particular viewer, they would only change it if they themselves felt like they had to change something.

   But again, that ties back to my original point, the audience barely has any hand in any of this, the most that they did was give their critical input, they said that the design was bad and hard to look at. The creative team took that feedback and DECIDED that they needed to redesign the character in order to at least grab back a sizable portion of the audience that they are losing. The decision to redesign was still theirs, the audience really doesn’t have much more say than “here’s various differing examples of how this could have looked better”, which is honestly still up to the creative team if they want to take those examples seriously or not. It’s completely possible that they aren’t looking at anyone’s work and are just reworking this internally…though it’s honestly more likely that they took at least some inspiration from some outside reference.

   This situation is exceptional and unusual because by the time the first trailer is shown, that’s usually it, all the work has been done, there isn’t going to be any huge changes, no matter what the audience says. The audience still gives their feedback, it’s just for the sake of making your voice heard and maybe, ideally, setting the stage for how future movies get made later on down the line. You say that you don’t like how the Lion King 2019 remake trailer looks so that hopefully Disney will think twice about how they approach future live action remakes (though clearly they don’t seem to be that concerned about public opinion anymore, because money). It’s not like you’re actually demanding or expecting them to delay the movie, rework ALLLLLL of the CGI and character models so that they resemble the cartoons better, nobody ever asks for that because of how long it takes and how you’re essentially asking for a completely different movie. And even if people were demanding that, it’s still Disney and the director’s decision on whether they actually do that or not, and usually decide against it, again because of all the extra time and effort that would have to be dedicated towards addressing that.

   With this Sonic movie however, it’s different. If you change the character design of just one character, then that’s really all you’re changing, the rest of the movie is still mostly the same movie it was always going to be, the artist’s vision is still mostly in tact. At this point, the only people most at fault for all this extra effort is the design team for thinking that this would fly with a general audience, let alone the fans. The animators and vfx people have no choice but to work with the final approved design, whether they like it or not, so all the reworking that they have to do is because the designers made a huge mistake. And the decision to correct that mistake was still the designers and director’s choice anyway, they could have just as easily stayed the course like so many other studios tend to do and just find ways to justify and defend their design. They didn’t HAVE to agree to the idea of a redesign, yet for some reason or another they DID. So if their choice results in an easier Sonic movie to sit through, all the better.

   The movie will still be largely what it was supposed to be, just with a (hopefully) less scary to look at Sonic. This doesn’t affect Jim Carry’s Eggman, it doesn’t affect all the other live action actors who’ve already talked to a floating tennis ball or whatever, it doesn’t affect the writers, the voice actor for Sonic, or literally anything else, it’s literally just Sonic’s appearance and animation.

   If Jim was expressing more concern about how the animators and VFX people have to redo all of their hard work because of the new design, then that’d be more understandable, it’s a reasonable concern to have. But no, it seems more like he just doesn’t agree with the idea on a…philosophical level I guess. Like the integrity of the art has been perverted or something. Which is still kind of understandable but also weird because this movie wasn’t exactly going for being an “artistic masterpiece”, it’s just a cheap cash-in and it really isn’t doing much to hide that fact.

   It’s only as much of a work of art as those cheap promotional movie theater toys, the passion only seems to come in the form of wanting you to buy them. It’s not trying to be unique, it’s not trying to be ground breaking, it’s not trying to be subversive, creative, or interesting. It just wants your money, and they used the most basic and safe movie making formula to guarantee that they at least make back what they spent, at minimum. The redesign, at this point, is just a desperate attempt to hold onto that outcome, which in the end might still work.

   Jim is an artist, so he’s justified in having the perspective that he has, and each movie is still a huge labor to go through (even if you hate a particular painting, it’s still “art”), but he’s also giving a little too much credit to the artistic integrity of this movie. If that’s even what he’s talking about that is…

5. @Seiji
   Either way no they were being naive into thinking it would matter or refused to accept that this awful looking video game movie with ugly designs was par for the course for what this franchise was going through for sooooooo long. The biggest benefit is that they helped for a delay that will make Sega of Japan sweat if they were seeing this movie as something they must have tie-ins or even worse the new image of Sonic going forward, that sounds crazy but look what happened to Transfrormers after the success of the 2007 film, most Transformer related things were altered in some way to invoke the films.

   @Hero
   It’s hard not to see him understanding what this is so he’s either being delusional or saying whatever PR is paying him to say, if their redesign gets mocked they’ll double down on the core of what he’s saying.
   Jim took this role because he thought it would be fun he probably envisioned going ham as Robotnik the whole movie complete with the outfit, mustache and lack of hair instead of some last minute/post credit bullshit like bald Lex in that mess Batman v Superman. Artistic integrity and Hollywood don’t mix, you’re at the whim of the studio, if you go against their plans they will have you replaced and they will butcher your vision if a test audience doesn’t’ like it, look at what Disney does with Marvel and Stars Wars they’ll fire youif you want to make a Marvel film that isn’t up it’s own ass in MCU references, if you want to make a comedic film about Han Solo you’re out of here because you don’t have the protection Rian Johnson has.

6. I really, really don’t care what Jim says.

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