Detective Pikachu director comments on Sonic's live-action portrayal

Movies adapted from games have evolved dramatically over the years. In the past, this meant putting handsome men and beautiful women in iconic costumes and trying to cram 20 hours of game content into a 90-minute movie, but now this is no longer enough to satisfy the audience. The popularity of CGI and computer imaging technology has made directors deeply aware that making classic 2D characters "animate" is the way to please the audience today.

Apparently, Rob Letterman, the director of Detective Pikachu, had carefully considered the image adaptation in advance. Whether it was Pikachu or Psyduck, after the initial discomfort, the public generally accepted their real-life style images and injected their love. However, Sonic the Hedgehog, which has been hotly debated online in recent days, was not so lucky. The blue hedgehog's realistic appearance was criticized by almost everyone.

The Verge also contacted the director of "Detective Pikachu" as soon as possible and asked him to talk about his views on the two completely opposite audience reactions.

"I just heard about Sonic's dilemma 15 minutes ago. It's not easy to decide to change the design of the protagonist a few months before the release. There is no right or wrong in shooting such a movie. (Because there is an original work) It is difficult for us to redesign anything. "Detective Pikachu" spent a year designing the character before shooting. If we change Pikachu a little bit, the performance of the actors behind him will be completely overturned. For our team, such a decision is simply impossible to complete-but it doesn't mean that Sonic can't do it. I can't speak from their perspective, but their situation is really quite difficult."

Letterman and his team were dedicated to ensuring that the Pokémon character designs were as true to the illustrations as possible, because it was not only about paying homage to the works that have evolved into a global trend over the past 30 years, but they also wanted to treat each design as if it were a human actor. They spent nearly two years studying real-life animals, such as packs of bulldogs, and working closely with the Pokémon headquarters design team in Japan.

Why does one movie look quite normal, while another has undeniable errors? This is probably due to the different attitudes of the production team towards the characters.