This post is spoiler free.
In the movie “Sonic the hedgehog”, sonic joins forces with a human named Tom Wachowski to stop the evil Dr. Robotnik from achieving his plans, all while sonic tries to adapt to life on earth. Now, if you have been on the internet the moment the film’s trailer came out, you’d have realized that people didn’t exactly receive it well. Which makes the mild success experienced by “Sonic the hedgehog” at movie theatres quite surprising. In fact, sonic the hedgehog topped “birds of prey” in the box office and even more surprisingly, “The call of the wild” with an estimated $26.3 million. With these results have risen questions, mainly, why did sonic the hedgehog become such a success despite all the mixed feelings related to it? Well, here’s my theory.
First, it’s a known saying that “all advertising is good advertising” and it shows to be true in some cases, like this one here. Indeed, all this negative talk and speculations surrounded the movie after the release of its trailer, might have played a role in advertising the movie. Whether it’s good or bad doesn’t matter, what does is that all these controversies surrounding the movie clearly made people curious to see whether it will meet the negative expectations put on him or whether the movie will actually be good. Moreover, it’s that curiosity that might have led many viewers to the theatres.
Second, we shouldn’t forget the influence of the actors playing in the movie. Indeed, when you put the name of someone like Jim Carrey on a movie poster, it’s bound to affect people.With Jim Carrey being such known comedian and well-liked by the older generations, more precisely, the generation who’ll be taking their kids to the movies, it is not surprising that his presence might bring people to the theatres. Furthermore, the presence of Jim Carey, might awaken in the generation of parents pleasant memories of his past movies and so, driven by their trust in the actor and maybe a bit of nostalgia they will take their kids to theaters and even enjoy the movie themselves.
Another thing to note is the fact that “Sonic the hedgehog” is based on a long time old school favorite video game so it will obviously attract a lot of the franchise avid follower and loyal fans to the theater or even old fans, driven by nostalgia, and the influence that video game had on their childhood.
On that note, another thing that might have affected the movie’s box office result is the fact that this movie is a comedy adventure movie. Indeed, the story is a bit lighter than “The call of the wind” and would still end up attracting people from potentially varied age category. The lightness and comedy of “sonic the hedgehog“ make it a perfect movie to get entertained on a Friday night, not only the adults and older kids who might be fans of the video game but also younger kids who might not understand “The call of the wind”.
While the story of the call of the wind might be an incredibly known and beautiful story just as deserving as “Sonic the hedgehog” if not more, these small factors might have been what narrowly put “sonic the hedgehog” ahead of call of “The wind” and other movies such as “birds of prey”.
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