As the game's influence in society has gradually deepened, its film adaptation has not changed. On April 8, the movie "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" adapted from the game series "Sonic the Hedgehog" was released in North America.
As a sequel to the series, "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" appeared on the big screen after two years, which really made Paramount sweat. Originally, the latter expected to open the film at the box office of only $50 million, but as everyone knows, "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" made a blockbuster start, winning $71 million at the box office, and the premiere took the top spot in the North American weekend box office.
In addition to winning the weekend box office title, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 became one of the best-performing films to date in 2022, second only to The New Batman, which debuted on March 4. Driven by "Sonic the Hedgehog 2", the North American box office reported about $116 million last week, which is also the second time that the North American film box office exceeded $100 million after a month.
Kill crazy, really kill crazy again
Supposedly, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 won the North American weekend box office title, which should have been a happy thing. But netizens in the United States have made things up on Twitter.
Open twitter to search for related topics, and you'll find that the top pick is not an official celebration news or statistics from a data agency, but a spoof post that is quite controversial. The meme in the post shows Sonic posing A triumphant gesture in front of the graves of Birds of Prey and Doctor Of The Night: Mobias, with the caption: "History repeats itself twice." At present, the post has nearly 120,000 likes and has received 13,000 retweets.
Judging from the content of the meme, the author's intention is very obvious, that is, to use Sonic's box office record to mock the two films released at the same time as it.
It is understood that the suspense movie "Doctor Night: Mobias" premiered in North America on April 1 this year, as a Marvel superhero blockbuster released as scheduled at the beginning of 2022, "Doctor Night: Mobias" won $17.1 million on the first day of North America, and $34 million in the first weekend, topped the weekend global box office list and North American box office list.
But the former's ass is not yet hot, april 8 launched "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" quickly grabbed the throne, so that now the heat of the movie is almost occupied by Sonic, and this has also caused fans on both sides of the network to scold, but also derived more stems.
In fact, the popularity of "Doctor Night: Mobias" has rapidly declined, not only because of Sonic's influence, but also because of its low quality. According to Rotten Tomatoes data, the freshness of the film is only 17%, word of mouth can be said to be explosive, and the freshness of "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" is 63%, and the contrast between the two is very obvious.
Therefore, Sonic fans sneered: "This wave of contrast is Sonic VS bad superhero movie." But some Marvel fans obviously can't agree, and directly choking Sony is a "lewd children's comedy."
In fact, this familiar scene has already happened as early as 2020. At that time, Marvel's old enemy DC had just launched the supervillain hero movie "Birds of Prey Squad" on February 7, which was officially released in 4236 theaters in North America, and the first day included the advance box office ($4 million) for a total of $13.03 million, easily winning the single-day box office championship. By February 9, "Birds of Prey" had accumulated three days and had earned more than $33.25 million at the box office.
But on February 14, "Sonic the Hedgehog" was coldly killed, officially opened in more than 4,000 theaters in North America, and won $21 million on the first day, reaching the single-day box office list with an absolute advantage of more than three times the runner-up, and even exceeding the $20.58 million on the first day of "Detective Pikachu" at that time, creating the best first-day performance of the game adaptation movie.
Subsequently, "Sonic the Hedgehog" grossed $20.5 million on Saturday and $15.5 million on Sunday, and eventually its North American opening three days will gross as high as $57 million, which will easily win the North American weekend box office. The weekend box office result also broke the $54.3 million record for the opening of a game adaptation held by Detective Pikachu, and the meme appeared.
Seeing that their favorite movies were crushed, some clown female fans couldn't sit still, and came up directly yin and yang weirdly: "I can't believe that a man is actually watching hedgehogs while going to the toilet." ”
But then, the Joker female fan quickly attracted a counterattack from Sonic fans. Someone made a meme to tell her to shut up, and someone else ironically said, "The more you scold, the more Sonic is." ”
Among them, there are Sonic fans who pretend to be outsiders who directly put on an innocent face, saying" It's not that I'm too strong, but the opponent is not strong." ”
In terms of final results, "Sonic the Hedgehog 1" did gain a lot, and finally earned about $149 million in North America, ranking third in the overall North American box office in 2020, and the global cumulative box office reached $320 million. This is still the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, which is enough to see the strong appeal of the series of movies.
Not only did it set box office records, but it also pioneered parkour games
A look back at Sonic's birth goes back to 1991. In order to fight against Nintendo that year, Sega decided to abandon the original mascot Alex Kidd and design a new mascot instead. At that time, the staff of Sega's Eighth Software Development Department (AM8) began planning a new game with Yuji Naka as the leader.
In more than 10 different samples of the characters submitted by the team, Sega voted internally to determine "Mr. Needle Rat (Mr.ハリネズミ)" designed by Naoto Oshima, and Nakayoshi later named Sonic (Sonic). At the same time, Sonic also became the new mascot of Sega, and AM8 has since changed its name to Sonic Team, responsible for the development of related games.
Sonic's IP derivative game "Sonic the Hedgehog" will soon be available, the core gameplay is a horizontal version of the level, players only need to operate the protagonist Sonic to avoid obstacles, and constantly sprint forward to the end. This unprecedented gameplay makes Sonic the Hedgehog the first side-board parkour game.
Thanks to sega MD's 16-bit image processing function and the fast image horizontal scrolling system made by Yuji Naka, the "parkour" gameplay brings players an unprecedented speed experience. After the game was released, players around the world sought after it, and Sonic the Hedgehog achieved a breakthrough surrounded by Nintendo.
Sonic's success led to the development of the parkour game category, but for its part, it didn't stop there. In 2008, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 landed on the PS2 platform, combined with the PS2's powerful game performance, the development team made more varied improvements to Sonic's parkour, such as adding more difficult jumps and cool model actions; and for example, using the PS2 controller to enhance Sonic's sense of speed.
In addition, the game also added a lot of auxiliary props to play, such as roller coaster rotation, acceleration running shoes, etc. In terms of levels, the game also introduces hidden levels, on the one hand, to bridge the "Chaos Gems" in the plot, on the other hand, to increase playability. At the end of 2008, Sonic IP was no longer limited to parkour, but derived a product with RPG elements "Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood", the production team absorbed many advantages of RPG games and AVG games, while ensuring the basic rules of RPG while retaining the unique sprint sense of the Sonic series.
As Sonic's global influence gradually increases, IP cross-field expansion is also on the agenda. In 2018, Sega authorized IDW to start creating the Sonic the Hedgehog series of comics. In 2019, Paramount Pictures partnered with Sega to launch the Sonic the Hedgehog live-action film project, the two Sonic the Hedgehog films mentioned at the beginning.
Today, Sonic, who has been born for 31 years, has transformed from an original game role into a super IP that spans games, movies, anime, peripherals, events, and even corporate spirit symbols. Therefore, it is not so much a fictional character as it has become a figurative symbol of the spirit of continuous progress and courage to explore.
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