So the new Sonic trailer just dropped, a film that no one knew was even in production and that, by all accounts, no one should really care about, and yet the official video has gotten over sixteen million views in a number of hours, is the number one trending content on YouTube, and has more than 1.6 times more dislikes than likes. Yes, you heard right. The trailer was only released last night and 370,000 people have put in the effort to not just laugh (or cry) at the video and share it with friends, but to dislike it.

While pressing a button may not sound like much, anyone who understands the rinse-and-repeat scroll cycle of YouTube knows that this concentration of views and relative dislikes is uncommonly high for a video that is isn't even twenty-four hours old. Clearly, this is the kind of on-the-spot, cutting edge reporting that I need to be talking about. The movie recommendations can wait until next week.

So, you might be asking, already getting bored with my attempt at stalling for the big reveal, what exactly is so bad about a not even three-minute trailer about a game that lost interest with you when you stopped using that dinky little PS2 from middle school? Except, if you've even glanced in the direction of the news regarding that film, or even looked at the headline picture for this article, I know that that can't be the question you're asking. Just look at him. The weird, grossly textured pokemon in Detective Pikachu looks better than this. Even Will Smith's Genie from the Aladdin teaser trailer looked better than this, and at least with Aladdin there was the excuse of a time crunch because live-action Disney adaptions expect to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars and are working on a tight schedule with a huge amount of pressure on their animators and design teams.

No one cares about Sonic. Or at least, no one cared before. Why, then, does it look so God awful, not only in the weird rendering of the digital character onto live footage, making the beloved hedgehog stick out like a bad Photoshop job, but even in the gross proportions of the character himself?

Someone somewhere had to have noticed that this is all kinds of the uncanny valley, unsettling even at a glance and even weirder in moving color. Someone had to have said something. I can't accept that I live in a world where groupthink is so powerful as to have everyone nodding in approval at that design. No one can convince me otherwise.

Thus, considering the fact that someone at the top of the chain had to have known, oh God, it looks awful, the real question comes down to:

Why did they post this monstrosity on the internet, and should we be worried about the mental health of Paramount's chief executives?

Was it a joke, a cheap shot at whatever franchise the company knew they could ruin for fun? Did they just not care, assuming that as unsightly as the design may be to our poor eyes, this is a safe capital with a recognizable brand, a Hollywood star in a leading role (kudos to Jim Carrey for shouldering the burden of this project, as I've read that the back pain must be unbearable), and a safe, cookie-cutter save-the-planet plot?

I say no. Instead, to all the raving cinephiles, gamers, animators, and conspiracy theorists out there, I present another theory. This is all an elaborate marketing ploy by Paramount, intentionally creating a horrible design to raise the level of publicity, regardless of good or bad, for a decidedly stale capital.

It's a well-known fact at this point that Hollywood's golden marketing formula for raising the intake of multiple films at the same time is to release particular genres or topics in waves, creating brief sensations for particular kinds of films. It ultimately allows one film to ride the success of a similar one released at relatively the same time. It doesn't always work, such as with the year that they released Mirror, Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman at the same only to find that no one really cared to see another adaptation of the princess' story, no matter if it's an annoyingly bubbly comedy with an out of place musical number or a dark, edgy, and ultimately dry medieval fantasy film with a sexy Thor-esque Chris Hemsworth and Kristen Stewart in a suit of armor after a much-needed five-hour energy shot. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, in the industry, you are likely to see films with striking similarities be released at comparable times to increase overall revenue. Mirror, Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. Bohemian Rhapsody, The Dirt, and Rocketman. Detective Pikachu and Sonic.

Except, Pokemon is a brand still alive and well, pumping out the mandatory Nintendo blue-and-red, sun-and-moon, whatever-whatever pair of games every year or so, as well as still riding the glorious wave of Pokemon Go, the pop cultural favor of the beloved surprised Pikachu meme, and the afterglow of the perpetually airing TV series. By comparison, Sonic is practically in its death throes. It is a stale property, nostalgic and continuous in its production but far out of favor. Or at least, it was.

Now, however, after a glimpse of that cringe-inducing character design, everyone from true fans to people passably familiar with the character are not only ranting about the film and hitting share and dislike, but putting hours of effort into creating new and improved character designs for the speedster, making clever reaction and analysis videos rehashing the trailer, and, of course, writing articles on the subject.

True, while I can't empirically prove anything, just consider this for a moment as a parting thought. If a decently animated, fairly rendered version of the Sonic trailer had been released, a standard corporate re-capture of a beloved childhood property, a formula we've seen a thousand times before and have gotten quite used to at this point, would the video have gotten more than a second or third glance, much less sixteen million? Who knows? Maybe purposefully bad CGI and reverse-psychology marketing is Hollywood's new sensational ploy.