Here’s your first look at Sonic the Hedgehog’s live-action version

Popular video game character and social media luminary Sonic the Hedgehog is getting his own live action/animated hybrid film from Paramount Pictures in 2019, with Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation) cast as the titular mammal.

IGN has released an exclusive “motion poster” that hints at what the character will look like in the film, and we already have some concerns about what they’ve done to our friend Sonic. His arms and legs look heavily muscled, for starters. And there’s also the issue of all that fur.

Paramount Pictures

Translating a cartoon character into three-dimensional space and putting them into the real world is always going to be a challenge — we already had this argument when it came to Pikachu’s fur — but Sonic presents another layer of problems. He’s a hedgehog, not a mouse. His quills should not be covered in fur.

The movie’s creative team disagrees, however.

“It would be weird and it would feel like he was running around nude if he was some sort of otter-like thing,” executive producer Tim Miller (director of Deadpool) told IGN. “It was always, for us, fur, and we never considered anything different. It’s part of what integrates him into the real world and makes him a real creature.”

The movie won’t take place on Earth, so they can always say that Sonic is an alien or maybe the version of a hedgehog that you’d find in other dimensions, but that only goes so far. It’s not that his quills are just thin and tightly bunched together so they look furry; the movie’s producer has confirmed that the character has fur. And not just on his adorable belly, which is where real-life hedgehogs have fur — but also on his back and all over his muscular arms and legs.

This would be less upsetting if the actual animals didn’t already give you so much great stuff to work with. Look at this magnificent beast below, with its prickly, sharp quills on its back and head, fur all over his face and body, and those cute, spindly (but very hairless) arms and legs.

Now scroll up to take another look at the abomination that will be presented to us in the film.

We’ll withhold final judgment until we see the finished product with proper lighting, but things aren’t looking good so far. They’re not looking good at all.

Sonic the Hedgehog will be released in theaters on Nov. 8, 2019.

Update (Dec. 12): An image of what seems to be another poster from the movie has surfaced on Twitter, giving us a more detailed view of Sonic’s horrible, muscular legs. It also makes us wonder where Sonic was holding the camera to get this very particular shot of his adventure.

It’s technically possible that the poster is part of a very elaborate hoax, but the legs match up with what we saw in the original teaser image. Everything about the image’s composition and framing is strange and unsettling, which lines up with what we’ve already seen from this new take on the character.

Heaven help us all.