When the first trailer for "Sonic the Hedgehog" showed up last year, fans were horrified at how Sonic looked. He had human teeth! And tiny eyes! He looked, frankly, extremely creepy.
The reaction was so strong, in fact, that Paramount went back and re-did the film's visual effects for Sonic. "The message is loud and clear ... you aren't happy with the design and you want changes. It's going to happen," director Jeff Fowler wrote on Twitter at the time.
That difference was critical, it turns out: The final version of Sonic is far cuter and furrier than the previous one. Instead of a humanoid Sonic, the movie has a version far closer to the rounded, animal-like Sonic we know from the original Sega Genesis game (and his many video game depictions since).
This is particularly meaningful when Sonic's cuteness is played for laughs, as it is repeatedly throughout the film. Those moments land, and he's genuinely cute — scenes that could've gone dramatically differently had Paramount stuck with the original, horrifying look.