My Word On The Arlo Sonic 2 Drama

 This is something I was hesitant on doing for quite a while. But I've realized over time that I had a LOT more to say about this than I originally thought. And I feel like it would be best for me to just get it all out there, so here we are. Starting off with the background, about a month ago the YouTuber Arlo posted a negative review regarding the movie Sonic The Hedgehog 2 and that video quickly received a lot of backlash. Once I saw this I was confused as the video seemed perfectly fine to me, and once I learned exactly why people were mad… I was only left more confused. The whole thing ended up getting so bad that Arlo ended up having to make a follow up video addressing the situation and even then quite a few people were still not pleased. Allow me to just cut to the chase here and say that I really don’t see the point of the backlash in the slightest. What I'm going to do here is go over some reasons people claim to be mad at the video for and give my thoughts on each of them. I also might as well get this out of the way, I haven’t seen the movie myself yet. But this is less so going to be about the movie itself and more so about Twitters reaction to the review. Starting with…

“He doesn’t get why Knuckles has gloves!”

Literally all he said was that he didn't like how they looked, all I thought when I saw that in the review was that “Ok he didn't like how the gloves looked, I personally don't mind it but I guess we just have different preferences.” I have no idea how saying he didn't like how the gloves looked equates to him somehow not even knowing what boxing gloves are.

“He said that the movie shouldn't be for kids”

Again, that wasn't what he said, you are twisting his points to make them sound worse than they really are. He was saying that he didn't want the movie to be a “kids” movie, as in dumb fodder meant to distract young children when the parents were busy. Obviously the movie was going to appeal to children as it’s based off a children’s video game series, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn't still have some appeal to adults who don't know much about Sonic. Arlo just didn't see any appeal, he even uses The Lego Movie as an example of a PG movie that manages to work for all audiences. Like if this was about something obviously meant only for toddlers like Care Bears or something then yes this sort of claim would be preposterous, but I don't get what’s so bad about wanting a movie based on a property that already has a huge amount of adult fans to be enjoyable for all age audiences. This is another problem people have with the video that doesn’t make sense to me as to how they came to the conclusion they did.

“He insulted fans of the movie!”

He has said time and time again that it’s cool that people like the movie. There is no point in repeating this over and over again when there is no legitimate proof of it. Now I know that people are referring to his tone with how he says it and that still doesn’t work as it was just him expressing his view points in a harmless way. Like he said in his follow up video “I saw a thing and I didn't like it, a lot of people liked it, that's confusing, doesn’t mean I think they're wrong for liking it.” Hyper focusing on somebody’s tone is hardly ever going to do you any favors.

“He insulted his audience by saying he won't read the comments”

This one feels especially petty to me as it looks like people are losing their minds over what's a joke essentially. I mean, it's pretty obvious it wasn't meant to be taken serious with how he says it in a very over the top and jokey manner. Even if he was being serious, can you really blame him? People always say that you don't read the comments for a reason and this entire situation pretty much reinforces that.

“He insulted the movie’s creators!”

This is the one thing that Arlo ended up apologizing for and while yes it is his choice for what he apologizes for… I don't really feel he needed to. When people say that Arlo was insulting the creators they're referring to when Arlo said that the movie had a corporate checklist and that the movie felt like no one who worked on it understood the appeal of Sonic. Speaking of the latter, people are angry about that one mainly because they didn't get the idea that Arlo was that big of a Sonic fan himself. The main thing that caused people to come to that conclusion was that he said he didn't like the fact that the movie took place in the regular everyday human world. He would go on to clarify that while he did play the older games when he was a kid, he would eventually go on to lose interest in the franchise, but he still decided to review the movie as he still has a soft spot for the characters. Given this information, it really isn't hard to see exactly where he was coming from initially. As people these days frequently make fun of cartoon characters being shoehorned into the regular everyday world. He simply didn't think the movie highlighted what Sonic worked best with. When you like something, and there's an adaptation, it's not unreasonable to want that adaptation to highlight what works best about that thing. I know people are going to say things like “He should've done research!” so let me say that I believe no one should have to do research about a movie to review it. If the movie is good, you should be able to enjoy it regardless of how much you know about its background beforehand.

Now regarding the “corporate checklist” thing, yes he said that… so what? The whole “this movie was made by soulless corporate executives” bit is absolutely nothing new to YouTube movie criticism, movie critics say that type of thing all the time and they hardly ever receive this much backlash. I have seen several movie or TV show reviews that straight up say the writers are stupid and even then a lot of them don't get this much hate. If you actually think a movie review saying a movie had a corporate checklist is some serious attack that needs to be apologized for immediately, that's on you, not the person who made the review. Like if someone directly insults one of the writers because of Arlo’s video, then yes that's not okay in the slightest, but you can't pin the blame on Arlo as he never directly name dropped anyone or said that anyone should quit their job or something. Yet you people are acting like he did to the Sonic movie writers what 2013 Mr. Enter did to SpongeBob writers, and I just find it odd. Besides, I haven't seen any proof that any of the people who worked on the movie give one single crap about this whole situation.

“He was deflecting criticism by logging off Twitter!”

Ok I'm not going to lie, this one genuinely infuriates me and it’s for some personal reasons. So because Arlo decided to log off Twitter because his mental health was openly being negatively affected, people claimed that he was burying his head in the sand and ignoring criticism… because he made a decision that put caring for his mental health first. Like just a couple of months before the Sonic 2 drama happened, Arlo put out a video called “Hey I got some stuff to say” making it clear that he wasn't in a good headspace. And he made it clear that this ordeal only made things worse. Like if Arlo actually did something genuinely immoral like harassment, threats, doxxing etc, this would be a very different story. But this is all happening because of harmless mean words about the SEQUEL TO THE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG MOVIE. I don't care how valid you think your criticism is, what does it say about your values when you’re more concerned about the honor of video game and movie franchise, and supposedly standing up for a group of filmmakers who have shown no sign of caring about this at all, than the person who is openly being negatively affected. Let me say this as someone with depression problems, when I see someone who was already not doing well mentally grow to an even worse state and eventually getting mocked for doing something to take care of themselves, all because of some harmless words about a fictional blue speedy hedgehog, I find that legitimately insulting. Now don’t take this as me saying that these people have some sort of serious malicious intention behind them, but I’m sorry, that's just how I see it. I don't see well meaning people who want to give constructive criticism, I see terminally online losers who take kids movies too seriously and get mad when someone stands up for themselves instead of bowing down and kissing their toes.

Wow, that's easily the most aggressive I’ve ever gotten on my blog. Honestly this whole thing just shows that Twitter has a big problem when it comes to handling differing perspectives (even though I'm pretty sure that's something we all already know). I do get what it’s like being blinded by nerd anger as I myself have done a cringy angry response to a negative review of a movie I liked which I have deleted as I don't like the type of person I came across as in that post. Maybe whenever I do watch Sonic 2 I’ll address criticisms of the review that are more directly related to the movie itself (if I have anything to say of course). For now let me just say that if something as simple as a movie review gets you this angry, you need to take a step back and think about whether or not that anger is justified. Thanks for reading, buh-bye.