For the second week in a row, I have to apologize for pushing back my more serious content for this fun little journalistic voyage into tinfoil hat territory, but I just can't help myself. This story is too good to pass up, and breaking news waits for no one. Maybe next week I can dive into the masterpiece of Paprika or something of the like, but for now, it's time to demand some answers from Paramount.

To bring everyone back up to speed, if you happen, for some odd reason, to be an avid reader of my content or, even more piteously, are forced to edit my articles (love you, Emily) then you will be well acquainted with the last article that I created, regarding Paramount's new Sonic movie and the trailer that just dropped. To summarize, the video practically blew up overnight for its absolutely atrocious character design of the titular hedgehog, Sonic almost immediately became a meme sensation, and I can't help but think that this situation reeks of underhanded marketing tactics and reverse psychology.

After all, the character design is, objectively, hideous, and a megalith like Paramount could not have blindly allowed such a critical component of their film to be presented to the public in what is likely one of the first glimpses the general public is getting of this project. People absolutely tore into this trailer, parading it around like the corporate bastardization that it is, and where things start to get fishy is the fact that the internet's predictably vitriolic reaction to this trailer caused a mediocre film with what would have been a lukewarm fan reception to climb to the top of YouTube trending and steal the spotlight. It's absolutely brilliant and as corny as it sounds, I have more proof up my sleeve that supports the conspiracy that Paramount knew precisely what it was doing by posting that joke of a trailer.

Not even three days after the trailer's release, more than enough time for the video to scale the trending list and Sonic to become prime meme bait, the director of the film promised that the glaring flaws in the character design would be fixed. Yes, you heard right. The director of the film, who for months had approved of and allowed this design to be used for some shadowed and inexplicable reason, decided to completely revamp the design of the lead character of his film in practically no time at all, and all of this due to the outcry of the sort of "Internet scum" that corporate execs typically wouldn't deign to turn up their noses at. Of course, the director himself is hardly a suit-wearing Paramount overlord, yet the fact remains that this is an incredibly generous offering on the director's part. Incredibly.

What might even say, suspiciously so?

Of course, I can hardly prove that the creative design team of Sonic has their real design for the character tucked away, just being sat on for a month or two as they pretend to reanimate the figure and dump the trailer's joke design, but the idea is worth some consideration, if only in jest.

However, this is not my only update to offer. In my previous article, I closely compared Detective Pikachu and this film, as I see them as two sets of a wave of corporate adaptations with similar tones, subject matters, and audiences, released at comparable time frames to maximize the profit margin of this "genre." Furthermore, as the marketing campaigns of both films increase in volume and intensity, I find it more pertinent than ever to bring up how Detective Pikachu has recently been using tactics similar to the methods I have proposed about the Sonic conspiracy meme trailer.

Specifically, on the night of May 7th, which was just yesterday to me as I write this article, the channel "Inspector Pikachu," new to YouTube and only ever having posted the following video, uploaded a title called "POKÉMON Detective Pikachu: Full Picture." Needless to say, millions of viewers, including myself, had clicked on the video expecting a juicy pirated copy of the film or a linked video claiming something of the kind. Instead, the one hour, forty-two minute, and fifty-four-second video, a believable film run time, has little more than a minute of actual content from the official film before cutting to a nearly two hour looped clip of Pikachu dancing to '80s synth pop. It's glorious. And that's not just my personal opinion. The video has been vindicated with over eight and a half million views and counting within less than twenty-four hours, and it's got Ryan Reynold's genius understanding of Internet humor and the art of punking written all over it.

In fact, by comparison, Paramount's similar marketing technique almost looks amateurish, though equally as savvy, and I can't help but think that perhaps Reynolds had seen through the Sonic ploy and responded in kind with this very video.

Of course, it's just something to think about. There's no way, you insist, any of this could affect the way that you look at these two corporate cash grabs. You won't watch them anyway, you blow off, even if your little cousin comes home one day with a ticket stub from Sonic or your baby sister starts going gaga over Warner Brothers' adorable treatment of Pikachu. Even as you read this, having sniffed out this article and followed the content of both films—films that you will not doubt pirate a copy of just to keep up with meme culture or your friends' ribbing of the movie industry—you might still try to convince yourself that Paramount and Warner Brothers haven't pulled the wool over your eyes by popularizing two films that mine as well have eaten dirt with the pitiful fanfare of their original announcements.

Don't be ashamed. Even I like to claim that I've weaseled myself out of the dirty tricks of the industry, that I'm above it all because I've found the truth, but that doesn't mean that they haven't suckered me just as bad as they've suckered everyone else. I mean, this is the second article I've dedicated to the topic, and doesn't that just say everything about what they've been able to accomplish with little more than a bad design and a gag video?

But hey, it's just a fun little something to think about as you're lazing through YouTube. Right?