Following a solid box office opening weekend, and pretty solid critical reviews, Sonic the Hedgehog looks like it made all the right decisions when it came to delaying the film to redesign the CGI main character. However, it appears that Sonic himself wasn't the only character who could have looked quite different in the movie, as some early concept art from the film shows Sonic fighting alongside...Chris Evans?
The concept art was unearthed on Twitter and shows a sequence those who have seen the movie will recognize, where Sonic and his human friend get themselves in a bar fight. It includes a version of Sonic that looks a lot more like his earlier, slightly disconcerting, design, but the even more interesting thing is that the human he's standing next to is actually Captain America himself. Check it out below.
I think we can all agree that a team up between Sonic the Hedgehog and Captain America is now a thing that needs to happen.
The image came from an artist who apparently worked with Sonic the Hedgehog director Jeff Fowler at some point, so this was legit concept art. What's unclear is why Chris Evans face ended up in it. It's possible that he was just a place holder. The artist needed to give the human character a face, any face, and maybe he had just seen a Marvel movie and so he had Chris Evans on the brain.
This certainly would have been very early in the process, conversations with potential actors almost certainly had not begun, but films always have their short list of actors they are interested in getting, and it's certainly possible, even likely, that Chris Evans was on that list. So perhaps this image was sort of the "dream team" for Sonic the Hedgehog, giving the filmmakers an idea of what their character would look like next to the actor they wanted most.
There's a joke to be made about Sonic the Hedgehog wanting to get Captain America and getting stuck with Cyclops, but James Marsten doesn't deserve that. He's perfectly cast in the film and does a great job.
Whether Sonic the Hedgehog ever attempted to get Chris Evans to star, we don't know, and we may never know for sure, but it's certainly an interesting idea. If Evans had starred, and the film had made it's original release date, it likely would have been the actor's first post-MCU project, which certainly would have been a very different vibe than Knives Out.
While there was probably never much of a chance of Chris Evans appearing in Sonic the Hedgehog, we can dream about what might have been. If he ever was interested, perhaps there's a chance he could show up in the sequel. The film certainly sets up for one, and following Sonic's solid box office performance, it's certainly made the possibility of one quite likely.
