I have to say, even after two movies and a TV spinoff, I’m still rather taken aback at how fast Sonic The Hedgehog has managed to craft a hefty cinematic franchise in only four years. Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised that the titular blue mammal covered so much ground in such a short space of time as speed seems to be Sonic’s subject of choice but when you cast your mind back to the days when that original, hideous character design first hit the Internet was was rightly destroyed, you have to give the rapidly balloning franchise all the credit in the world.
While I would hesitate to say that parts 1 and 2 are hardly the cream if the blockbuster crop, they both contained enough Jim Carey japery, slick action sequences and shameless, old school, Sega nostalgia to be genuinely fun, but with the third entry introducing yet more classic Sonic characters, is the series in danger of becoming so bloated it simply can’t maintain the necessary velocity?
Where there’s a quill, there’s a way…
The steadily growing mass of Team Sonic is continuing to bond nicely as this alien pseudo-family of Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles “Tails” Prowler and Knuckles the Echidna mooch off the kindly human couple of Tom and Maddie while occasionally saving the world. But when a secret experiment being held by the military organisation known as G.U.N. suddenly escapes after being in captivity since the 70s, the fast and furious furballs are dafted in to fight this new menace running rampant in Tokyo.
However, this new force is quite unlike any other force Sonic and his buds have ever – actually, no wait, scratch that because their newest adversary seems very familiar as he also is revealed to be a bug-eyed bipedal hedgehog with borderline godlike powers. This, is Shadow the Hedgehog, and where Sonic received all the love, patience and after school special style advice from his surrogate human parents, Shadow has only known pain and loss and proves to be quite the bitter, nihilistic pill indeed.
After getting royally trounced by this newcomer in Darth Maul colours, it’s decided that the only way Team Sonic can hope to bring down a grimly vengful Shadow, is to team with their most hated enemy, Dr. Ivo Robotnik, if they want a chance to take him down. However, Robitnik – still as hateful and petty as the average online Sonic stan (you know who you are) – has seen better days after his most recent defeat, but as his tenuous alliance with Sonic barely holds, the gadget obsessed scientist finds that his family tree entwines quite tightly with Shadow’s past.
Enter Gerald Robotnik, Ivo’s jowly grandpappy, who was instrumental in Project: Shadow and knows exactly what the trigger was that turned Shadow into dark, emo twin to the more upbeat Sonic, but as master plans and double crosses suddenly erupt everywhere, Team Sonic have to pick up the pace if they want to save the world.
Even to this day, I’m still oddly confused about how shamelessly entertaining I find the entire Sonic franchise ever since he raced onto the big screen back in 2020. The action is absurdly huge, the energy is high and the jokes come rapidly despite them having the hit rate of your average family movie made over the last ten years and Sonic’s third coming is reliably no different. Dealing in the same amounts of needle drops, reliance on pop culture and shameless pandering to nostalgia that made the previous movies (not to mention the Knuckes series) such an undemanding treat, but as Sonic 3 begins, there’s more than a little sense of the overfamilar as it races to get all of its narrative ducks in a row.
You see, at this point in the rapidly expanding lore of the Sonic franchise, hitting the ground running is fairly essential as we have to quickly reintroduce Ben Schwartz’s Sonic, Idris Elba’s Knuckles, Colleen O’Shaughnessey’s Tails, James Marsden’s Ben and Tika Sumpter’s Maddie before unleashing a whole new mammalian menace on the world and anyone not up to date with the franchise so far will doubtlessly be left in the dust from the start. In fact, the series have come so far establishing its video game icons in the CGed flesh, the movies are in a curious position where the human characters are rapidly becoming dead weight. Marsden is always a pleasure, but he’s fast becoming surplus to requirements when all he offers is fatherly advice straight put of an after school special and while Sumpter was slightly better served in the Knuckles show, every other reoccurring human character have mostly been reduced into single scene cameos for continuity. The reason for this, obviously, is to make room for that time honored franchise tradition of bundling in new characters to create new plots and threats.
It’s with this that we bid a hello to Keanu Reeves’ incredibly serious Shadow, a bitter furball of pent up resentment and past trauma that the actor amusingly pitches as John Wick with quills and while his story arc isn’t actually that different from Knuckles’ in the previous film (unwisely teams with a Robotnik until common scenes prevails), his much moodier antagonist allows the action scenes to pick up a more anime-lead style (Akira bike slide, ahoy!). I have to admit, as someone who was generally ignorant of Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast (the basis for most of the story), the rampant nostalgia factor didn’t have me in an instant choke hold as much as the previous two films, so I have to admit, the first act (which has been remorselessly spoiled in tbe trailers) didn’t really hit as hard as it should despite featuring as much property damage as the final act of a Marvel movie and I was beginning to worry that the franchise was merely going by the numbers.
And then, like a bald, luxuriously mustachioed angel of mercy, Jim Carrey’s Ivo Robotnix reenters the chat and business picks up exponentially, especially when the actor doubles his pleasure with a dual assault as he plays opposite himself as Gerald essentially making the actor his own grandpa. In fact, the movie improves to such a degree and the emotional resonance that comes from Shadow’s back story means that the final act turns out to be way better than it has any right to be and packs a surprising emotional punch while superpowered, woodland creatures brawl on the moon.
OK, so much like the rest of the series, it ain’t high art and if you don’t know your Genesis from your Master System, you may be confused as to why a Hedgehog with the ability of super speed and teleportation would feel the need to make a getaway on a motorcycle, but for all it’s flaws, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 still seems to be the current gold standard of video game movie franchises. Best of tbe franchise? I don’t know, probably, there’s not a lot in it – however, as a post credit sting suggests Sonic’s supporting cast is about the grow even further, the franchise better adapt to learn how to juggle all of its characters lest the next installment ends up running on the spot…
🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 