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Sonic 3

This post contains spoilers for Sonic Adventure 2 (the game), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (the movie).

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 has come out in theaters. I went to go see it on New Year's Eve. Someone else might write a funny letterboxd review about it; I will be writing a blog post.

As a die-hard Sonic fan, I saw the first two Sonic movies shortly after they came out in theaters. I left with a generally positive impression of the movies, but was annoyed by how the adaptation tried to 'ground' the series by pairing up Sonic with a human companion. Ultimately, it feels a little bit less like a piece of Sonic media, and more like a movie where some guy befriends an alien and gets to see them react to Earth stuff (have you ever wondered how Sonic might dance to Uptown Funk? Well, now you know), except in this one, the alien faces off against against Jim Carrey in a hovercraft in the final act.

Grounding the movies was a reasonable decision. Let the film be too video game-y, or too furry, and you risk alienating American audiences. However, the downside is that it doesn't provide enough of what makes it special: we already have E.T.. The less Sonic it is, the more we've already seen of it.

Therefore, there was caution to my optimism when it was teased that Shadow would appear in Sonic 3. I consider Sonic Adventure 2 to be 'peak Sonic' from a story and aesthetic perspective, so I was excited to see what they did, but also worried that they would 'ruin' their shot at doing the story justice as a movie.

After having seen the movie, I'm... okay with the result. The writers were pretty true to Shadow's story--or at least, his backstory, motivations, and eventual redemption. The casting was decent, and the movie looked good (to my eyes, at least).

I think we knew what to expect from the 'tone' of the movie based on the first two, but I still found myself exhausted by the pace of jokes. There is some pretty decent character-based comedy (especially with Knuckles) and some serviceable visual gags (Commander Walters meeting with Team Sonic at a Chao-themed Chuck-E-Cheese-alike was amusing), but the script was also filled with Marvel-quality one liners ("he can't take all of us on at once! ...He just took all of us on at once!"). It felt like the writers were embarassed to be writing a blue hedgehog movie so they tried to defuse their shame with jokes whenever possible. Additionally, as delightful as Jim Carrey is, I don't think it helps the movie when the utterly serious doomsday scenario is interrupted by Eggman having a goofy little face-off with his grandfather culminating in a fart noise as he pokes (penetrates??) his grandfather with a quill, launching him to his death.

In spite of it all, I still liked the movie. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for Crush 40, and having Super Sonic and Hyper Shadow team up in space while Live and Learn plays was literally all it would take to turn me back int oa giddy child, but I enjoyed it. The movie was far from perfect, but I didn't expect a faithful adaptation, nor did I expect something so good it would become the new definitive take on Shadow's story.

P.S. bring back Rouge, you cowards