Posted in: Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Paramount Pictures, Review | Tagged: sonic the hedgehog 3

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Review: The Fans Are Getting Everything They Want

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is something fans have been dreaming of, and that joy should be celebrated regardless of how mediocre the film is to the layman.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 isn't going to convert any non-believers, but the fans will get everything they've ever wanted, and we love that for them.

Director: Jeff Fowler
Summary: Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails reunite against a powerful new adversary, Shadow, a mysterious villain with powers unlike anything they have faced before. With their abilities outmatched, Team Sonic must seek out an unlikely alliance.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Is For The Fans And No One Else And That's Fine

The longer a franchise goes on, the more it focuses on the established fans rather than bringing in new ones. That's not a good or bad thing; it's just the way things are. The longer something goes on, the less approachable it becomes to the layman. The concept of appealing to the layman was practically written into the DNA of the first phase or two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Still, more than a decade in, Marvel is going against its own ethos by becoming less and less approachable every year.

Sonic seems like it would be approachable to the layman, and maybe it would be if you only knew about the first or second game from foggy childhood memories in unfinished basements. Sonic has been around for a long time, and much like any other superhero, the longer he's been around, the weirder the mythos around him has gotten, and the less approachable he has become. The three Sonic films feel like they are speedrunning this process as they continue to lean further and further into the weirder stuff that has come out of this character's history. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is here for the people who stood up and cheered when Shadow appeared at the end of Sonic 2. If you aren't already on board with what this movie is selling, then this might not be the movie for you unless you're looking for a different sort of theatrical experience.

For this reviewer, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and the previous two movies have not resonated with me. However, there is something to be said about sitting in a room full of fans and getting so much joy from their reaction to seeing something they love represented on the big screen. It's a secondhand joy as you feel, see, and hear the energy in a room as people cheer when their favorite character appears. It's a feeling you won't get in your living room watching this film on streaming, and that secondhand joy is something that can only be felt in a theater full of people. So, if a Sonic fan in your life wants to drag you to this movie this weekend, you should go. Their joy will be infectious, and while you might not love the film on screen, you'll love seeing someone you care about loving something so purely.

Time To Get A Bit Lost In The Weeds Of This Franchise

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 also does the same thing so many other films do as they get further and further into their own mythology, which is getting a bit bogged down. This movie clocks in at a little under two hours, which absolutely does not need to be a full two hours. The end of the first act and most of the second tend to drag quite a bit as everyone figures out who is fighting whom and for what reasons, and we have flashbacks as to why Shadow hates everyone so much. While the fans might enjoy the exposition, it will make a movie that isn't very long somehow feel longer for everyone else.

The film does make the good decision of sidelining most of the human characters in the film aside from Robotnik. While it's clear that the film wants us to see Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tika Sumpter) as the "heart" of the film, they vanish for large segments of the plot, and nothing really changes. It's the right move since the first two films, much like the Transformers films, made the mistake of thinking audiences cared more about these human characters than the video game characters running around and having shenanigans. Jim Carrey infamously said he was done with acting after the second film, but he's back and clearly having a ball for Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Not only is he back for one role, he's doing two, and they really let him go for it. However, they let him make a lot of meta jokes, and we probably could have done with about half of them. Lee Majdoud,  as Agent Stone, continues to quietly steal every scene he's in.

As for Shadow, Keanu Reeves seems like a great fit for the character. His effect and general delivery are as deadpan and serious as you would expect coming out of the mouth of this black hedgehog with a gun and motorcycle because someone at Sega thought that would be cool. Ben Schwartz is just the right level of annoying for Sonic, while Colleen O'Shaughnessey as Tails is probably the unsung hero of the entire movie. And Idris Elba is clearly into this and having a ball. He wouldn't have done that TV show if he wasn't all in, and it's clear he's having so much fun playing a good guy rather than a bad guy this time around.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 will probably be something that fans have been dreaming about for years, and that joy should be celebrated regardless of how mediocre the rest of the film might be to the layman. Sometimes, you have to sit back and admit something isn't for you, and that's fine. While Sonic fans deserve a magnum opus, their Winter Soldier, this film isn't it. Maybe this franchise will get there if it goes on long enough, and fans will probably love it every step of the way. As for the rest of us, if someone is taking you along for the ride, there are worse rides, and secondhand joy is so essential during hard times.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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6.5/10

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 isn't going to convert any non-believers, but the fans will get everything they've ever wanted, and we love that for them.

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