Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024): Difference between revisions

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"You're a colorful bunch."
— Shadow

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

"I can't believe I'm saying this... but we got another great movie."
— Sonic

Genre:	Action Adventure Comedy Science Fiction Fantasy
Directed by:	Jeff Fowler
Produced by:	Neal H. Moritz Toby Ascher Toru Nakahara Hitoshi Okuno
Written by:	Pat Casey Josh Miller John Whittington
Based on:	Sonic the Hedgehog by Sega
Starring:	James Marsden Ben Schwartz Tika Sumpter Natasha Rothwell Adam Pally Shemar Moore Colleen O'Shaughnessey Lee Majdoub Idris Elba Jim Carrey Keanu Reeves
Cinematography:	Brandon Trost
Distributed by:	Paramount Pictures
Release date:	December 20, 2024
Runtime:	110 minutes
Country:	United States
Language:	English
Budget:	$122 million
Box office:	$279 million
Franchise:	Sonic the Hedgehog
Prequel:	Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise) Knuckles (Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise, spin-offs)
Sequel:	Sonic the Hedgehog 4

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is a 2024 action-adventure comedy film based on the video game series published by Sega. It was directed by Jeff Fowler and written by Pat Casey, Josh Miller, and John Whittington, based on a story by Casey and Miller. Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Colleen O'Shaughnessey, Natasha Rothwell, Lee Majdoub, Tom Butler, Adam Pally, Shemar Moore, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, and Idris Elba reprise their roles, with Krysten Ritter and Keanu Reeves joining the cast. In the film, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles ally with Dr. Ivo Robotnik to defeat a new enemy, Shadow the Hedgehog. A fourth film named Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is in development and is set to be released in Spring of 2027.

Plot

In 1974, a meteorite was discovered containing an unknown being. Fifty years later, the being, known as Shadow, escapes from his containment facility. Team Sonic is called in to stop him, but they soon realize they must forge an unlikely alliance with Dr. Robotnik and Agent Stone if they ever want to stop Shadow from destroying Earth.

Why It's Running It

Like the previous two films, it stays faithful to its franchise in many ways and manage to be even more faithful than Sonic 2.
- Ivo Robotnik finally gets to wear his more iconic costume.
- Shadow is properly introduced, and he also maintains his backstory.
  - Adding onto Shadow, he gets to be Super Shadow.
- The Chao makes an appearance in a restaurant.
- Dr. Gerald Robotnik, who was dead in the source material of Sonic Adventure 2, makes an appearance once again by Jim Carrey.
- The film's logo takes inspiration from Sonic Adventure 2.
- Shadow drives a motorcycle and wields a gun like in Shadow in the Hedgehog.
- "Live and Learn" from Sonic Adventure 2 debits here.
Incredible visual effects that is a big improvement over the previous films (who already had great visuals effects), and manage to be even more colorful and detailled.
- Like the previous two films, the opening logo once again has its Paramount stars replaced with rings from the Sonic franchise.
- The CGI for the three Sonic characters remains top-notch as usual.
- Shadow looks as epic as ever, and his design translate very well to the CGI style of design.
- The end credits use an old-style 3D animation that looks perfect for a Sonic game transitioning to a 3D perspective.
Excellent soundtrack, especially Live and Learn from Sonic Adventure 2 who make it's debut in a Sonic cinematographic product, which fit this movie considering that Shadow appear and that this movie take inspiration from Sonic Adventure 2.
The returning characters are still just as likable and lovable as they are in the past films, and the new characters are interesting:
- Sonic is the leader of Team Sonic, a team that Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles formed. You can tell that Sonic has gotten more mature this time, complete with him wanting to kill Shadow.
- Tails is the intelligent kid of Team Sonic, and as usual, he has his gadgets.
- Knuckles is still a likable and funny character, and thankfully, was not flanderized into a dumb muscle like he was in the games.
- Shadow is an excellent character, combined with his dark and troubled backstory of connecting with Maria and being locked away for fifty years.
- Maria Robotnik is a sweet child, all the made more horrifying and tragic because of her death.
- Surprisingly, Ivo Robotnik and Agent Stone gets great character development as well. While Sonic fans and some moviegoers unfamiliar with Sonic may expect the two to betray the Sonic characters like in the last two films, here Robotnik and Stone genuinely has a change of heart and redeems themselves by preventing the Eclipse Cannon from destroying Earth.
Excellent acting, with Keanu Reeves being the perfect choice for Shadow.
Incredible action scenes such as Shadow's escape, the fight with Shadow in the beginning, and the fight between Super Sonic and Super Shadow.
The tone is much darker than the previous two films, with themes such as loss, pain, vengeance, and suffering. All perfect for a character like Shadow.
Even with its dark tone, the humor is still great like a group of children referring to Tails as Detective Pikachu, Tom making a creepy puppet of himself, and Ivo Robotnik and Gerald Robotnik dancing in the lasers.
- The scenes where Ivo Robotnik and Gerald fight each other, while they interrupt the fight with Sonic and Shadow, are actually quite hilarous.
Ivo Robotnik's sacrifice is surprisingly heart-shattering, especially considering the amount of trouble he has pulled off in the previous films. He even treats Agent Stone like a genuine friend rather than a pawn for his own gain.
Like the previous two movies, the direction by Jeff Fowler is great.
The soundtrack is still great, like the first and second, is also amazing as it was composed by Tom Holkenborg (known as Junkie XL who also composed the first film's score and the second film's score), and there's also more music from the games this time. "Run It" by Jelly Roll is a great choice for the end credits, even though a lot of people said a country song was unfitting for a dark and gritty movie.
Ivo Robotnik makes an awesome reference to the flop of the 2011 Green Lantern, where he said that he loved to hate that movie, which was likely done to mock that film especially that it was poorly received.
The Live and Learn song actually appears in the movie during the scene where Sonic and Shadow become super versions of themselves while trying to stop Gerald. It also played during the introducting at one point albiet in a soft guitar version. This is used as some sort of recurring theme for Shadow in the movie.
Sonic's meltdown is shocking for a family film after he witness Tom getting brutally beaten by Shadow. From attempting to use the Master Emerald despite Knuckles' warning (even the heated argument between Sonic and Knuckles was shocking enough) to Sonic even attempting to kill Shadow, this is where the movie goes into the point of no return. Eventually however, Sonic calms down and realizes his faults.
Like the first and second movies, there is not one, but two post-credits scene for the fourth movie. The first mid-credits scene involves Sonic unintentionally running to New York City and he looks around for Tails and Knuckles but doesn't see the two, and he sees a billboard that says "WELCOME TO NEW YORK.", and Sonic sees a metallic robot version of him, of which he comments that he got his costume wrong, and Metal Sonic proceeds to aim on Sonic, and it generates a huge blast in the forest of New York City, which Sonic manages to survive. Metal Sonic then copies himself into multiple copies of Metal Sonic, and Sonic then looks around at the Metal Sonics, and as he thinks he's doomed, a mysterious pink light comes out of nowhere and defeats the Metal Sonic copies, and the mysterious creature appears on the Moon, it comes to the ground and takes down its cloth, and it's none other than Amy Rose. In the second post-credits scene, Shadow is revealed to have survived the Eclipse Cannon's destruction, possibly teasing his return for Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
Overall, this film ultimately proved that video game movies are becoming great, even after the disaster that was Borderlands.

Unlived and Unlearned Qualities

This film pretty much requires you to watch the previous films and Knuckles to understand what is going on.
- It also somewhat requires playing both Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog to understand what is going on because this film heavily takes inspiration from them in some scenes.
In a bit of a poor grasp of the source material:
- MARIA DOES NOT GET SHOT. Yes, a GUN soldier shoots at her, but the shot misses and Maria dies in an explosion instead. This is probably done because a little girl getting shot was too inappropriate and violence for a family-friendly franchise like Sonic.
- Shadow arrives to Earth on a meteorite, when in the games he was a creation from Gerald Robotnik.
- Despite the film taking elements from Sonic Adventure 2, the Biolizard doesn't appear and the Soap Shoes are absent.
The pacing is a little too fast.
The scene where Sonic lashes out at Knuckles and Tails was a bit mean-spirited, although it is somewhat justified as Shadow made him mad and injured Tom; the outrigh problem is that it doesn't excuse him stealing the Master Emerald from Wade Whipple and ditching his friends to battle Shadow, which is out-of-character for him.
Like the first two movies, a few of the humor can be somewhat forced and over-the-top, such as the one infamous part where Super Sonic and Super Shadow are fighting and it's abruptly cut off by Ivo and Gerald fighting, which could ruin the emotional moments.
For some reason, the film seems to have forgot that Sonic called Tom his "Dad" in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, as Sonic does not once call Tom his Dad at all in the film, which is unfortunate, especially since it would have been nice for Sonic to call Tom Dad more in the film.
- It doesn't help that Tails and Knuckles don't bond that much at all in this film, since most of their screen time is sharing it with Sonic.
Shadow never gets a resolution with Gerald, especially since Gerald manipulated his pain and used him and he doesn't even ask Eggman what happened to Gerald when he came back.
The infamous scene where Tom has issues switching between different disguises during the heist.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 87% of 69 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "With a double helping of Jim Carrey's antics and a quicksilver pace befitting its hero, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is the best entry in this amiable series yet." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 60 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.

Sonic fans were universally positive, with many calling this film the best in the series.

Rumors/Future

While it hasn't been confirmed, Alyla Browne (Maria's actress), expressed interest in a Shadow the Hedgehog spin-off film^[1], while Idris Elba (Knuckles' voice actor) and Keanu Reeves (Shadow's voice actor) expressed interest in a Knuckles & Shadow spin-off with Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves reprising their voice roles as Knuckles and Shadow, respectively^[2], while Idris Elba also expressed interest in reprising his voice role as Knuckles in a potential Knuckles season 2^[3], and outside of the unconfirmed films that some of the cast members want. Additionally, X leaker DanielRPK reported that in September 2024, that Paramount plans a Team Chaotix spin-off^[4], and he later reported in November of 2024, where X (formerly known as Twitter) leaker DanielRPK that Paramount has big plans for Silver the Hedgehog.^[5]

Gallery

Trivia

This movie was released on the same day as Disney's Mufasa: The Lion King, and a lot of people said that they would go see Sonic the Hedgehog 3 instead of Mufasa: The Lion King, especially since they thought a sequel/prequel to an already bad film was unnecessary.
- However, Mufasa: The Lion King grossed more money when Disney forced audiences to see it instead of Sonic 3, despite the latter being more profitable for theaters.
Originally, this film was intended to be adding Amy and Rouge during in production process, but it was scrapped, probably due to runtime and budget constraints.
Jim Carrey's older sister Rita Carrey (??? birth, ??? month, any day 1956-November 14, 2024), who was a radio show co-host at the The Peet & Reet Show, producer, musician, and public speaker, unfortunately died on November 14, 2024, and the age of 68 (her age of when she died was revealed by some news sites), and the reasons were not revealed publicly, and she was surrounded by her friends and family when she died, just one month and five days before the release of Jim Carrey's then-latest film, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, additionally Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was released five years after Jim Carrey's oldest brother, John Carrey, died from a rare blood condition called aplastic anemia, and the film was released five months and nine days before what would have been John Carrey's sixty-sixth birthday, while the movie was also released in the twenty-fifth anniversary of when Keanu Reeves' only daughter and his late wife Jennifer Syme' only daughter, Ava Archer Syme-Reeves, was stillborn and was born and died on December 24, 1999.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was released one day after the forty-sixth birthday of writer Patrick Casey (better known as Pat Casey).
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was released four days after the forty-third birthday of Krysten Ritter (who plays Director Rockwell).

Videos

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