“This may terrify children,” I repeatedly thought to myself, sitting through a bolder but much grimmer installment in a series that’s often been content to be mostly lighthearted fare for families and young audiences. The first Sonic the Hedgehog film felt like a standard but sometimes poignant fish-out-of-water story with some grandly ambitious set pieces and inappropriate humor; the second film felt scaled back in both areas but was otherwise highly enjoyable despite perhaps feeling unambitious.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 feels like it’s stepped out of the shadow of its previous entries’ story molds: Sonic gets along well with his human family and his animal friends, and the film, which stops to make a few jokes at the superhero genre but thankfully doesn’t feel derivative of it, makes a strong attempt to tell its story in its own way without feeling formulaic. It isn’t always successful, adopting a few too many story molds for its own good, but it’s still a lofty recommendation whose level of violence and often ominous mood may alienate part of its core audience.
Keanu Reeves’ Shadow is the most notable addition to the cast and the film, lacking Doctor Robotnik’s mix of danger and humor and feeling rather one-note as a result. With an emotional range as dark as his fur color, Shadow’s shallow writing is sharply elevated by Reeves’ performance. (Speaking of fur, it’s worth noting that the graphical detail here still doesn’t animate very well, in stark contrast to the gorgeous Detective Pikachu film this movie pokes fun at.)
Shadow’s origins are empathetic enough – imagine if a young Superman had come from an alien background only to have no loving family taking care of him after he arrived – but the story does little with this, despite some positive vocal messages about cherishing the positive memories of loved ones who are no longer with you. In this case, much of this centers on the young Maria, Shadow’s closest resemblance to “family,” whose death prior to the events of the film leaves an emotional void Shadow never learned to grieve or to fill. (Death of a child: Her establishing scene, to its immense credit, isn’t overlong or gratuitous, nor does it ever feel sappy. I had a number of issues with this film’s level of intensity compared to the first two films, but this was one of its quietest moments and could serve as a lesson to other movies that try to force emotional bonding with dramatic “No!” screams or an in-your-face musical score.)
While a story that still gets by on its gags and giggles doesn’t really know what to do with the narrative implications of its own premise and arguably glosses over some of them, it fills the void with a thinly explained but fun to watch mutual-foe plot that develops into a heist film, thankfully relying more on comedic character interactions than on technology and complex gadgets even as it starts to resemble a Mission: Impossible film. A scene involving a gravity chamber is one of the film’s highlights, blending simple effects with solid writing that’s both humorous and narratively important; another scene involving a laser grid gives the returning Jim Carrey one of his standout goofiest sequences in the film, but it’s one of the few that he’s given. Even his comic addiction to the static electricity generated by Sonic’s hedgehog spines subtly feels more drug-like than it did. That said, his rotund, substantially game-like appearance gives the movie a number of surprisingly funny fat jokes I’d expected were too old-fashioned. Another elderly character makes a joke about women in the military that makes the film feel less “sanitized” than did a number of contemporary movies.
The action scenes look high-quality, if not substantially improved from the earlier films. The first movie still has my favorite final fight of the three, though this latest installment brought a number of surprises that had my audience cheering in an almost Endgame-like fashion. Their context had me feeling mixed emotions at the best of times: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is much more singularly focused on revenge, and its acceptability or lack thereof, and as a result, its middle and third acts frequently reminded me of Spider-Man: No Way Home’s harsh tonal shift from comedy to drama, with a lot of similar stakes and sacrifices, some of which don’t get the emotional or narrative resolution they deserve. The story does get one thing majorly right: It feels like a genuine continuation of its established character development instead of its central cast failing to learn lessons they’d already been taught in previous films. Most notably, the human protagonists have no contrived drama or distrust of one another: they feel like a family, and they’re a well-grounded element in a film that often has its head in the clouds and beyond, whose “cool moments” feel internally divisive when the story conflicts motivate the audience to root against them. (Dragon Ball Super: Broly did this more elegantly, despite being even more intense for young audiences.)
The soundtrack and the environmental designs aren’t particularly notable, serving their respective jobs well while rarely being awe-inspiring, with the exception of a stray London gag that parodies the cover of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road,” as well as a few scenes whose narrative relevance doesn’t really extend past asking, “Remember this cool thing from the games?” This third film dispenses with a lot of the second’s more mystical elements, feeling more like a science thriller as a result and less like Tomb Raider mixed with a Marvel film. Some of 3’s early scenes feel a bit over-acted in that “cheesy ’90s children’s-show” way, with one character’s Vulcan-like professionalism and newcomer Krysten Ritter’s wholehearted seriousness serving as a welcome comic foil, but the actors settle into their roles more confidently as the movie goes on; their line deliveries feel more natural despite the thin script, complementing the story’s reinforced emphasis on family that now feels more relevant than simply serving as the basis for a magical adventure.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3, despite the pre-release press I saw for the film, isn’t the best installment of its series, even as it spends a good deal of its running time trying to bluff its way into being considered as such. In some ways it feels the most ambitious, like the children’s-movie equivalent of Oscar bait, and in some ways it feels the most unpolished, sacrificing story structure for an emotional gravitas that frequently feels “earned” but doesn’t always feel consequential. And yet even that is a high bar – the film isn’t significantly worse than either of the other two, and I highly enjoyed all three of them despite this one feeling the most structurally uneven. I do think the story’s reliance on surprise character introductions feels more like a burden than an asset as the series goes on – too much of my emotional goodwill for the movies now seems to be tied up in “surprise! Look who’s here!” moments that add nothing to the immediate plot while generally keeping well to their promises of future excitement.
The film’s general lack of pop-culture references – including, notably, to its own games – is a boon, such that its few remaining shout-outs feel brightly chosen and well used. Its more intense action sequences and story backgrounds, extending from risky plot choices such as a child’s death all the way to small artistic choices (some morally ambiguous characters’ eyes resemble black holes when they get angry), make this a more difficult choice for families even as a lot of the earlier films’ more vulgar jokes have long since been removed. I welcomed this, but as the film lurched from one morose scene into another, I found myself grappling with a thought I wasn’t expecting to have:
“I almost wish we had the Magic Mike jokes back.”
This post was originally written and published for my movie-review blog, Projected Realities.