2024 has been Shadow’s year. Announced in April as The Year of Shadow, the black hedgehog has been celebrated in multiple ways. From an animated series on YouTube to the fantastic Sonic X Shadow Generations, it’s been a good year to be a Shadow fan. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 the movie might be seen as the finale of the year, reminagining the beloved Sonic Adventure 2 into the universe the movies have created and putting Shadow on the silver screen. Following its predecessor’s footsteps, the film is a fun couple of hours hours and a great group activity if you have a few fellow fans in your friend group. My only gripe is that some of the rougher edges that made Sonic Adventure 2 so special have been filed away in the rewrite.
Please note that while I will not spoil events unique to the movie, I will discuss parts of the plot of Sonic Adventure 2.
I always knew I would have a weird relationship with Sonic the Hedgehog 3. In one sense, I’m not hard to entertain; as a Sonic fan in general, I will be whooping and hollering at the first few notes of Live and Learn. But as a Sonic Adventure 2 fan specifically, I’m in danger of holding Sonic 3 to a standard that even the original game would probably fail to uphold. So I tempered my expectations and settled in to watch an uncomplicated kids movie about my favourite black hedgehog. Doing so allowed me to enjoy the movie as it was without worrying about how faithful it was to the game, but now that I’m home and on my soapbox, I have some thoughts.
In Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles take on Shadow and Professor Gerald in a re-modelled version of the plot of Sonic Adventure 2. Ben Schwartz, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, and Idris Elba all reprise their respective roles, with Keanu Reeves joining the cast as Shadow and Jim Carrey playing Gerald on top of Doctor Robotnik. The story has been heavily reworked to fit the world of the movies so that only the broad strokes remain: Shadow has awoken after 50 years, this time by Professor Gerald who is still alive to enact his revenge plot against the world following the death of his granddaughter Maria. Tragically, Rouge the Bat does not make the cut.
“Sonic 3 has taken a page from Shadow Generations’ book and made Shadow as cool as possible.”
Keanu Reeves delivers a decently convincing performance as Shadow, serving as a foil for Sonic and friends’ loud personalities. Shadow is the kind of character Reeves does best, stoic and gruff — think John Wick or Neo. Sonic 3 has taken a page from Shadow Generations’ book and made Shadow as cool as possible. He’s got a few cool one-liners befitting of an anti-hero, but is also convincing in his more emotional moments. However, the animation and fight scenes made Shadow stand out in this movie, particularly where he gets to use his iconic motorcycle and gun.
There are plenty of Sonic references to keep fans happy, from direct quotes and camerawork that imitates cutscenes from the games, to small background details and sound effects. I saw the film with a group of Sonic fans, which made for an especially great time, as we celebrated each reference as they came. This, along with the multiple cool action scenes, will be enough for most Sonic fans to enjoy this as its own film, even though it’s not a completely faithful adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2’s story.
That being said, if the first two movies didn’t do anything for you, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is unlikely to change your mind. Like the first two films, Sonic 3 prioritises laughs over a tight story, leaving much of the screen time dedicated to dialogue that exists only to get a giggle out of the audience. It works to keep butts in seats, but it doesn’t leave any lasting memories. If you asked me what I thought about Sonic 2, I could only tell you that I enjoyed it in general, but I couldn’t tell you much about what actually happened.
At least the human side characters have reduced roles, leaving more time for the actual Sonic characters to do their thing, but this movie still wastes a generous part of its runtime. To explain what I mean, let’s talk about Jim Carrey.
Double the Carrey isn’t always double the fun
In 2022, Jim Carrey told “Access Hollywood” that he would only return to acting “if the angels bring some sort of script that’s written in gold ink”. In reality, I think the angels must have brought him a golden cheque.
How charmed you’ll be by Carrey will depend on your tolerance for his “unique” brand of comedy. I am not entirely unaffected by it; his energy is infectious, and his on-screen dynamic with Agent Stone, his lackey invented for the film franchise, can’t help but put a smile on my face. Carrey’s duel performance as Doctor Robotnik and Professor Gerald is evenly split between genuinely funny and overwhelmingly cringe, and while I was laughing through every scene, it only lasted until the credits were rolling. Coming out of the theatre, I was already beginning to feel that Carrey as Prof. Gerald had not made the movie funnier, it had just made Gerald seem an extension of Robotnik rather than his own character. Worse, it may have detracted from the edgy darkness that made Shadow’s story so cool in the first place.
“Carrey’s duel performance as Doctor Robotnik and Professor Gerald is evenly split between genuinely funny and overwhelmingly cringe…”
In the games’ backstory, which was recently expanded upon in Shadow Generations, Professor Gerald was a kind and lovable scientist who was contracted by G.U.N. (the United Federation’s military force) for weapons development. He reluctantly accepted the role as a means to fund his life-preservation research, which included attempting to find a cure for his terminally ill granddaughter Maria. G.U.N. committed an unimaginable betrayal against Gerald when it violently shut down his research facility, killing Maria along with many of his colleagues. Going mad with grief, he altered Shadow’s memories of Maria to manipulate him into exacting brutal revenge on the Earth Maria had loved. He was executed soon afterwards by G.U.N., leaving Shadow to carry out their plan alone. Gerald is already dead during the events of Sonic Adventure 2, but the chilling video recording that relays his final words portrays a frighteningly cold, husk of a man devoid of any love for his fellow human.
This rough, edgy backstory informs Shadow’s motivations, and it’s also what makes Gerald a different flavour of evil from his grandson, who is a classic moustache-twirling mad scientist. Sonic 3 has taken the character in a completely different direction by making him into just another vehicle for Jim Carrey, shoving Gerald into the same villain stereotype as Doctor Robotnik. It makes him less interesting as a result.
Multiple scenes of Carrey hamming it up as both characters chew up the time the film otherwise could have used to establish Gerald’s relationship with Shadow and Maria, something the film skips over. When Maria is killed (by accident, another change that makes the story less compelling than the original), it is the only scene they share together in the whole film. During a series of vignettes, we are shown how close Shadow and Maria have become, but Gerald is notably absent, accidentally implying that he’s too busy to spend time with them. The setup for Gerald’s descent into madness, his love for Maria, is completely unshown.
So yeah, Sonic 3 doesn’t have the emotional core that I hoped for. But it does have Dr Robotnik and Prof. Gerald doing a funny dance together, so I guess it was a good movie.
Paramount has the unenviable task of trying to cater this movie to kids as well as 30-something Sonic fans like me. The idea that they chose to prioritise the kids in the equation should be no surprise, and it’s still an enjoyable movie even if its humour is designed for a younger generation. It’s still got Shadow looking cool as hell in it, which will be enough for most of us— me included. But I don’t think Sonic The Hedgehog 3 will have the staying power that its video game counterpart did, because they smoothed over all the rough edges of what made Sonic Adventure 2 such a unique story.
Kids like edge, you know? that’s why they like Shadow in the first place.
About the Author
Edie W-K
she/her
If it isn't video games, Edie doesn't care about it. She's been playing games since the N64 era, and only spent enough time away from her 3DS to earn a Bachelor in Games Design from RMIT.
