Director – Jeff Fowler, Screenplay – Pat Casey, Josh Miller & Josh Whittington, Story – Pat Casey & Josh Miller, Producers – Toby Ascher, Neal H. Moritz, Toru Nakahara & Hitoshi Okuno, Photography – Brandon Trost, Music – Tom Holkenborg, Visual Effects Supervisor – Ged Wright, Visual Effects/Animation – Industrial Light and Magic Special (Supervisors – Rhya Claringbull & Hayden Landis) & Marza Animation Planet (Supervisor – David Nelson), Visual Effects – Agora, Blur Studio, Bot VFX (Supervisor – Sean Pollack), Cantina Creative Canada, Fin Design + Effects (Supervisor – Roy Malhi), Lola | VFX (Supervisor – Edson Williams), Digital Makeup Effects Group, LLC & FX3X, Little Zoo, Rising Sun Pictures (Supervisor – Christoph Zollinger), Rodeo FX (Supervisor – Sebastien Francoeur), Untold Studios (Supervisor – Julien Bolbach) & Vandivision (Supervisor – Dylan Vanderberg), Animation – Steamroller Studios, Special Effects Supervisor – Hayley Williams, Prosthetic Makeup Designer – Mark Coulier, Production Design – Luke Freeborn. Production Company – Original Film/Marza Animation Planet/Blur Studio.
Cast
Jim Carrey (Ivo Robotnik/Gerald Robotnik), James Marsden (Tom Wachowski), Tika Sumpter (Maddie Wachowski), Lee Majdoub (Agent Stone), Krysten Ritter (Director Rockwell), Natasha Rothwell (Rachel), Shemar Moore (Randall), Tom Butler (Commander Walters), Ayla Brown (Maria), Adam Pally (Wade)
Tom and Maddie hold a party to celebrate the anniversary of Sonic’s arrival on Earth. They are interrupted by the arrival of Director Rockwell from G.U.N. to request Sonic’s help with an emergency in Tokyo. The Sonic Team head to Japan where they face Shadow, another hedgehog who landed on Earth in the 1970s but has gone over to the dark side after being imprisoned in a government facility for fifty years. However, Shadow is much more powerful and defeats the entire Sonic team. To take Shadow on requires Sonic collaborating with his old nemesis Dr Robotnik.
Sonic the Hedgehog was a videogame created by the Japanese company Sega in 1991. It has been an enormous success with multiple sequels, spinoffs and even several anime series. This was then developed out into the live-action film Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), which was one of the top box-office hits of 2020, due to being released just before the declaration of the Covid pandemic and the shutdown of theatres. This produced a sequel with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022).
Whether we asked for it or not, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is upon us. I have not particular attachment to the franchise. I found the first film mindlessly enjoyable, although by the time of the sequel it felt like the series was just recycling the elements of the previous film. Fairly much the same elements have been brought back here – director Jeff Fowler, James Marsden and Tika Sumpter as Sonic’s human hosts, Jim Carrey as Robotnik, and Ben Schwartz, Idris Elba and Colleen O’Shaughnessey in the voice roles of the various Sonic Team.
I didn’t expect much of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 but within minutes of it throwing us into a furiously fast-paced scene with the Sonic Team facing down with Shadow in the streets of Tokyo, I was surprised how much I was engaging with the film. The visual effects are at the peak for the series. And the action takes place at an exhilarating zip that leaves you wowing at just how slick and exciting the editing department makes it all look.
(l to r) Sonic the Hedgehog vs Shadow
The film conducts two coups on the Super-Villainy side of the equation. First there is the voice casting of Keanu Reeves as Shadow the evil Sonic, which is a stroke of genius and one that Keanu delivers spot on. The other is when it comes to Jim Carrey who gave a performance of cartoonish excess and literal mustache-twirling villainy as Robotnik in the previous two films. Here we get two Jim Carreys for the price of one with he playing both Robotnik and his grandfather. In fact, Jim Carrey so dominates the show here that the nominal leads in the previous two films, James Marsden and Tika Sumpter, are pushed aside to being little more than supporting characters – there at the start and then engaged in a climactic caper (where even then they are replaced by two lookalikes using a disguise gadget for a number of scenes).
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is an absolutely formulaic film. The good characters are cute and anthropomorphic, the bad guys twirl mustaches and comes in black. The secret government agency has been cloned from the playbook of E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and imprison Shadow for no real reason other than that is what they do. You can predict just about every move that the script makes right down to the reversals of sympathies at the end. And none of it engages the adult brain in any way beyond someone who is eight years old. And yet it is entirely enjoyable, the best of the Sonic the Hedgehog films to date.
