Well, this movie was a long time coming. Yes, my friends, the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is finally here. The delay is over, the movie is in theaters, I went and saw it with a friend somewhat late last night, and now I'm here to give my thoughts on it. The movie was directed by Jeff Fowler, the screenplay was written by Patrick Casey and Josh Miller, and Tim Miller serves as an executive producer alongside the Paramount Pictures/Sega co-distribution. Legendary film composer Junkie XL gives the movie its score, and Ben Schwartz provides the voice of Sonic. Also among the main cast is Jim Carrey, Tika Sumpter, and James Marsden. This movie was originally slated for a November of 2019 release, but, after the first trailer dropped and the entire internet became terrified of Sonic's design, Paramount actually listened to the fans and pushed it back to allow a redesign. In my opinion, it was well worth the wait. Old movie Sonic looked like a dead old man, so Paramount deserves huge props for retooling him. I'll be honest, after seeing that first trailer, I was really nervous that the movie was gonna be bad. Among other things, it just looked like a massive cash grab. The second trailer, that first revealed Sonic's astronomically better design, was definitely an improvement, but a lot of the problems I saw with the first trailer were still there. My fears weren't quelled all that much. What did I think after I finally saw the movie, though? Well, let's just jump right into it. This is your official spoiler warning.
The first thing I want to do is pay my respects to Paramont for actually listening to the now infamously terrible design of the first trailer's Sonic and opting to redesign him. Most other companies would've stuck to their guns and released that abomination to the world, but Paramount actually paid attention to the backlask and changed the design. That deserves so much respect. Let's all give them a round of applause for making Sonic actually look like Sonic this time. Seriously, though, big thank you to Moving Picture Company for doing the redesign. The first trailer's Sonic looked like a melting snowman that took the form of a wax sculpture, any attempts to kill that monstrosity are appreciated. New Sonic looks so good! He looks just like he did in the newer games, but with Detective Pikachu quality fur animation. I have no complaints about how he looks, aside from one or two off moments here and there. He has the gloves, he's a nice shade of blue, his eyes are bright green, it's exactly how a live-action Sonic the Hedgehog should look. He looks adorable in this movie. The new design is really good, miles ahead of the live-action Smurf from the first trailer. And, while we're on the subject of praising Sonic, Ben Schwartz did a great job of bring this iteration of the character to life vocally. Recasting Roger Craig Smith seemed like a weird idea at first, but Schwarts ended up surpassing expectations. He was a great pick to do the voice. He has the perfect amount of energy when it calls for it, he still maintains the same slight cockyness to his tone that all the great Sonics of the past had, and he pulls off the more dramatic moments rather nicely. Not all the jokes worked, but Ben's delivery saved a lot of the duds. I'd love to see Ben do this character again in the future. Baby Sonic was okay. He's cute, but it really feels like he only exists because of the trend that Baby Yoda started. To be fair, the whole prologue scene was a little weird. The only things it really did were show off Green Hill and then set up the ring portals. Cutting it most likely would've been a better choice. That's neither here nor there, though. I don't know who did the voice for Baby Sonic (IMDb doesn't say at the moment), so I'm going to assume it's Ben again. At any rate, Ben Schwartz was a great Sonic. The perfect casting choice for this version of the character. If you end up reading this, Mr. Schwartz, nicely done. You're great!
Although I found this movie to be surprisingly good, with the new design of Sonic being one of the main things that saved it, there are still things that bugged me kinda about the movie. I guess I'll go ahead and talk about them here, since there aren't that many. My biggest problem is the story. It's very cliche. Character has important thing, character loses important thing, character seeks out the help of other characters in order to retrieve important thing. Wash, rinse, and repeat. This movie tells that story rather well, to be fair, but that doesn't excuse that we've seen it dozens of times before. The dialogue is also very wonky a lot of the times, with the exception of a few standout lines here and there (with my favorite being Robotnik's "I was spitting out formulas while you were spitting up formula". I don't care who you are, that is a bar). Sonic has a lot of generic "I am sad" lines periodically. You know the ones. "Even though I have a lot of friends, I'm still very lonely", "There's so much more I wanted to do", things of that nature. They've been done to death, but at least Ben Schwartz makes them work. Also, in relation to Sonic's "I'm sad" moments, do you remember how the second trailer made it look like the power outage was cause by Sonic accidently running over the plates too fast during a baseball game? Well, that's sorta accurate (it's just that it happened during a different part of the game). Sonic wins the game against himself, then gets sad cause there's no one there to cheer him on, so he just randomly starts running really fast across the plates, and he eventually picks up enough speed to cause the power outage. So, firstly, false advertising. Secondly, and please don't take this the wrong way, it's a little off-putting to me that Sonic would just abruptly start running at top speed because he's sad. I think it would've been a more powerful moment if we saw him slowly walk away with the depressed look on his face. Having the power outage be caused by Sonic accidently getting too excited makes more sense, if you ask me. The way it happened in the final cut of the movie really gave off the impression that it happened because the plot needed it to happen. Another thing I clashed with was the kinda meh CGI on Robotnik's robots. The designs are cool, and the finished animations definitely look better than the ones in the trailers, but I think it dips just a bit too much into the uncanny valley. Sonic himself unfortunately does the same thing once or twice, most notably in the scene where he annoys Tom with the paddleball. Maybe it's the camera angle, maybe it's the face Sonic's making, maybe it's the objects in his hand, but something about that scene looks off to me. Also, Sonic flosses twice and I hate it. Please stop.
I've sung my praises for Ben Schwartz as Sonic, but most of the rest of the cast deserves credit as well. Especially Jim Carrey. When it was first announced that Carrey would be playing Robotnik, most of the internet (including myself) was skeptical. His usual over-the-top, animated style of acting definitely fits the character, but his voice and body type didn't. Or so I thought! Carrey's performance ended up being my favorite thing about the movie by far. And, yes, Jim is mostly just using his normal voice for the character, but there are times when he does a pretty good impression of the Eggman from the games. Prime example: There's a moment near the end when we think Robotnik has killed Sonic. Sonic is lying lifeless on the road, Robotnik's ship flies out of one of the ring portals, and Jim Carrey laughs in a way that sounds identical to the way Eggman sounds in the games. It's almost scary how spot-on it sounds. Also, Robotnik will sometimes dip his voice into a growl when he talks, and it also really sounds like the Eggman of the games. What I'm saying is that Jim Carrey was a perfect choice to portray a live-action Robotnik. I really hope the movie gets a sequel, just so Carrey can return to the character. He has the goofiness that you'd expect from Robotnik down to a T, and there's even some moments when he's genuinely menacing. Carrey looks like he's having so much fun in this role, and it translates beautiful onto the screen. Also, huge missed opportunity to not play Carrey's "I Am the Walrus" cover during the first stinger (where it shows that Robotnik has finally adopted the iconic bald head and the moustache from the games). It would've most likely taken the audience out of the moment, but I would've loved it. When Jim isn't being the best part of this movie bar none, the other actors give solid performances as well! James Marsden and Tika Sumpter have adorable chemistry, it makes the scenes they share together such a joy to watch. And they hold their own very well separately, too! James as Tom plays off of Schwartz as Sonic perfectly. Tika Sumpter's portrayal of Maddie is also really fun. She's a very good actress, and she was a great choice for the character. Natasha Rothwell was hilarious and I love her character so much. She has most of the funnier lines, her camera presence is great, her line delivery is flawless. It's such a shame she's only in, like, three scenes. Definitely bring her back for the sequel. The interactions between Sonic and JoJo were cute, Crazy Carl was funny, Lee Majdoub was entertaining as Agent Stone. The cast was good, I like them. They were fun.
Like I said before, this movie also has some pretty good special effects a lot of the time. I've talked about how good Sonic himself looks enough, but I also really like now the electricity that sometimes engulfs his body looks. Yeah, it's really Thor-esque, but it still looks pretty cool! I don't know why it's a thing that happens, though it could just be how the movie represents Sonic's kinetic energy, but it's really pretty to look at. Sonic gets a couple Quicksilver sequences here and there, and they're all absolutely marvelously done. This is where Sonic's animation and voice acting really shine, in my opinion. These moments are fun, they're pretty inventive, they're funny, and the bullet time allows for the light beams that appear behind Sonic when he uses his superspeed to really shine through. They look awesome! Exactly the way they do in the games, just with more polish and flair. Tails makes a brief appearance in the second stinger, and he looks absolutely perfect. The same amount of care that went into redesigning Sonic also appears to have gone into putting Tails on the big screen. Also, shout out to Colleen Villard for lending her Tails voice to the movie. She wasn't credited, so I'm gonna give her some love. She's great. And you know what else is great? The way Green Hill Zone looks during the brief moments we see it. Good Lord, it looks beautiful! Kinda makes me wish the whole movie had taken place there, but I'm still really excited about how great it looked when we are there. Please give us more Green Hill Zone in the sequel (if it happens), Paramount. And, while we're discussing the more technical aspects of the movie, I kinda liked the cinematography as well. This movie was a bit more complexly shot than I anticipated, which was a nice surprise. There's a really cool shot of Robotnik where the camera is upside down and then turns itself back over, and it looks great. There's no reason for the camera to do that, but I'm glad it did. There's another really neat shot that shows Robotnik from above as he spins around in his chair for about two seconds. His dance scene has some fun one-takes, the pan up that first introduces him is neat, the first stinger is shot nicely. Jim Carrey is filmed very well in this movie, is what I'm trying to say. Sonic's bullet time sequences are, too. Major props to Stephen F. Windon, the cinematographer. He did great with this!
Junkie XL's original score is good from what I heard of it. It wasn't all that memorable, but it served its purpose nicely. The moods of each track fit the scenes they appeared in very well. Intensity for the action scenes, mellowness for the calmer moments, genuinely beautiful-sounding music for Sonic's more emotional moments. It's good. I like it. It doesn't necessarily stand out, but it's still very easy on the ears. The use of licensed songs was good, as well. Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" plays over a scene of Sonic running, and it fits the scene perfectly (mostly because of the "I wanna make a supersonic man out of you" lyric). The use of "When Evil Grows" by The Poppy Family during Robotnik's dance scene was nice. The tempo of the song fits the scene a lot better than I initially thought it would when it started. Also, the Lil Yachty song in the end credits is really catchy. I have one more point of praise, and I'm not sure where else to put it, so I'll put it here: I like all the nods to the source material a lot. They were really nice touches. The stars on the Paramount logo being changed to rings was cute, the Sega logo (with footage from a bunch of their games and the choir performing the iconic chant) was fun. I liked the fact that Sonic defeated Robotnik at the end by just hitting the ship a bunch of times with his body, like he did in the Genesis games. There's a really cute piano cover of the Green Hill theme that plays just before Sonic is revealed to have moved in with Tom and Maddie, that was a nice touch. Sonic says "Gotta go fast" once, the word "Badnik" is seen written on a sticky note during Robotnik's dance scene, Sonic does a play on the "looking bored and tapping his foot" idle animation from Sonic 2. Heck, even Robotnik's slimmer figure could be an unintentional nod to Sonic '06. I hope not, but it could be. We briefly saw footage of the game in the Sega logo, so it isn't that far-fetched. Also, the end credits were just beautiful. It recaps the movie in the classic 8bit style of the Genesis games and Mania. I loved it a lot. All of the source material tie-ins were adorable and I appreciate them all. Also, one of the characters holds up a drawing of the Sanic meme at one point. It was really weird.
So, yeah! The long-awaited Sonic the Hedgehog movie was a surprisingly fun time! A bit generic, yes, but still good. The kids will love it, and I reckon the adults will find some enjoyment out of it as well. I know I did. It's probably ultimately not gonna be very memorable in the longrun, aside from Jim Carrey's bombastic performance, but it's still a fun ride through and through. For the most part. It's geared towards kids, which is pretty evident if you watch the movie, but that doesn't instantly make it bad. I liked it a lot, personally. I will give Sonic the Hedgehog a solid 7/10! Thank you so much for reading this! I apologise for the lack of blogs lately, it's just that my personal life has swamped me. I've been doing work on some non-blog projects, one of which is something I've been chipping away at for about two years now. I'm also attempting to start a music career. All of that, in addition to me not having the healthiest of mental states most of the time, hasn't left me a lot of time to focus on the blogs. But that's gonna change. I'm gonna really try and get back into the swing of things. I've got quite a few drafts that I need to sort through anyway. The three I'm looking to get out right now are a Joker retrospective, a review of the new Eminem album, and a list of Oscar snubs that I'm still very salty about. I'm also thinking about covering the new Mac Miller album, but I don't know if I should? At any rate, it'll be one of those four. Until then, if you want to keep up with my dumb antics outside of TTH, you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram. I don't Tweet very often, but I'm very active on Instagram, so those are the best places you can go to keep in touch with me if you want to. Thanks again for reading. Be safe today!
