The live action film of Sonic The Hedgehog hit cinemas in February of 2020. Based on
the popular Sega video game character that arrived on Sega Mega Drive back in 1991 and
has had endless amounts of sequels and spins offs released over the years. Just
recently it arrived on Bluray and is also available to rent on streaming platforms.
The film was directed by Jeff Fowler who had only directed a short movie called
Gopher Broke which received an academy award nomination. Budgeted at around $90 million it
managed to gross over $300 worldwide making it the most successful video game to movie
adaptation released in the USA. It could’ve been a massive failure. Once the first trailer
hit the internet in April of 2019 the look of sonic was universally panned and it wasn’t just
the fans of Sonic complaining. Apparently Paramount Pictures expected Sonics fans to
object to the new look but they felt general audiences wouldn’t care but they were wrong.
Sega themselves weren’t entirely happy with the redesign either especially Sonics eyes.
Paramount made the right decision to delay the movie by 3 months and spent
an additional $5 million to redesign Sonic to mirror his classic image.
There has been talk of a sonic movie, since the mid 90s following a similar approach to Roger
Rabbit with animated version of Sonic interacting with actors or to go in the direction of a fully
animated movie, but there was a reluctancy from Sega due to the failure of Super Mario Bros,
they didn’t want the reputation and image of their character to be damaged and the rights
to develop a live action movie was shelved. Interest grew again in 2013 when Sony had
wanted to push forward with feature but again the idea was put on hold and it was Paramount
Pictures who gave it the greenlight and got the film off the ground in 2017.
The majority of the cast signed on by August 2018,
and principal photography took place between September and October in Vancouver.
For the films plot, Sonic has been living on Earth since he was kid,
he escaped from his homeworld having been sought after by tribe for his power. His guardian an owl
called Longclaw gives him a bag of rings which he can use to create portals between worlds.
Stuck on earth by himself for the remaining years in the town of Green Hills in Montana,
he has been keeping an eye on the locals but longs to make a friend.
He idolizes the local sheriff, Tom, and his veterinarian wife, Maddie,
unaware the pair are planning to relocate to San Francisco soon. One night, Sonic becomes
frustrated by his loneliness when playing baseball by himself, and runs at supersonic
speed as a result, accidentally triggering an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out power
across the Pacific Northwest. Doctor Robotnik is enlisted by the United States Department
of Defense to uncover the source of the outage. Robotnik discovers and tracks Sonic foot prints
to Green Hills thanks to his drone technology. Sonic spots the government are on his case and
he hides in Tom’s shed. Tom discovers Sonic and accidentally shoots him with a tranquilizer,
causing him to send his bag of rings through a portal to San Francisco. Tom reluctantly
agrees to help Sonic to get his rings back. As the pair evade Robotnik, Robotnik comes across
one of Sonic's quills, discovering the power in it has the potential to fuel his robots,
he then becomes obsessed with capturing Sonic to harness his power for himself!
Now I didn’t get the chance to see Sonic in theatres, I wasn’t desperate to rush out and
see it, I grew up playing Sonic and its sequels on the Mega Drive and Sonic Adventure when it hit
the Dreamcast, I enjoyed those games but I never considered myself a super fan of the character,
the games were just fun to play, I’ve been a bit surprised Sonic
has continued to have a strong fanbase over the years especially with younger audiences,
from what ive seen and played of the more recent Sonics games the last decade or so
they have largely been rubbish or just lack the charm and strong gameplay of the earlier
titles from the 90s. Sonic has somewhat struggled with the leap from 2D to 3D,
far less successful than Mario who has had hit after hit. The recent release of Sonic
Mania demonstrated that Sonic works best in a 2D medium and its probably the best Sonic
game I’ve played since Sonic 2. I just wish this game came out on the Sega Saturn in the late 90s.
I had heard from many people that this Sonic film wasn’t too bad and certainly
wasn’t the disaster many people were expecting and those opinions are true, its perfectly fine,
is it however average and plays it very safe and doesn’t do anything original with its story. Sonic
with the early games never really had a plot, things were of course expanded over the years
in further games and the long running comic book series but the film just follows a very
familiar storyline that is very predictable, cliched and doesn’t make any large attempts
to spend time in the world of Sonic, it quickly gets to Earth and spends 95% of the time there.
The films most frustrating aspect is Sonic himself sadly, he does have some gags that work and got a
few chuckles from me but the majority of time I just found him a bit irritating, he’s hyper
active, never shuts up, its like you’re dealing with a kid high on sugar. Also I didn’t think the
voice fit the character. Its always been a bit weird once Sonic started speaking in the games,
of course there had been cartoon, but I don’t think they have never fully got his voice right,
their direction from it appears to me is to have him sound cool and edgy. To me I felt Sonic should
be a bit sarcastic and witty, a bit like Raphael from Ninja Turtles. He should be a bit lazy as
well, making it ironic that he is the faster thing on the planet but he is a bit of slob.
His whole goal and the theme of the movie is about friendship, not the most exciting idea
put to film, Sonic just wishes to make a friend so he doesn’t feel so alone. Thankfully the redesign
makes his CG counterpart look more familiar to his classic video game image but Sonic has
always looked a bit off in 3D, I prefer the chubby 2D version of Sonic from his early days. Despite
being nicely animated he doesn’t quite fit the live action elements very well, he doesn’t seem to
blend naturally and looks like a cartoon character that has just been superimposed into the movie.
Jim Carrey is certainly the highlight as Dr Robotnik, he brings back his over the top comedic
style from his 90s output of movies such as Ace Ventura and Batman Forever which was nice to see
again, the comedy doesn’t quite hit the mark in all his scenes, he is trying his best to elevate
the comedy but the jokes aren’t strong enough in the script. It was nice to touch to have Sonic
refer to him as Eggman which is his name in Japan. Robonik is supposed to be over weight man and
Jim Carrey is far from it, but he does look more like the classic villain by the end of the film.
James Marsden who im always happy to see,
a good actor and has great comedic timing but he doesn’t really get the chance to be funny,
he is just plays a generic nice guy who is stuck in a boring town as a police
officer who wants to escape to the big city and comes to the help of sonic and befriends him,
its just an forgettable role for James. One my favourite characters is the cop called Wade played
by Adam Pally, a small role but his character is great and got a lot of laughs from me,
I just wish he was in it more. He should’ve joined Sonic for his adventure to be honest.
When Sonic utilizes his super speed, we end up with sequences we’ve seen before
in recent movies and even TV shows, watching Sonic play baseball by himself feels like a
scene ripped from the old Lois and Clark show, seeing the scene of him moving at normal speed
with everyone essentially frozen in time is ripped off from X-Men days of future past.
its stuff you’ve seen before. I suppose this was the difficult aspect for the filmmakers,
what else can you do with Sonic that hasn’t already been done before with
say The Flash or Quicksilver? So in this area they seem to struggle to do anything original.
The films visual effects are overall okay, they do the job but nothing looks photo realistic,
it very much looks you’re staring computer effects, the score my Tom Holkenborg aka
Junkie XL does a serviceable job, he provides a classic symphonic score with some soft rock,
a big departure from his electronic approach, his stuff on Batman V Superman was headache inducing,
felt like I was being bashed over the head with a keyboard. Oddly Tom doesn’t take any
inspiration from the Sonic games using the very recognise themes and melodies. I did hear one
theme near the end that is a slow rendition of the sonic main theme but that was all I noticed.
For once Tom should’ve gone with an electronic score with some jazz thrown in and adapted many
of the classic themes from the game to please the fans. What we get seems like a missed opportunity.
The film leaves it open for a sequel and from its success at the box office,
I would imagine that Paramount would want to do a follow up and hopefully they will feature
more of Sonics world. If you have children then im sure they will have a lot of fun watching it,
Since Super Mario Bros there has been a lot of movies based on video games,
most of the time they fail at capturing the games as its difficult medium to translate and
often the filmmakers don’t really care about the game but just see an easy opportunity to
profit from the IP. Sonic doesn’t come across as a cynical cash grab but it doesn’t really do
anything interesting with the famous Hedgehog, its understandable that they wouldn’t want push
things too far with the first film because there is a risk it could be a disaster and to their
benefit it worked in their favour. Its definitely up there as one of the stronger adaptations but
that isn’t really saying much considering the best of the video game movies for me is Mortal Kombat
which isn’t a cinematic masterpiece but just an enjoyable action film. Thankfully Sonic is
far better than say Double Dragon, the resident evil movies, Dead or Alive and MK annihilation.
I do have to remind myself this is a film aimed at kids and not people who are in the their late
30s but then again, that age bracket who grew up on Sonic during his golden years are in their 30s
to 40s so it would still appeal to them in some way and I did laugh a few times watching it,
it wasn’t an embarrassing mess put it that way. It was strange experience for me however, I
would flip flop a lot, there would be a scene that irritated me and was way too cheesy then the next
scene was good, just back and forth a lot but the general enjoyable aspects outweighed the clumsy
and negative stuff. If you’re hardcore Sonic fan then im sure you will enjoy it but for everyone
else it’s a harmless movie that will generate some laughs but is ultimately throw away entertainment.