What would have happened if Sonic hadn’t met the lovably goofy family who took him in all the way back in the first film in the franchise?
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 seeks to answer this question by introducing Shadow, who came from the same planet as Sonic but fifty years earlier, and put into a government lab until his usefulness had waned and they put him in cryogenesis.
When Shadow breaks out and tries to take revenge on Earth, Sonic and the friends he collected in the last film are called upon to stop Shadow.
The Sonic franchise is laser-focused on entertaining 6-13-year-old-boys. This newest film once again successfully hits that target. The design is bright and easy to follow. The characters are distinct specialists. The boys I watched it with followed the plot like the characters were Beyblades or Pokémon cards.
We learn that Shadow is using tech developed by our previous villain, Dr. Robotnik. So Robotnik teams with our heroes to track him down.
The film is well-paced, always moving to the next thing without ever feeling like a firehose. Jim Carrey who plays Robotnik, is indulged. I thought it was a bit much and distracting, but the kids in the theater always perked up when he was given a minute here or there to dance around or crack a handful of B- puns.
And for a franchise that started with the awful sonic design, it’s a surprisingly sharp looking movie that, through sheer CGI magic, makes you buy into a world where small super-powered neon forest creatures work with government agencies.
The film also takes its role as a film for children seriously, and it tries to develop two big themes.
First, the importance of families. James Marsden and Tika Sumpter, Sonic’s adopted parents, are the emotional heart of the film. They are goofy and warm and helpful. It’s hard to depict real parental love on screen, especially in a film as slight as Sonic, but their performance makes a solid placeholder. The main message is that being in a family where we feel loved helps us be better people. It’s a bit complicated by the fact that Dr. Robotnik meets his grandfather (also played by Carrey). That’s the only biological family in the film, and while it does help Robotnik grow, he ultimately decides it’s his relationship with his work colleague that’s more important. All the other families are adopted or found families.
The second major theme is making the right choices. Sonic is a rascal who nevertheless has a good life because he’s decided to make good choices with the help of his family. The only way the film defines what is good and what is right is by following who you are in your heart. For a movie that portends to be teaching about right and wrong, it’s a pretty weak message. The film also ties choosing the right to how we respond to anger, and that we shouldn’t let anger lead us to make bad choices. Sonic makes a particularly bad choice in anger near the film’s climax before stopping himself and reversing course. This is an important theme, especially for young boys, and it seems to have hit home. The ten-year-old I watched it with said he loved the flashbacks of Shadow’s life that helped us learn about him more because of how closely it tied into the lesson about dealing with anger.
There’s enough good here that I didn’t struggle to find positives to talk about after the film. We talked about how we could learn about what was right and wrong and how to educate our moral intuitions. We talked about how rejecting revenge doesn’t make the harm go away.
Two and a half out of five stars. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 opens in theaters nationwide on December 20, 2024.
