I didn’t expect much from Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The first movie was a nice little diversion from COVID, but the sequel was quite irritating–and with the same director and writers back for another go-around, I figured we were in for another round of “more of the same.” Fortunately for all of us, I was wrong: The threequel successfully reins in the pop culture references and Jim Carrey’s wackiness just enough, while also giving us a serious villain for the first time with Keanu Reeves’s Shadow, and the result is that Sonic the Hedgehog 3 works better for audiences of all ages than its predecessors, which were more squarely aimed at children.
Sonic 3 picks up some time after the last movie, and the Wachowskis have adopted Tails and Knuckles along with Sonic–they’ve got a nice little family unit going. Robotnik, meanwhile, is very depressed, just hanging out in his crab mech binge-eating snacks and binge-watching telenovelas. In other words, all is well. At least until an unknown person manages to free the mysterious Shadow the Hedgehog from stasis, letting him loose to pursue revenge for something that happened long ago and putting him into conflict with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles.
That unknown person was, it turns out, another Dr. Robotnik–grandpa to the one we know (but still played by Jim Carrey). Robotnik Sr. and Shadow are allies, having shared a deep trauma decades earlier that is driving them both to extreme lengths for revenge. The younger Robotnik, the one who was a bad guy in the other two movies, serves as a wild card, because he wants to team up with his grandad but has a pretty different ultimate goal.
The plot is messy and doesn’t quite add up. For example: One major character, GUN director Rockwell (Krysten Ritter), positions herself as an antagonist but then bows out of the movie halfway through, and it’s hard to tell what point there was in including her. But it’s easier to overlook potential plot holes like that one this time out because the movie’s tone is more controlled than the last one was.
Look at the Robotniks, for example. Jim Carrey is still a complete weirdo in his dual roles, but it doesn’t feel like he’s riffing the whole time the way it did in the last one. Part of that is likely because of the technical restraints–Carrey shares most of his scenes with himself, and it’s more difficult to improv in that kind of filmmaking situation. But that’s a great thing for the movie, because it keeps Carrey from crossing the threshold into being outright annoying too often, and his jokes now hit more than miss. Though when he does miss, it’s still pretty grating.
The inclusion of Shadow the Hedgehog as the other villain also helps restrain the goofiness, because he’s actually a serious character, unlike previous antagonists Robotnik and Knuckles (the latter’s shtick working much better in a supporting protagonist role this time). Shadow’s seriousness, aided by Keanu Reeves’s tired and sad line delivery, gives Sonic 3 a marked heft that the first two movies did not have at all.
That’s also nice because it gives us a bad guy who can match the earnestness of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. Shadow is the angry counterpart to Sonic’s carefree nature, a dark vision of what Sonic might have turned out like had things gone differently for him. Reeves would be great for the part in a vacuum, but he’s also particularly effective as a counter to Ben Schwartz’s happy-go-lucky delivery as Sonic. Schwartz once again does solid work as the speedster, though he’s been so consistent through all three movies that it feels like faint praise at this point. He was and continues to be the right guy for the job.
The other key returning human characters–Tom (James Marsden), Maddie (Tika Sumpter), and Stone (Lee Majdoub)–have a little bit less to do in this one, but that doesn’t dampen their enthusiasm any. The three actors are super comfortable in these roles and are clearly having a blast, and that vibe is infectious. Stone in particular has become a uniquely fun character, because he’s just a genuinely nice, smart, and hot dude who just happens to be an evil henchman. It’s a very unusual characterization.
It’s not hard to figure out why the humans took a bit of a backseat this time–with the addition of Shadow, there are four CGI main characters now, and the movie leaves most of the third act to them and the Robotniks as they do battle in outer space. Finding a place to use Marsden and Sumpter during this part would have been more trouble than it’s worth, and the immense success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie demonstrated quite clearly that it’s OK to leave behind the grounding elements and go all in on the video game stuff. The result is that the final battle in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is far bigger in scope than the climactic fights from either of the previous flicks, and the entirely CGI action sequences are gorgeous and very well directed. These are easily the best sequences in this series thus far.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 succeeds not because it’s a complete shakeup for the series–it isn’t that at all–but rather because it refines the franchise template in the right way, swapping out a lot of the pop-culture references for more original humor and putting more of the focus on the game characters. This Sonic film took itself just a bit more seriously than the first two did, without going overboard and turning grim and gritty–director Jeff Fowler and co. found the right balance this time around.