Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Sonic the Hedgehog is based on the popular video game created by Sega, primarily seen as an effort to give to their console and portable systems a mascot and platform game to compete with the likes of Mario for Nintendo after Alex Kidd didn’t take hold. Sonic debuted on the Sega Genesis system in 1991 and has gone on to become a billion-dollar property for Sega, selling over 360 million units of its game on a variety of platforms worldwide. In the game, Sonic is a blue-haired hedgehog who can run, jump, and burst into insanely fast sprints through loop-de-loops to collect rings and take down the evil enemies, Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik.
That kind of international fandom makes Sonic ripe for a motion-picture release, perhaps over-ripe given that there hasn’t been a committed attempt to capitalize on its popularity in the nearly thirty years since its breakthrough into home consoles, though MGM had dabbled with the idea in the mid-1990s. In its leadup, Sega began to attract young new fans a couple of video game releases in 2017, “Sonic Forces” and “Sonic Mania”. It also built new fans starting in 2014 through its “Sonic Boom” CG-animated show for Cartoon Network and other popular channels in various international markets. “Sonic Boom” became the Cartoon Network’s top-rated show among kids aged 9-14, and eventually made its way to Hulu to find yet another crossover audience.
The idea for the film started back in 2014 with producer Neal H. Moritz collaborating with Sony Pictures Animation to come up with a live-action story featuring Sonic as a CG character on Earth. Sega’s own CG animation film company, Marza Animation Planet, would collaborate to get the look and motion of the character right. Evan Susser and Van Robichaux were initially slated to script but struggled with ideas when Sony wanted them to make their ideas darker and edgier. Sony felts that Sonic’s fans were all adults and would want something more than a flick aimed only at kids.
In 2016, Tim Miller, whose Blur Studio collaborated with Sega on a couple of “Sonic the Hedgehog” games in the past, became an executive producer, hot on the heels of Deadpool, pegging his longtime collaborating partner Jeff Fowler to develop the concept and potentially direct if given the green light. The go-ahead was given in 2017 by Paramount Pictures, who had just signed Moritz with a first-look deal after the financially struggling Sony Pictures had let their rights to the franchise lapse. Paramount ordered a rewrite of the script to make it more family-friendly, eyeballing a release pre-holiday release date of November 2019.
Fans of the character caused a bit of uncanny-valley uproar upon seeing new pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog, complaining about his beefier legs and shapelier body looking like they are trying to make the cute cartoon character look too realistic. Subsequent pictures revealed the look of his face, which drew more derision, with fans feeling like his eyes were too small compared to his video game counterpart. When the trailer dropped, more complaints resulted that his teeth looked more akin to a human than a hedgehog. Bad word of mouth began among social media circles that this new version of Sonic was looking to be hot garbage.
Due to the rampant backlash, director Jeff Fowler, who gets his first live-action feature after a respectable career in animation, came out to officially announce that the film would be delayed three months to Valentine’s Day of 2020 to perform design changes to Sonic’s character to make him more palatable to the viewing public expecting the iconic look. In addition to the design changes, Sonic’s voice changed to reflect more of a juvenile than an adult in its qualities. The new-look received a much better response and avoiding the iceberg of rejection, though it did beef up the total cost of the film to over $90 million, not counting its $15 million ad blitz that included a prominent commercial played during the Superbowl.
The plot, once you get past the weird backstory of Sonic fleeing his homeworld due to possessing powers that make him a fugitive carrying a bad full of rings that are portals to new dimensions, is typical road-movie adventure comedy we’ve seen many times in a variety of forms. Sonic ends up teleporting to Earth, specifically the flyspeck town of Green Hills, Montana (a nod to Green Hill Zone from the game), where he encounters a sheriff so bored with the town’s lack of crims that he’s taken to having conversations with his donuts, Tom Wachowski, who is hoping to not make another day a waste by waiting patiently to nail someone speeding. He gets it in Sonic, who clocks in at a speed that makes Tom question his radar gun. Tom dreams of doing some real crime-fighting, intending to move him and Maddie, his ever-supportive veterinarian wife, to San Francisco to join their more active police department. It turns out when Sonic loses all of his other rings through an open portal atop the city’s Transamerica Pyramid, he’ll have to tag along as well.
However, when Sonic’s energy burst (EMP) ends up causing a massive power outage to the entire Pacific Northwest region of the United States, the government sends in a secret weapon, Dr. Robotnik, a mad, megalomaniacal genius with an army of sophisticated flying drones who tenaciously will find a way to exterminate the blue alien thing once and for all. Robotnik chases Tom and his new companion Sonic (who happens to know plenty of English) as they make their way to California.
Sonic the Hedgehog is graced with a likable ensemble of actors, casting James Marden as Tom Wachowski. Although many were given a look (or a listen) for the role “Parks and Recreation” actor, Ben Schwartz provides his snarky personality and playful banter to the voice of Sonic. Jim Carrey, who chose to do the film because his daughter Jane was a huge “Sonic” fan as a kid, sinks his comedic teeth into the villain role to portray Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik. He improvised the majority of his lines, making this one of the rarer modern-day comedies that make good use of his talent for wacky, off-the-wall characterizations. Two side characters that also steal some laughs: Maddie’s buttinski sister, Rachel, who is persistently trying to break up Maddie and Tom, and Tom’s partner at the police station, Billy Robb, who says the dumbest (but most amusing) things.
Sonic is so fast that when he is in action, we only see a whir and kicking up flying papers in his wake, a la the Road Runner, or we see him at average speed while the rest of the world is in super slo-mo, a la Quicksilver from the X-Men films. The slo-mo scenes can be fun watching Sonic set up inevitable calamity, such as in a barroom brawl where is fast action can squash a melee in the blink of an eye, all in his favor.
Adults may find much of Sonic the Hedgehog to be familiar to many other films featuring an “other” with unique gifts that come from outer space or the fantasy realm, but this is a movie that primarily is aiming for the younger set. Nevertheless, some have made comparisons between Sonic the Hedgehog and the road-trip films that were very common in Sonic’s heyday of the 1990s, which may be a deliberate choice. Seeing both Sonic the Hedgehog and Jim Carrey at the top of their game again will have those nostalgic for the nineties smiling throughout the entire showing.
Along those lines, kids will likely find much to like and laugh at within the film to keep them entertained. There are just enough pop-culture references to older movies and TV shows that their parents will likely understand and appreciate to get them through the formula antics. It’s not a great film, but it’s not striving for greatness. It’s aiming to be fun and humorous enough to entertain throughout, and if that’s what you’re looking for, Sonic has enough juice to keep pace with the rest.
— There are mid-credits scene and post-credits scenes that will please longtime fans of the character and set up for a potential sequel.
Qwipster’s rating: B+
MPAA Rated: PG for action, some violence, rude humor, and brief mild language.
Run time: 99 min.
Cast: James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Tika Sumpter, Lee Majdoub, Adam Pally, Natachs Rothwell, Neal McDonough, Melody Niemann
Director: Jeff Fowler
Screenplay: Patrick Casey, Josh Miller