“New adventure. New rival.
Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails reunite against a powerful new adversary, Shadow, a mysterious villain with powers unlike anything they have faced before. With their abilities outmatched in every way, Team Sonic must seek out an unlikely alliance in hopes of stopping Shadow and protecting the planet.” – Letterboxd Synopsis
Sonic 3 is one of the coolest movies I’ve ever watched. I was a casual Sonic fan prior to these movies coming out so I can only imagine the feelings and emotions of the people that are huge Sonic fans seeing their beloved series get treated with so much love and respect on the big screen time after time. Actually, I don’t have to fully imagine it. I’ve never heard a theatre erupt with so much hype and emotion like the one I was in during the final act of this movie. This series of Sonic movies is something special and I enjoyed almost every moment of this third movie.
The big themes that this series explores are friendship and family. Its nice seeing sonic and the crew be family. Knuckles and Tails are his brothers and Tom and Maddie get to be the adoptive parents. I think their relationship is very sweet and I like how its juxtaposed to Eggman’s family and Shadow’s situation. In the last movie Knuckles was just misguided. Shadow is the same in this movie but Shadow is played to be more of Sonics opposite. What if instead of finding a loving family when he landed on earth, he was made to be lab rat. What if instead growing with that family, he lost the only people he cared about? I absolutely loved every moment that Shadow was in. Keanu Reeves was the perfect picked. He played this part to perfection.
Really, this movie is about how people deal with loss and true relationships. As much of a meme Agent Stone and Eggman’s relationship is, there is a true relationship there, and I loved the culmination of their arc in this movie. It was really heartfelt. Gerald was a bit hit or miss for me. I think it was clear what they were trying to do with his character. And I think once he got bit more serious and his underlying sadness and anger came out, it was great but he felt a bit too samey as Eggman most of the movie. But when everything is revealed and comes full circle, it all hits. And omg we finally get to see Eggman as we know him. In the red costume and everything. Even though I do think Eggman’s interactions with Gerald could be a bit much. Overall it came together at the end really well and they had some really amazing scenes together like the dance scene, which I think is the best Eggman dance scene in the series.
Okay, so the CGI has looked mostly solid through all of these movies with some meh moments here and there but a handful of really amazing looking moments. This movie pretty much always looks amazing. Shadow especially. The details in his fur, oh my goodness. The scenes of him in Tokyo, with the rain pouring down on his wet fur are gorgeous. I won’t spoil but the last act of this movie is some of the coolest shit I have ever seen on screen. This series has always been on point with its mix of music from the games, music created for the movie, and licensed music, but man did they really knock it out of the park with this one. Especially during the last act.
So yeah, I loved this movie and I can’t stress enough how epic and heartfelt the last act of this movie is. It wraps up long time character arcs really nicely; it wraps up Shadow as a character really nicely and if it were all to end here, I could walk away saying this was an amazing trilogy of movies that I could easily see myself going back to. As a movie, sonic three really embodies everything this trilogy is about. It’s a heartfelt action packed family comedy. All of these movies feel very comfortable. I could throw on any of these while I’m doing something else or having a lazy or bad day and just relax and enjoy them. There’s clearly a lot of passion and love that went into this series from everyone involved and it shows. This is the best movie out of the three and that post credit scene has me and millions of other people beyond excited for what’s coming next in this series.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 – 9/10
