Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Movie Review - The Blue Blur is Back.
You know it’s quite fascinating how far we’ve come with the Sonic film franchise. After all of the online controversy, scathing responses towards the marketing and delays due to remodeling the character to its appropriate design rather its demon spawn counterpart, what was supposed to be a project destined for disaster turned out to be not as bad as everyone expected. It wasn’t a spectacular feat for video game adaptations by any stretch of the imagination, but despite its faults was a decent family film that can be admired by fans and newcomers alike and was a tremendous example of a production company and filmmakers listening to their core audience rather than alienating them. I wish we had more like that in Hollywood.
Because of the box-office and video on demand streaming success of the first movie even through pandemic conditions, it was inevitable that a follow-up to the blue blur’s opening cinematic debut was going to happen. This time constructing a challenging storyline for Sonic further developing his character, bringing back his nemesis Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik (of course) and introducing a couple of fan favorite additions to from the original 2D platform games that being the flying two tailed fox, Miles Prower also known as Tails, and the red, powerful echidna, Knuckles, being voiced curiously by Idris Elba. And lo and behold after years of production, here we are with “Sonic the Hedgehog 2”.
Let me rip the band-aid off already and get this out of the way, “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” is, in fact, an improvement over its predecessor and delivers everything that diehard Sonic fans have anticipated. But as I review from the perspective of a movie reviewer, it also has the same amount of problems as its progenitor.
So what we are given in this sequel is that after the events of the first Sonic movie, the supersonic rodent is living the young teenage dream with his newly adoptive parents and has taken his jolt-like powers to the public to become heroic vigilante. But one night, all of that starts to change. As Sonic is home alone while his Wachowski family are attending a wedding Hawaii, he finds out that Dr. Robotnik has returned, this time with a powerful asset we know as Knuckles. Sonic is thankfully rescued by Tails, and the two discover that Dr. Eggman and Knuckles are after an ancient mineral fought for centuries that contains ultimate power and is kept in a secluded, prehistoric tomb, the Master Emerald. It becomes a race against the clock for the duo to make sure that the emerald doesn’t fall into their adversary’s hands.
Starting off simple as I have done previously in my first review of Sonic’s cinematic premier, you know that I have to touch on the spikey, blue speedster, so let’s go for it. As previously, Ben Schwartz is still steady and delivers adequately as the titular character. His hyper, overconfident persona still works well of the voice of the blue devil, and it doesn’t come across as plate-scratchily irritating for you to leave the theater and abandon your kid.
But the thing that is remarkable about Sonic as opposed to his characterization in the first movie, is that the film makes Sonic much more developed via a solid character arc. An important lesson that he has to learn is maintaining full responsibility of being a hero no matter if what he thinks is the right thing or not. This event was even acknowledged in a conversation between him and Tom, as Tom tells Sonic of how “irresponsible" and “reckless,” and is followed by him telling Sonic a prominent Wachowski family saying that being a hero is about being responsible for people around you rather than taking care of yourself. The movie goes out of his way to challenge and put Sonic’s values to the test, and it isn’t afraid to show moments of sincerity and pretty interesting character development, including scenes that establish that Knuckles and Sonic, might have more in common than they thought. It is one the best elements that the film has to offer and I bet that audiences, even kids will admire the kind of growth Sonic has.
The vocal talent, particularly from the supporting crew, I can say do an admirable job making their characters come alive. Idris Elba as Knuckles was a fitting cast decision, and his voice acting really shows here. As his character is portrayed as a focused, formidable warrior, that still has instances of naïveté and misunderstanding of his viewpoint of the world and his enemies, Idris Elba’s thunderous delivery in combination with the movie’s material for the character makes him a compelling anthropomorphic character to watch.
A surprising appearance in the film that I’ve noticed is Colleen O’Shaughnessey as Tails, who (for some who don’t know) is the only voice actor from the Sonic the Hedgehog video game license to reprise her role for the character. Although I do have to say that the character himself doesn’t have much going for him in terms of depth. Sure, the movie gives us context through exposition that he was shunned and made fun of because of his two tails, and he looks up to Sonic as an inspiration because of his heroism in San Francisco and Green Hills. However, while his chemistry with Sonic may be charming—mainly because of my knowledge of the games, and there are some instances of it—it still feels like their friendship isn’t legitimate enough to make us believe that they are going to be close companions for years to come. His character unfortunately serves as a plot device, a prop for the story to move forward, and hopefully once the next one roles around, he will be more grounded and relatable like his video game version.
As far as live-action acting’s concerned, James Marsden and Tika Sumpter do respectable jobs as Tom and Maddie Wachowski, and their performances, even while talking in front of a non-CG model behind the set, truly conveys that they share a good familial bond with him and will take care of Sonic no matter what. And Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik is, yes, hamming it up as per usual like his previous appearance. But sometimes in his performance, it feels he overdoes it to a needless degree. There are just instances where he just does his over-the-top Ace Ventura schtick to make himself more zany than usual and for a few times it may be funny in an endearing sense, but when it comes to the majority of his appearances in this sequel, his movements and facial expressions wear out their welcome.
I don’t really have much to say in terms of storytelling department, because the plot itself is pretty serviceable. In a narrative sense it’s fairly good, straight forward, and functions for the most part with the character writing being the backbone of the narrative. However there are some shocking conveniences and contrived elements in the plot that stick out like a sore thumb. A huge example of this is one that has to do with the coincidental capture of Sonic and Tails by G.U.N. who turns out planned to capture the hedgehog and fox at the wedding in such a method which would require a massive stroke of luck for this strategy to be executed. Or the fact that a location that may have the Master Emerald that Sonic needs to get to just so happens to be where the wedding is taking place in.
An issue that I had with the first Sonic movie was that it tried to crowbar needless gimmicks to make kids This go around, there are instances where the film tries a bit too much to placate and pander to children. Like Robotnik doing the floss dance, again, or almost repeat moments of the previous film such as Sonic and Tails instead of Tom confronting a bar full of unfriendly and unwelcoming ruffians, but this time to save their skins being challenged by the Siberian bar attendees to a fight, well…a dance fight…and it ends just about the way you would expect.
These moments in the script also applies to the pieces of dialogue or jokes that are composed of puns like, “Time to get off this Shiitake planet,” (which I haven’t heard that pun since probably Spy Kids, if I’m being too harsh) or meta humor about curtain entertainment, products or media properties. Some of them don’t make any sense, such as Sonic when he and Knuckles are snowboarding down the Siberian Mountain, he says, “Oh look, the Winter Soldier”. Not sure how that joke even corresponds or makes any sense with Knuckles’ character or his backstory that matches up with Bucky Barnes, but hey, gotta do something just to make a kid go, “I know who the Winter Soldier is.”
An improvement that I can say without question is that the visual effects are much better from the first movie. Whereas the Sonic model and the multitude of Eggman’s robots gallivanted into the hills of Uncanny Valley (or in English, didn’t look all too convincing) primarily because of the special effects composting, in the sequel, it honest feels like the Paramount special effects studio house steps up their game this time. The robots and even Dr. Eggman’s gigantic automaton are designed, framed and composited it a way that makes you believe that a giant cyborg is a threat that needs to be dealt with, and the models for Sonic, Tails and Knuckles are integrated in a way that doesn’t make the actors look like their talking to an invisible area where the computer generated characters are supposed to.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is undoubtedly the most faithful adaptation to a video game I’ve seen in quite some time, but simultaneously, some work still needs to be done to make this franchise get better. If the next movie doesn’t try too much to pander to children with its forced, gimmicky soundtrack and references, and if the script-writing gets much better, we could have the golden nugget on our hands that being the best video game adaptation in existence. It is a film that delivers to the fans, but it’s gotta do a lot more than that to prove it’s capable of being the best.
Until we meet again in Green Hills, my name is Luke Nukem...and you've been blown away!
P.S. And before I go, I just want to say is…that mid credits stinger, I have never geeked out so much in my adult life. Thank God he’s coming for the third one, and I pray to the movie gods that his story and his character will be made the right way.
RATING: 3/5
