I’m almost done! I’m almost done!
Battle Around The World
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| Back where we started. Time to see how it ends. |
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The only way this could get more stereotypical is if the
mime went "Sac-"
"Sacrebleu!"
....Ah, come on. |
Sonic has sent Tom and Maddie home through a portal ring, but the battle with Eggman, I mean Doctor Robotnik, is far from over. The doc's flying ship has the power to go just as quickly as the blue blur. Finally, a challenge. When we left off, Sonic was running through the streets, dodging blasts from the doc’s machine. Passing under a bus advertising trips to France, Sonic gets an idea and, still speeding through the town, summons a portal that takes him… yep, you guessed it, to France. However, the ship is also fast enough to follow into the ring and resume the chase. Complete with mandatory Eiffel tower cameo and Robotnik yelling an “Excusez-moi, monsieur!” at a mime he almost crashes into. Geez, could you be more stereotypical?
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| Runnin' Up That Pyramid |
The fight is later taken to the Great Wall of China – that one was on Sonic’s bucket list, he wanted to run on it! Sure, he’s being hunted down, but it just makes his tourist visit more interesting, right? Still unable to flee, Sonic summons another portal, this time into Egypt, running towards the Pyramid of Giza. Fun fact: Those are damn close to civilization, so if the movie wanted to be accurate, instead of large areas of sand near them, Sonic would basically be running through streets again. He could stop by the KFC right by the Pyramids if he wanted, but that stuff would be worse for his colon than the chilidogs were. No, not speaking from experience. Meanwhile, Robotnik has gone full trigger-happy and blasting whatever’s in his way, including the Sphinx! And then he has the gall to call Sonic out for running up the side of the pyramid? Even a sand-tornado buffed up by the hedgehog’s fast running isn’t enough to deter the wacko!
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| Can hardly get more ominous than that. |
Sonic summons a final portal at the top and gets blasted into it by his enemy. He crash-lands, wounded into Green Hills’ main street… late into the evening. When Tom and Maddie were falling through Sonic’s portal, they landed on a pile of hay in a farm, and the day was still bright. Yet, it’s almost night now? Have Sonic and Robotnik been fighting around the world for literal hours, and we were just shown a few minutes? Is that what happened? I mean, I’d believe it if it was stated anywhere.
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Oh, some evil genius is about to get punched in the face
♪♫ agaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiin! ♪♫ |
The ship emerges menacingly from the ring portal, and Robotnik once more states his scientific desire to study the alien. Oof, he’s got those “murder and dissect” eyes. He’s salivating at the thought of getting those quills to power up his armada of robots. Tom and Maddie arrive on the scene during that monologue, and the cop sees Sonic’s bag of rings. He summons a portal that takes him onto Robotnik’s machine, behind the scientist. Surprise attack! The two men come to blows, but the doc cuts the fight short by tilting the ship, sending the cop overboard.
Eggman goes into another rant to further highlight his misanthropy. I love a good movie where the hero and the villain are opposites; whereas Sonic lived alone for too long and is desperate for social interaction, his enemy could have all the social interaction he’s ever wanted but completely rejects it. (I mean, he does have Agent Stone, but it's not like Robotnik respects him all that much. Speaking of, there’s been a severe lack of Stone since his last appearance handing an Austrian goat milk latte.)
Second Wind
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| Carl... maybe point your chainsaw away from the cop... |
As though to disprove the madman’s point, Green Hills’ villagers show up, ready to fight. First Wade, still a total dummy, but a decent shot with a firearm; then Crazy Carl, wielding a chainsaw, all while basking in the recognition that he was right all along about the “blue devil”! Man, I hope he became good buds with Sonic after that. Too bad we never seen him again in the films. Not that this surprise arrival helps much, as Sonic looks dead.
…Not as comically dead as that.
Yeah, that's more like it.
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Sonic has gained the power of friendship!
Mandatory secondary power unlocked: Energy control! |
Following another sneering mockery from the doctor about the alien, Tom defends the hedgehog, ending by declaring the lil’ guy his friend. Friendship Power Activate! Sonic awakens and he gets up, channeling his energy in a way he never did before, and Tom and Maddie move away to let the confrontation take place.
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Anytime somebody says family films can't be cinema,
show them shots like this one. |
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| How many hits is this one going to take? |
Sonic steals back some of the energy from his quill (but not all, as we’ll see later), then the enemies stare each other down. Damn, that shot of Robotnik with Sonic reflected in his goggles is awesome. The ship targets Sonic with enough missiles to blow up a small town… And the final showdown commences. Sonic dodges the missiles, jumps onto walls, then homes in on the doc’s vessel, smacking it once. Then once more. Then again. Apparently, when this film came out in theaters, there were crowds so accustomed to Sonic bosses taking roughly 8 hits to go down that they were counting them loudly as they happened. Instead of stopping at 8, Sonic smacks the ship from all angles, going faster and faster until it’s barely staying in the air.
When Sonic stops, he signals Tom, who tosses a portal ring right behind the doc’s ship, thinking about the mushroom planet. Robotnik drives forward to escape his fate, but Sonic spindashes into his ship a final time, breaking it and sending it through the portal, which closes afterwards. Evil has been vanquished!
Tom comes closer to his buddy, hand raised. Sonic is super-giddy to finally be able to give someone a high-five, and it’s to his best friend, too! All seems well, no loose ends… well, they did forget to untie Maddie’s sister, but… eh, there’s no hurry. Besides, Tom figures he’d rather stay in Green Hills now than move to SF.
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What is there to say about Commander Walters in this film...
...Honestly, there's much more to say in the sequels. |
Cut to some time later. Life has gone back to normal in town. Tom and Maddie are renovating, when they hear a knock at the door. It’s Colonel Walters, here to thank them for stopping a certain someone before they became too dangerous. He claims that Robotnik is now treated as though he had never existed. He also inquires about the alien, and Tom and Maddie claim that the hedgehog won’t be heard from again. The Colonel hands them a measly gift – apparently, “being in harm’s way for two whole days and sending some dangerous scientist to another planet” is only worth a 50$ gift card. To Olive Garden. Because of friggin’ course. I know this joke turned out to not actually be product placement, but… damn does it feel like it. He won’t even pay for the repairs, the cheapskate. Even as the Wachowskis close the door, the Commander tries to peek in.
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| An unconventional family, but hey, it all works out. |
Turns out, the couple did “adopt” Sonic unofficially. Hey, he can watch movies all he wants now! And he doesn’t have to watch them through the window anymore! They pretend he needs to rest, but it’s an excuse to show the hedgehog his new bedroom: The attic! They even went and grabbed some of the stuff from his cave and brought it up there! He has a home now. Aww, could this end any better?
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Now all he's missing is the belly.
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Well… Cut to the Mushroom Planet, where a determined Robotnik has gone sliiightly insane from the isolation after three months. He’s shaven his head and still wears his goggles, but what truly sells the resemblance with the original Eggman is that mustache, that’s grown beyond the sides of his face into a bushy, unkempt mess. Oh, that reveal was a moment of cheer in the theaters, you bet. He has scavenged anything salvageable from his ship, and kept the blue quill, which still has plenty of energy left to keep his machines powered up for a while. Ironic for this people-hating man, he keeps around a human-shaped rock he nicknamed “Agent Stone”. Either it’s some way to keep some of his sanity, or it’s proof that he’s truly lost it. For a moment, he even mimics Mike Pollock's classic, gravellier Doctor Eggman voice from the games and shows. To close this, the scientist claims he can find a way home by Christmas.
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If you heard a squee from afar back in February 2020,
and you don't know where it came from, well, that might
have been me. Or any other person who saw this movie
in theaters and had the same reaction to live-action Tails. |
But that’s not all! A mid-credits sequence shows a ring portal opening near Green Hills, and a yellow-furred two-tailed fox stepping through, on the look for a certain speedy hedgehog. Oh yeah, that brought some cheers, too. The idea to bring Tails into the movie came late, after the decision to redesign Sonic following the Internet’s reaction to the original trailer, so no, you won’t ever see “what Tails should have looked like before they remade all the animation”, that doesn’t exist. Thankfully.
Final words
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These two are fun together. The film franchise would be
missing something without Tom. He plays great off Sonic. |
Took me long enough, but I’ve finally gotten here. The general opinion I’ve seen about the first Sonic movie, and one I share, is that though it has a story that’s a bit overdone in terms of tropes, it’s still a great first step forwards. Said plot has the hallmarks of a ‘90s’ film, likely paying tribute to the decade since the first Sonic game was released in 1991. “Road trip with somebody from another world”, that’s been done a lot. But as an homage, it’s fine. Not like there was much to work with, considering this film also serves as an origin story for both Sonic and Doctor Robotnik, and thus is meant to be simpler overall. Gotta build up to the larger lore of the franchise.
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It's like seeing someone fall into insanity after things keep
not going their way. And it's not like Robotnik started with
a full deck, either. I mean, smarts? Through the roof.
Mental wellness, though? Yipes. |
I personally love the new takes on these forever enemies. Ben Schwartz as this aggressively ADHD-coded version of Sonic, a total geek who won’t shut up, but who has this lingering pain stemming from his prolonged loneliness. Then there’s Jim Carrey as Eggman, a magnificent performance where he plays that egomaniacal super-genius with a severe superiority complex and a bad case of misanthropy. A man powered at first by an unhealthy ambition for scientific research, only to lose his marbles along the way from repeated defeats at the hands of our heroes. Would love to see more machines of his working like that tank during the road fight, it was one of the best scenes. This Robotnik has notes of many of Carrey’s high-energy, nutty performances from the ‘90s.
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We get even more of all of them, for better and for worse,
through the sequels. I'll get there. |
I also think that most of the human characters invented for the film are great; at least the big three, which are Agent Stone, Tom Wachowski, and his wife Maddie. Jojo is fun, too. Among the others, well, Wade is a dummy and isn’t given much to shine, and Rachel is despicable by design; they get better. And Colonel Walters, well, he gets much more important later, but when your main trait (and the one other characters remember you by) is your attachment to a restaurant franchise…
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"Can you believe Amazon is going to deliver packages
with these things?" is something this Sonic says. |
Yeah, product placement ain’t subtle here. Between a full-screen view of Zillow, name-drops of Olive Garden (admittedly unpaid as it’s for a gag, but it’s still there!), and some others… yeah. Sonic name-droppping Amazon, Robotnik mentioning Optical Illusions… yeah. To be fair though, it’s roughly the same approach the film has with referential humor; lots of it, not subtle in the slightest. I get that this Sonic is a geek – as weird as it is to say – but please, come up with your own gags more often instead of referring to something else so frequently! It’s even worse in
Sonic 2! At least, the film loves to throw in plenty of mythology gags – references to various games and associated media in the franchise, gameplay mechanics and even famous poses, and it’s a treat to look for them throughout.
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Then again, the Piston Pit does lead to a number of great
moments one after the other. Can't blame them for
enjoying that scene. |
The film clearly has its own preferred scenes, the biker bar one being a notable example. Effects-wise, though there are a few issues here and there likely owing to the quick re-animation of Sonic to pull the old design out and replace it with the new, in general Sonic does give the impression that he’s there. I can note of a few scenes where it doesn’t work as well, but not too many.
For a first foray into live-action for the franchise? It was a commendable effort. It stands as the weakest of the trio so far, but that’s because it set the groundwork for the next entries, which would add more and more of the elements we know from the series.
Next Friday: Sonic 2! Be there!
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