THE REVIEW OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3

THE OFFICIAL LOGO FOR SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3; PHOTO BY ALEX ARENSDORF

While I haven’t watched the first two Sonic movies, I feel I could understand what they were about from the trailers they had. They are kids' movies, with simple plots that are easy for kids to follow, but just because they are kids’ movies doesn’t mean older people can’t enjoy them. Honestly, I fully planned on reviewing Kraven The Hunter. But after hearing that Kraven performed so poorly that it got the entire franchise it was a part of scrapped, I decided covering Sonic 3 was a better idea. Sonic 3 is heavily inspired by the video game “Sonic Adventure 2” which is considered one of the better Sonic games. Since it is a recent movie I won’t dive too deep into the plot.

The movie begins with Sonic, an anthropomorphic hedgehog from another planet, his best friend Tails, a two-tailed fox from the same planet, and Knuckles, whose backstory I do not know. They are celebrating with these two people whose names I cannot remember when tons of soldiers from a private armed group called G.U.N. show up. They meet with Team Sonic about the threat of another hedgehog called Shadow. Team Sonic teams up with G.U.N. to capture Shadow but it goes sideways and Team Sonic loses badly. Meanwhile, Robotnik, also known as Eggman, is working with his grandfather and Shadow to take control of a space station armed with a weapon that is capable of destroying the Earth. Both teams collide, betrayals and battles happen, you get the jist. You’ll have to watch the movie to know the details. Something that you don’t have to watch the movie to hear about is the CGI, because I’m going to give my opinion on that.

This movie has some of the most impressive CGI I have ever seen when mixed with real environments. The amount of detail on Team Sonic and how well they mix with the environments is truly amazing. The robots and lightning effects are great. And I’m fairly certain that the background of the entire part of the movie on the Ark Space Station is CGI. It blows my mind how good this movie looks. 

The only other thing I would like to discuss is a moment in the movie that has crossed my TikTok For You Page multiple times: the Eggman dancing scene. Partway through the movie Jim Carrey, who plays Eggman and his Grandfather, has a dance scene to “Galvanize” by The Chemical Brothers. It was unexpected in the movie but 100% entertaining.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was released on December 20th, 2024, and grossed $384.4 million at the box office. The franchise overall has grossed over $1 billion, beating Mufasa: The Lion King. I say that is well deserved.  IMDB gave Sonic 3 a 7.2/10, Metacritic gave it 6.8/10, and Rotten Tomatoes gave it 8.7/10. While they are welcome to their own opinions, I disagree. Score: 8/10