The Sonic the Hedgehog movie has made for a very interesting case study in how “outrage culture” on the internet can actually affect positive change sometimes. When the first trailer for this movie came out, people on the internet went nuts over how bad it looked. Specifically, people criticized the design for Sonic in the movie, which led the movie studio to delay the film’s release in order to revamp the design. Once they finished doing this, a new trailer was released, and reception was much more positive. It’s possible that they just changed the design of the character in this time, but it’s also possible that they used the time to change some other things that weren’t working as well. Either way, the point is, that because the internet freaked out over the movie, this led the movie studio to change the movie instead of just releasing it under its intended form. I’m not sure of the potential ramifications of this for movies, since I think there’s definitely an interesting discussion that could be had about trying to please the vocal minority instead of sticking to an artist’s original artistic vision. So, just because this worked out in a positive direction for Sonic the Hedgehog, doesn’t necessarily mean this is a good thing for movies at large. Either way, I think this is interesting that this can even happen at all in our new age of everyone having a soap box on Twitter. This never used to be possible, but now we have one of the clearest examples of a movie studio hearing the cries of its potential audience, and reacting to make them more likely to see the movie. How this personally affected me is that I originally wanted to see Sonic the Hedgehog because it looked like an absolute trainwreck and I wanted to see how bad it was going to be, but after it was changed around I genuinely thought it might be a good movie.

Anyway, I feel as though this isn’t a movie I really need to sell anyone on, because you either fall in one of two camps. Either you’re already familiar with the Sonic the Hedgehog and don’t need me to tell you what this is all about, or you’re not familiar with Sonic and probably aren’t gonna care about this movie anyways. This is the first attempt to bring Sonic to the big screen, in one of those weird animation/live-action hybrid movies where Sonic is an animated character in the real world. It’s one of those “fish out of water” stories, where Sonic finds himself on a new planet (ours) and is trying to adjust to that life. This wasn’t really the kind of story I would have wanted out of a Sonic movie, but it also ends up working much better than it has any right to, and winds up serving as a “good-enough” film prequel to the whole franchise.

I recognize that I’m using a lot of halfhearted compliments here, and that’s because that’s my general feeling towards the movie. Look, I’m never going to try to convince someone that a Sonic the Hedgehog movie is high art, and I would never expect a movie like this to be that. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself why you would ever want to see a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and for most people the answer would simply be that they’re fans of the game series and want to see the character on the big screen. And that’s exactly what we get here. This is not an amazing movie by any means, but if you want to see a good Sonic the Hedgehog movie, this is probably one of the best ways we could have gotten one.

I do need to give a special shoutout to Jim Carrey here, who plays Dr. Robotnik in the movie. This is the one aspect of the film that I will genuinely argue for being a great thing about it. Much like some other famous comedic actors from the 90s, Jim Carrey kind of faded into obscurity over time, and only really ended up doing more serious roles after a while. So, it winds up being easy to forget that at one time, he was amazing at playing these hilarious larger-than-life characters, and that’s exactly what he does here with Dr. Robotnik. It was so incredible to get to see him play a role like this again, and he really just eats up the whole scenery in this one. I’d argue that even if you’re not a Sonic fan, the movie is worth seeing if you’re a Jim Carrey fan. This is one of the most fun return-to-form performances I’ve seen in a while.

Other than that, you’re pretty much getting what you would expect from a movie like this. It’s not trying to do anything groundbreaking, and so honestly I think that if you’re expecting something incredible from this movie, then you’re kind of the one that’s at fault. I knew what I was getting into with this, and if anything it exceeded my expectations since I was originally expecting a trainwreck of a movie. The movie is aimed much more at kids than I was expecting, so that’s also something to note if you’re an adult Sonic the Hedgehog fan like I am. Still, I think it’s a movie that’s enjoyable for both kids and Sonic fans, so if you fall into either of those camps then I think this is worth checking out. This will never go down as an amazing movie for me, but I genuinely enjoyed it, and so I have to commend everyone involved for making this the best possible product that it could be.

3.5/5