About the three Sonic movies...BIG SPOILERS FOR ALL THREE

Thanks a lot to my buddy

RandoBear

for streaming Sonic 3 on our server! It was a lot of fun, and thanks to him, now I can say I watched all three Sonic movies :3

I don't think we're free yet from the cursed video game movies since they still can exist to this day *cofcofborderlandscofcof* but it is true that now they do have a way more chance of being at least decent compared to before, and the Sonic movies are proof of that. All three of them are good! That's great news, especially for fans of those characters in their games. Just a shame they aren't like...perfect as they could have been.

Will talk a bit about each of them and I will do it in the order they're the best at least imo. This means we gotta start with...

Sonic 2: Even the games didn't dare to introduce Tails and Knuckles together, each having their own game. So, this would be quite the herculean task to do it in a movie. Not only do it, but do it in a way that is good. By itself, this could fuck the entire movie big time. And yet, they somehow did it! I'm not even sure if it would be possible to have those two introduced in the movie and do it in a better way than what we have.

While I still think it would be better if they introduced each of them at a time, the single fact they pretty much nailed this already gives them major bonus points. Plus, the rest of the movie is also quite good, including Robotnik, which I think is as good here as he is in the first movie. But, to me, there are at least two issues that kinda bring the movie down, and it's why I still prefer to use the word good rather than something like amazing for a movie like this.

First, I'm not fully satisfied with the way they dealt with the conflict between Sonic and Knuckles. This isn't like the games, Sonic here was raised by Longclaw, who was murdered (apparently? More about this later) by Knuckles's tribe, the Echidnas, so Knuckles also lost his entire family to Longclaw. This is quite a big thing and should have made the whole conflict between them a lot bigger and more personal than we see in the movie, and this is something we don't see in the games. But they never really do much with it; it felt like it was done too quickly. It's the kind of thing that the whole movie could be about, but maybe because they also had to not only introduce Tails in the same movie but still have Robotnik as the villain taking precious screentime, there was no room to give this conflict the proper development and resolution it deserved.

And speaking of Tails...uh...he just randomly found out about Sonic and decided to just go over to the world he's living in now, to what? Become his friend? Why? He has NOTHING for him in his world? That's quite an extreme attitude when you think about it. It felt like he just let go of his entire life to meet this random hedgehog that was living on this alien planet (Earth) just because he thought he was cool? Come on, this makes no sense unless he has no family or was being mercilessly bullied every day or something but the movie never gave us anything about Tail's backstory that could justify such an extreme action from him.

On that note, it's so weird that after living YEARS on Earth, when Sonic finally met Tails and Knuckles he never really tries to do much with the knowledge he found others like him. He isn't curious about the world Tails came from at all? The movie never explains this, so we don't know if Tails even comes from the same world that those two did, unless the small series they did before Sonic 3 elaborates? And we do know for sure Sonic and Knuckles come from the same world, and again Sonic doesn't seem interested in at least visiting his old place at all, even if just to look for Longclaw to make sure she is dead. With those two here he can come back to his world to try that. Heck, at last, ask them if they know about other hedgehogs like him or something! It's so weird he doesn't seem to care about the world he lived with Longclaw at all, to not even ask questions or want to come back just to check on her.

Sonic 1: not much to say here because this movie should be a big pile of fail, but it went against all odds and it's quite good. It helps a lot that the human characters aren't annoying, and that Jim Carrey was a great Robotnik. Funny, silly, and yet still threatening enough to be taken seriously. Maybe because we only had Sonic as the only character from his universe aside from Robotnik himself, he shares a lot of screen time with him, and that was great since both are great here. I'm not even sure if the movie could be better unless they had another plot and, for example, we had Sonic on his planet and not on Earth dealing with Robotnik's invasion there, but yeah, it's not what we got and we can only talk about what we got. And what we got is good.

I mean, do I wish they had made the movies more "adult" and stuff? You know, with a plot that was more based on the games? Of course, and the games and comics do have the lore to support that. But that's obviously not what they were going for, the movies are like 80% for kids and 20% for the fans of the games. So I can see why there are fans not satisfied with the movies, including this one. I'm here only judging the movies as they are, and in that sense, they're good at least for the most part. The only reason I think 2 is better is because 2 managed to do more with its plot with Tails and Knuckles compared to 1.

Sonic 3: And now we've got the last one! I wish I could put this one above 1, but I can't do that xD. While I liked what we got and do think this is a nice introduction to Shadow (even including his teleport which I had forgotten is a thing he can do...when the games allow for it) I can't say I like the big conflict between what I will call the Shadow plot and the Robotnik plot.

Remember what I said about Sonic 1, "I mean, do I wish they had made the movies more "adult" and stuff? You know, with a plot that was more based on the games? Of course, and the games and comics do have the lore to support that. But that's obviously not what they were going for, the movies are like 80% for kids and 20% for the fans of the games."? Well, this is much worse here. The Shadow bits are awesome, the best part of movie. But the Robotnik parts just conflict with that so much. It makes the "tone" of the movie always change between adult and childish which hurts the plot.

I think this is because wanting or not Shadow's backstory and lore are among the most dark and fucked up of all Sonic characters from the games. So, to try and adapt that to a movie that is 80% for kids...and probably to try and make that content more "ok" they doubled down on the childish bits with Robotnik and literally. I get that since it's his grandfather, it does make sense to use Jim Carrey to play his part as well. But the result is basically two Robotniks at the same time, which means even more childish stuff than the first and second movies combined.

Heck, the way the movie is, I'm surprised they even put Maria's death...kinda of? But it's hard to take that seriously when it's sandwiched between so much "Robotnik plot". And maybe it's because there are two of them no,w but his character feels even more goofy than before. So, yeah...I think they should have either gone all "dark and adult" with Shadow for this movie or just gone all childish from the beginning to end, with Shadow's backstory not introduced here or something. As it is, it feels like they wanted to have the cake and eat it too. While I still think it's a good...well, more like a fine movie for what it is, if I could ask them to change the plot of one of those three movies, it sure would be this one.

Sooooo that's my opinion of those three movies! How about you guys? Thoughts on them?