Monday, April 30, 2018, the first trailer for the movie based on the hit game franchise Sonic the Hedgehog dropped. The internet was furious. The internet has opened a great door for criticism, and the production team for Sonic the Hedgehog heard a lot of it. A year after the release of the trailer, on Thursday, May 2, 2019, it was announced that Sonic would be getting a makeover before the release of the movie, pushing the date to Valentine’s day 2020. 

Now, the day has come where Sonic the Hedgehog takes his place on the big screen. 

I, a 15-year-old sophomore in high school, and my two teenage friends bought three tickets to see Sonic the Hedgehog this Sunday. Ignoring the fact that we were the only teenagers in a sea of five to eight year olds with their exhausted parents, we sat in the back row and prepared for whatever was to come. 

The movie opens with an action scene, Sonic running away from an enemy at high speed, as he’s known for, only shortly followed by a freeze-frame with commentary from our protagonist, a scene straight from the 2000s. All three of us kept back a laugh as the movie picked up, creating a story behind Sonic and why he’s now on Earth in the United States instead of the world built in throughout the Sonic games.

Sonic, voiced by comedian Ben Schwarts, is shown to be a lonely hedgehog watching the other main characters, Tom (called the Donut Lord by Sonic) played by James Marsden, and Rachel (called the Pretzel Lady) played by Natasha Rothwell. This gives the supernatural creature a sense of relatability outside of nostalgia factors involved. 

Soon the antagonist of the film, the evil Doctor Robotnik played by comedian Jim Carrey is introduced, a smart man who is hired through the government to sort a Sonic induced power outage, setting the stage for the main plot. 

The movie goes on to tell the story of Sonic and his human friends and earn a comfortable place on Earth rather than escaping to the next planet once found. He is shown to struggle and have very human emotions, which Marsden’s character points out. It’s a heartwarming film about a beloved video game character and gives him a sense of humanity and relatability for the audience. 

The end credits scene showed Tails, another character from the Sonic universe, who seemed to be searching for Sonic. Could this be setting the stage for a sequel? I certainly hope so. 

While I am not necessarily the target demographic of this movie, it was a lovely experience and I would love to see it again in theaters. It had humor, action, fantastic animation for all the work put into redesigning Sonic and a nice story with good messages.

If you would like to watch the trailer here is a link to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szby7ZHLnkA