Folks, we finally got a trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and the next live-action spin on Sega’s speedy hedgehog looks like it’s drawing heavily from Sonic Adventure 2’s story. Though it’s not a 1:1 recreation of the Dreamcast game, Keanu Reeves’ Shadow the Hedgehog is primed as the main villain this time around, with Jim Carrey’s Doctor Robotnik seemingly teaming up with the blue blur to take down a planet-wide threat. But this trailer has a lot to pick through, so we figured we’d break down the 3-minute video and see what else we can glean. Grab your rings and chili dogs and let’s dive in.
Sonic 3 will lean heavily into the tragic parallels of its leads
In the live-action movies, Sonic has a pretty sad backstory that surprisingly mirrors Shadow’s in the games. In the first film, we saw Sonic being chased away from his home and sent away by Longclaw, his owl caretaker, for his own safety. If Sonic the Hedgehog 3 follows Shadow’s origin story from the games closely, he has a pretty similar moment that turns him towards chaos and destruction. We can already see in the trailer that Sonic is reflecting on his past, including some chalk drawings of him and Longclaw together. James Marsden’s Tom Wachowski is seen talking to Sonic about how he never let that tragedy change him. Later in the trailer,Tom Butler’s Commander Walters makes the comparison between Sonic and Shadow more directly, though he points out that Sonic found friends and family, while Shadow has no one.
Shadow is too powerful for humanity to subdue
Throughout the trailer, we see Shadow breaking out of a stasis pod and fighting his way through squads of G.U.N. agents. This is why Commander Walters asks Sonic and his friends for help. It’s clear conventional weapons aren’t enough to take down an immortal, superpowered hedgehog. This means we also get to watch Shadow beat the shit out of the institution that was likely the cause of his tragic backstory. We see the black-and-red hedgehog teleport around the group and lay them out as they fail to keep up with him. Shadow seems to be doing this right out of his pod, so it’s unclear if he’ll be using a Chaos Emerald to power these abilities as he does in the games.
Our first look at Maria and Shadow together
Furiosa actor Alyla Browne is joining the live-action cast as Maria Robotnik, Doctor Robotnik’s cousin and granddaughter of Doctor Gerald Robotnik, Shadow’s creator. In the games, Shadow was the result of an experiment to find the cure for a deadly illness Maria had that prevented her from living on Earth. The two bonded on a space colony that supported Maria’s life and was also home to Robotnik’s experiments searching for a cure. In the games, Maria was tragically killed by a raid on the space station, which imbues Shadow with a vengeful rage and a desire to destroy the world. The trailer paints a pretty explicit picture that this is probably what’s going on in the movie, though it’s unclear now how much of the extended lore the movie will get into beyond Shadow and Maria’s relationship.
Sonic and friends are just a big ol’ family
To juxtapose the sad shit, we see Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles doing fun things with their human adult parents Tom and Maddie, like racing against one another in the forests of Green Hills, Montana. You see, anthropomorphic hedgehogs are social creatures and are shaped by their environment and connections to others. Shadow needs a loving hand to reach out and show him there’s another way so he, too, can race them in a forest instead of doing terrorism.
Tails is learning how to fly even more aircrafts
Miles “Tails” Prower is a known pilot, and we saw him flying the Tornado plane in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It looks like his knowledge of human vehicles has expanded since we last saw him, as the trailer shows him flying a whole-ass helicopter over Tokyo as they search for Shadow. Get your certifications, king. You’re like eight years old.
“Where we dropping, boys?”
Shadow absolutely bodies Team Sonic
When Sonic and company show up to face Shadow, they try to reason with him first. Sonic says they don’t want to fight him, and then Knuckles interjects that actually, yes, he would like to fight him. Then as the echinda charges in, Shadow wrecks their shit. He nearly breaks Knuckles’ wrist and kicks him into the air, swats Tails off like a fly, and then slams Sonic down on the ground while choking him out. God, I love him so much.
The Donut Lord may be in danger
Tom has been the human lead in all these movies, and given the clear themes of overcoming grief that this third film is toying with, it would be thematically appropriate for Sonic’s emotional center to be in some danger this time around. We see a brief shot of Marsden’s character shouting to Sonic as Shadow is wreaking havoc. Could we see an actual major death in Sonic the Hedgehog 3?
The gang’s been captured
We see a brief shot of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles all tied up as a black-and-red vortex of some kind forms above them. It draws in some of the loose debris around them, but it’s not clear what’s going on here. Is Shadow creating some kind of black hole to destroy the planet? To be determined.
Agent Stone greets Team Sonic
Lee Majdoub returns in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 as Agent Stone, Doctor Robotnik’s abused (and probably infatuated) assistant. We see our heroes meeting up with Stone in front of what looks like a mobile base for him and his boss. The two seem to have been in hiding after their devastating loss at the hands of Team Sonic in the second movie.
Eggman’s let himself go since the last movie
Jim Carrey has come out of his brief retirement to play Doctor Robotnik again, and it looks like he’s taken his defeat in the past two movies pretty hard. He’s not been taking care of himself. His hair’s grown out, his beard’s unkempt, and he’s gained a bit of weight. The first shot we see of him is his drumming on his gut, though he is mortified when he turns around and sees his archnemesis is there to see him like this.
Sonic and Robotnik begrudgingly team up
Shadow is too big a threat for the government, and too powerful for Team Sonic to take on by themselves. So they’re turning to their worst enemy for backup. As Stone lovingly helps Robotnik get back into fighting form by shaving his head and tailoring his suit, he says if he can’t rule the world he might as well save it.
Parts of the movie seem to take place in Tokyo
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is called Sonic X Shadow: Tokyo Mission in Japan, and it seems like swaths of the film will take place in Tokyo. We see what looks like Shadow causing a city-wide power outage, including shots of Shibuya. So it looks like another international adventure for Sonic this time around.
Shadow is bringing out his hog
In his 2005 game, Shadow started riding a selection vehicles on top of running really fast. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 will pay homage to at least one of those, as he’s seen riding a motorcycle while racing Sonic on the streets. No sign of him using firearms like he did in the game, however, but it sounds like Sega is actively trying to distance him from guns these days.
Chao finally make an appearance in the movies
Chao are adorable little alien creatures that appear in various Sonic media, but they have yet to show up in the films. That’s changing in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but they seem to be mascots of some kind in this universe. We have a brief shot of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles in what looks like a restaurant that features animatronic Chaos on stage. They’re about to get their shit rocked, though, as we see missiles barreling toward the establishment aimed at the hedgehog’s crew.
An easy Akira reference
The Akira motorcycle slide shot has been referenced by so many anime, video games, films, and other media. The Sonic the Hedgehog live-action movies are filled with pop culture references that often date the movies to the moment they premiered. Sonic flossing in the 2020 movie was a moment that broke my brain realizing how these movies swing for low-hanging fruit. However, Shadow does the Akira motorcycle slide in the trailer, and I’ll give them that that’s a much more timeless reference than the ones they usually jump on.
Shadow continues to be the coolest
The final shot before the logo shows up has Shadow launching into the sky on his motorcycle and kicking off it as he clashes with Sonic. God, he’s so fucking cool.
Gerald Robotnik seems to be alive in the movies?
The stinger is one of the most interesting scenes in the whole trailer. We see Carrey also playing Gerald Robotnik. In the games, Gerald is long gone by the time Shadow reawakens and attempts to destroy the world. Here, we see both grandfather and grandson meet and hug it out. Gerald was the secret villain of Sonic Adventure 2, who put things into motion before his death to destroy the world in an act of vengeance for Maria’s death. The whole big emotional turn of that game is that Shadow remembers Maria’s final wish to bring hope to humanity and saves the world rather than destroying it. So if Gerald is still alive, I’m curious to see how Sonic 3 handles this storyline. It’s also not out of the question that Robotnik could be talking to his grandfather through some magical mumbo jumbo, as the Knuckles show established that the dead can speak to the living. I’m not used to Gerald Robotnik being portrayed as anything other than a grieving mad scientist, so we’ll see where this is going.
Sadly, it does look like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 will be omitting Rouge the Bat and Amy Rose, two key players in the Sonic Adventure 2 story, unless they pull a Spider-Man: No Way Home and keep them out of the marketing. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted to streamline Shadow’s debut for the film given the shorter runtime, and that might mean that Rouge and the layers she brings to the story may have to be left on the cutting room floor.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 premieres on December 20.
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