Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022).

There's an element of the Sonic franchise that began to puzzle me after a while.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out where all those video games were set.  It's not something I ever lost sleep over, or anything.  It was always just one of those vague, free-floating curiosities that cropped into my mind on occasion.  As I think back on my interactions with the Blue Blur, however (infrequent as it might have been), I began to realize a kind of irony taking shape.  It always seemed (to me, at least) that the more artists tried to expand upon the mythos of the games, the greater a sense of complexity began to evolve, at least in terms of the story's setting.  The more I thought it over, it soon became clear of just what kind of stage setting the world's most famous video game speedster belongs to.  Right about now is when a lot of readers are thinking, "How can you not know any of this?  Haven't you been paying attention"?  Well, time for a bit of a re-confession.  I said just a second or two ago that my interactions with the Sonic franchise was infrequent, and I mean every cent of that word.  I've never been what you might call a die-hard gamer.  The last major period in which my attention was focused on platform console entertainment was way back somewhere from 1991 or abouts to, say 94 to 5.  Somewhere along that timeline, my interest in either Sega or Nintendo just began to taper off, and I've never really been back to revisit either ever since.

That's not just a long time ago, it's practically a whole other world, another life.  It also does a good job of establishing my non-gamer credentials.  My understanding of the major franchises came to an end with Sonic and Mario.  There was a brief moment when I was kind of interested in the original Resident Evil 2, yet that went just as quickly as it arrived.  Let that stand as a testament to my lack of place in the Gaming world.  It's a fandom I've never really belonged to, in the end.  I've always been more of an outsider gazing in every now and then.  In fact, now that I think about it, the last time I ever bothered with the world's greatest chili dog fanatic was not with any of the games.  It was with the two kid's TV shows.  I'm talking, of course, about Adventures and Sonic SatAM.  For better, worse, a reversal of the two, or even a little of both, those two incarnations where the last time I ever paid attention to the little speed demon.  I bring these two portrayals up because both were like the main template by which not just me, but fans everywhere viewed the world-building of the games.  The stages, or levels of the original video games were presented as almost the exact opposite of Mario's Mushroom Kingdom.  

In the strictest sense, all we were ever given as players was a series of digitized backgrounds that were just elaborate enough to suggest hints of some kind of undisclosed identity, yet they were also generic enough so that the ambience of one level was allowed to bleed over into another with a seamlessness that made the transition barely noticeable.  It was pretty clear, even to the children at the controls that the original focus of the series was always on platforming first, and story second.  There's nothing so unusual about that.  For the longest time it was little more than just the standard approach that most consoles aimed for.  The thing to keep in mind about both Mario and Sonic is that each character emerged out of the classic era of the video game arcade world.  This was a time when the basic "story" of any game amounted to little more than the threadbarest excuse plot that existed for no other reason than to set things in motion.  In other words, it was gameplay and not plot that was the sole purpose of video games for the longest time.  In many ways, it still is.  Mario, for instance, has mostly managed to cling to it's arcade origins by keeping any semblance of plot simple and to the point.  At the same time, the makers of Sonic seemed a bit more willing to expand on the lore and nature of their creation.

That's part of how the two Hedgehog shows came to be almost at the same time.  For a brief period, Nintendo was even willing to let Mario get in on the act.  It was from Adventures and SatAM that both constant and casual fans (like me), along with average Saturday Morning Audiences in general were given our first ever idea of where our little blue hero came from.  For the longest time, I was always under the impression that Sonic was this extra-terrestrial, along with all of his friends, on a far distant planet named Moebius.  Some viewers might have wondered how human looking figures like the Eggman could exist in this other world, though that one's easily accounted for.  Just imagine them as an alternate version of the Time Lords that never developed TARDIS technology, or the ability to transform, and there you have it, problem solved.  It might not have any bearing on the logic of real life, yet that's the fun of Science Fantasy stories like this.  They're so far removed from the real world, it's like the Imagination has been given carte-blanche to go as far out and wild as it can.  So this was my first introduction to the idea of the World of Sonic the Hedgehog.  For the longest time, that seemed to be all the world-building explanation I was given about the character, and it looked like that would be the only scraps of information we would ever have.  It would also have been all that we needed.

Even the introduction of characters like Knuckles, or McGuffins like the Chaos Emeralds did little to shake things up.  Then, as time went on, more human characters began to play a bigger role in the series, and it began to get a lot harder to tell if the Blue Blur's world was just this other alien planet (which would make a certain amount of Imaginative sense) or were we dealing with this weird, Planet of the Apes style twist, where it turns out the setting was Earth all along (which just raises all sorts of headscratchers).  To be fair, there is a scenario where this kind of revelation can be made to carry dramatic weight.  All you'd have to do is introduce a game with a more plot based design.  All you'd need to do then is create a riff on the above mentioned Charlton Heston story line.  You could write the scenario so that as you complete each level, Sonic and the gamer learns a bit more about the backstory of Moebius, until when you reach the end and discover that Sonic, Tails, and everyone else are living on this technologically re-shaped version of a post-apocalyptic Earth.  That sounds a bit grim to me, yet that's all it would take to set up a perfectly reasonable imaginative explanation for how guys like Sonic and his world came to be.  Then the franchise started transporting all it's characters to the actual Earth.

To say the confusion only deepened for me there is a bit like saying everything about showbiz appears to be in freefall these days.  For whatever reason, somewhere along the line, Sega partnered up with TMS Entertainment to give us the first successful Sonic anime series.  It the one where some BS science accident ends up sending all the main cast of the games up to that point through a wormhole that drops them all straight into the middle of the contemporary modern day, human centric Terra Firma that we call home even outside the make-believe confines of the franchise.  In retrospect, this show might have turned out to be the one installment that was able to create a shift in the nature of the original platformers, in and of themselves.  Even before the premiere of X, there had been Sonic film and video game entries that had tried to incorporate  human characters, or else Class M human-looking aliens that amounted to Homo Sapiens in all but name, and the file numbers scratched off.  These all seemed to have been an effort on Sega's part to try and take their star mascot in a more experimental, plot and lore oriented direction.  However, these early attempts (such as an infamous OVA and a trial console title called Sonic Adventures) did little to move the needle, and the company folded not too long after.

It's therefore interesting to note that the Hedgehog's current owners felt obliged to try and continue with this strategy going forward.  That seems to be how we got the Anime series which transports just about everything to Earth, while the video games themselves appear to have undergone a retcon where Moebius turns out to have just been our own planet all along.  In other words, what we've got on our hands here has been this almost constant, decades long shuffling of the deck with just a handful of the main cast remaining more or less the same in terms of personality and purpose, while always in danger of having their backgrounds, and hence, their motivations changing on a number of levels, while still being the same in essence.  It just goes to beg the question.  Is anyone else reading this as confused as I am?  I get the impression I've stumbled onto one of those classic rabbit holes in video game history.  One where anything like talk of an official, settled canon is almost ludicrous for the game developers involved.  What's remarkable about all of these shenanigans to me is how none of this constant re-arranging of the deck chairs has managed to deliver anything like a permanent sense of damage to the character and brand.  Throughout it all, Sonic and his main friends remain more or less the same.

He's just this Hedgehog with a remarkable ability for speed who goes on various adventures with his two somewhat equally fast friends as they fight a never-ending battle against the machinations of a twisted mad scientist.  And since you come to think of it, with setup as basic and simple of as that, is it really any wonder that the developers and producers have been able to create so many shifts and changes in the backstory while the basic outlines of the cast and crew more or less stand still as they are?  It's pretty clear all of this is on purpose at some level.  Sonic is designed as this one size fits all protagonist.  Someone you are meant to be able take and place in whatever scenario sounds the most profitable regardless of lore and continuity and still be identifiable as himself.  This creates an idea of who Sonic is at his core which is worth exploring in further depth later on in this review.  For now, we'll simply note how this fundamental sense of malleability was to apply even to his transition onto the big screen.  When the first official Sonic film came out way back in 2020, it amounted to yet another reset of the character's backstory.  There was nothing all that novel in the setup of that film's plot.  All it amounts to is a re-using of the basic concept of Sonic X, where the First Speedster of Gaming was born and raised on another planet (presumably Moebius) and due to plot contrivance gets sent to Earth.

The major novelty to be found in how the 2020 film approached its material was in the way it strove to give the protagonist this almost quasi-Spielbergian feel to his exploits.  I'll have to admit, out of all the direction the first movie could have taken, I'm still not sure this affectionate parody of the E.T. setup was what I had in mind.  At the same time, this one aspect of the film might be a pointer to one of the reasons it amounted to such a cozy success upon release.  That's another factor I'll have to discuss when we get into the review proper.  For now, it's enough to note that since the first Sonic Movie was such a big hit, it was inevitable that sooner or later a sequel would makes its way onto screens.  The real question was just how good of a follow up could you make to a film and character like the Blue Blur?

The Story.

Attention All Agents.  The following memo is intended for the use of any an all operatives participating in the exercise codenamed: Catfish.  As some of you are new recruits to both the operation and the service, the following enclosed message is meant as a combination mission orientation and background check.  Starting back to front, welcome aboard as a new member of the Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N.).  As an operative, your task in this organization will be review any an all relevant material pertaining to the sightings of, and encounters with the possibility of extra-terrestrial lifeforms not of this Earth.  No matter how tedious, ridiculous, or else just flat out unbelievable, your job remains the same.  All agents are to make as thorough and comprehensive a review of close encounter material (from actual physical and/or recorded proof all the way to mere eye-witness testimony) and determine it's veracity.  If at any point the testimony can be or is proven as legitimate, then it is time to move on to phase two of standard G.U.N. operations.  Your task will then be to track down, locate, and contain and/or if necessary neutralize the identified lifeform depending on its potential as a hostile threat.  This is where the combat portion of your training will come in as a vital aspect of your task here at the Units.

Since no agent can perform the job properly without a full debrief, it is felt that a bit of deep background information is in order.  Not long after the conclusion of World War II, a rash of Unidentified Flying Objects(UFO) sightings began to crop up at a rate and regularity that was deemed constant enough to be alarming to the United States Military.  With the authorization of President Harry S. Truman, the first incarnation of G.U.N. was begun.  At first we were known simply Project Grudge.  Then as the frequency of sightings began to pick up, we became known as Project Blue Book.  A combination of factors, including a certain gathering and retrieval incident in New Mexico, along with the growing number of close encounters of the third and even fourth kind meant that our mission, name, and purpose was upgraded into the proud service team that the organization is today.  A key turning point in the purpose of this organization was in the recovery of the contents of a meteor crash site in 1974.  Since then, G.U.N. has expanded its operations to include a world wide task force to protect our shared planet from any and all extra-terrestrial threats, up to and including the threat of invasion.

That brings us to today's mission.  Not too long ago, an enormous surge of electrical power seemed to erupt out of nowhere within the confines of the Green Hills sector of Montana.  This particular piece of information does not count as top secret in the strictest sense.  When it happened, it left enough of an impact that there was no way to keep what followed out of the news.  Even the most inattentive observer has long since learned at least something about it.  A lot of it has since found it's way onto various online conspiracy forums, yet none of them have ever discovered the real truth  That surge held enough magnetic and electrical strength to knock out any and all power grids contained within the Pacific Northwest, with an estimated radius extending up the vicinity of Baker, MT west all the way to Vashon Island and somewhere approximately just south of Portland, OR.  The pulse was of such strength as to extend past the trans-lunar barrier, knocking out one of our own defense satellites.  The incident was enough to spook not just our Government, but those of several other nations.  Since it happened under American jurisdiction, it was agreed by all concerned parties that a special military investigation be launched, and a preliminary unit be dispatched to the impulse's place of origin.

That is where we came in.  G.U.N. dispatched a number of available units to Green Hills and began to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident.  In time, the cause was both found and contained, in a manner of speaking.  While Operation: Green Hills can be considered an official success, there are one or two events in the maneuver that, while no longer seen as a major problem, are nonetheless worthy of both highlight and comment.  Command believes that it's operatives deserve to know the following facts, as they will be relevant to Operation: Catfish going forward.  It is true, G.U.N. has managed to locate, neutralize, and contain the cause of the Green Hills Pulse.  What needs to be stressed, however, is that the road to success in that mission was anything but straightforward.  To start with, Command felt that the best way of keeping a low profile would be to send in a lone agent into the area designated as the Forbidden Zone, in order to function as an advance scout for the operation.  This decision turned out to be what's best described as a somewhat fortunate mistake.  The agent chosen for the task was one of G.U.N.'s former operatives.  It is now believed he is either dead, M.I.A., or else he's long since gone rogue.  Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carry) was chosen to head the exploratory task force into Green Hills.

Upon his arrival, the agent began to assert his authority to a degree was that deemed disrespectful at best, and edging very close to the line of insubordination, at worst.  He insisted on micromanaging every aspect of the mission to the point where the vast majority of our military field units were left with nothing to do.  Instead, the Doctor relegated most the task to his specialized collection of automated drones to explore the area in search of clues to the Pulse's cause.  It's to Robotnik's credit that his efforts did locate the source of the Pulse soon enough.  It's also when the discovery was made that the mission just got a whole lot more complicated.  As per our initial surmise, the cause of the Green Hills Pulse was discovered to be a lifeform of extra-terrestrial origin.  Upon first contact, this lifeform was revealed to have the height of 91.4 cm, and the appearance, for all intents and purposes, of a walking, talking, blue Hedgehog (Ben Schwartz).  He was revealed to have been inhabiting Green Hills and its surrounding area for some time.  Evidence at the scene of discovery indicates that this lifeform (herein after designated as Subject: Blue) had just had its presence uncovered by Thomas Wachowski (James Marsden), a local resident, and current Sherriff of the Green Hills area.  Here's where it gets weird.

Upon discovery of the Subject, Robotnik attempted to apprehend the lifeform.  The target was able to escape, however, with the seeming assistance of Sherriff Wachowski.  What ensued was a cross-country fugitive chase that, through a very convoluted series of events that will not be gone into here, somehow wound up right back at its initial point of origin.  The final result was surprisingly fortuitous for our purposes.  Subject: Blue was contained in a manner that was deemed satisfactory for the purposes of national security, as it allowed our agency to monitor the lifeform without the slightest bit of awareness on its part.  The one possible downside is that Agent Robotnik seems to have vanished off the grid completely.  Debate is ongoing as to whether this counts as any significant loss.  All of this brings us to today's operation.  In the aftermath of what we are now calling the Pulse Event, HQ has seen fit to move things a step up from keeping tabs on our latest "visitor".  It's been determined that the best course of action is to bring Subject: Blue into our newly established facility for the purposes of both containment and further research.  The only drawback so far has been how to accomplish this goal without invoking the wrath of the residents.  For the past few months the Subject has remained living under the roof of Sherriff Wachowski and his wife, Maddie (Tika Sumpter).  Any and all attempts to extract the Subject from such a setting has been deemed too high of a risk until a bit of luck happened to come along.

There have been rumblings of late that certain events in our favor might have begun to unfold.  For one thing, our revamped intelligence satellites have indicated a new number of pulse waves emanating once more from somewhere in the Green Hills Zone.  Our reconnaissance indicates that it's more or less localized at a source in and around the Wachowski family compound.  The owners are not present at this time.  Sources say they arrived in Hawaii a day or so ago in order to attend the wedding of Maddie's sister Rachel Simon (Natasha Rothwell).  The key piece of intel here is that there are currently no flight logs listing the Wachowski's venturing either to or from Green Hills to Oahu by air.  They just appear to have vanished from one location, only to turn up as if nothing happened in another.  There is currently no proof that Subject: Blue is with them.  Our spotters have taken this occurrence as proof that the target is still currently residing in the family compound.  We were going to take this as an opportunity to move in and apprehend the Subject under cover of darkness.  Both the timing and the logistics of the situation were ideal at that moment.  What has prevented us from doing so are a number of curveballs.  Recall it was said that a number of psionic pulses have radiated from the target area.  The first one appears to have been the Wachowski's.  The second came a few hours later.  It got weird real fast.

Bear in mind, the following intel has not been 100% confirmed.  Data is still incoming as of this missive, and the details are still sketchy and always subject to change.  Reports will be amended as more reliable information comes in.  For the moment, however, what is "speculated" is that the next pulse resulted in the reappearance of Agent Robotnik.  It is worth noting that the Doctor's original disappearance is believed to have happened in a similar manner.  The agency has been unable to track down his whereabouts since then, and some have speculated that an advanced, yet unknown form of String Theory teleportation tech might be at work.  I repeat, all of this is speculative at this point.  The reliable data does indicate however that our AWOL employee has somehow transported himself back to the Wachowski residence, and was last seen in an altercation with Subject: Blue.  The unexpected part was that he doesn't appear to have been alone, neither was the Target.  The Doctor appears to have been accompanied by a second lifeform of similar appearance and build to the Hedgehog.  Yet it was clear they were two separate species.  After a bit of consultation, this new potential specimen has been dubbed Subject: Red.  Some of the lab boys have also given him the nickname Knuckles (Idris Elba) based on certain features of the second lifeform's hands.  That just leaves the third visitor to the melee.

Before the events of (date redacted) our sensors were able to detect a final psi energy pulse, originating a day or two before the encounter between our erstwhile agent, Subject: Red, and the Target.  It's difficult to determine the exact nature of the tech involved, yet it appears to be similar to whatever the Hedgehog uses to get around to various locations in less than ten seconds.  The third and (so far) last specimen to emerge can be seen in the documentary evidence provided along with this mission folder.  No, you're eyes are not seeing double.  Yes, the photos are real, it's been confirmed by all our best lab work.  No, we have no explanation for how a Fox can have something like that, much less be able to stand on it's two back legs, then walk and talk at the same time.  Note: some of our agents have pointed out how this final lifeform bears a suspicious resemblance to a figure out of Japanese folklore.  This sideline info may be worth following up at a later date.  However, this remains very much TBD.

We only know that this last specimen made it's appearance not long before that of Robotnik and the Red lifeform.  The third specimen (whose official designation has now been listed as Subject: Tails (Colleen O'Shaughnessy) made it's way to the Wachowski compound, and proceeded to intervene in the altercation between the target, the agent, and this new opponent.  The two lifeforms known as Sonic and Tails are now on the loose, having escaped from the containment zone.  The same applies to Robotnik and Subject: Red.  All four targets remain to be acquired and they could be trapsing anywhere around the globe in search of, or doing who knows what.  The single bit of intel we've gathered from the events boils down to just two simple words: "Chaos Emerald".  Whatever that is, it's made some of the higher ups very nervous.  This situation has now been labeled as high priority.  G.U.N. agents are to scour the globe and keep you eyes peeled for all three subjects, plus the whereabouts of one missing operative who must be assumed to have gone rogue at this point.  If you should see or hear any clues to the whereabouts of Ivo Robotnik, he is to be apprehended immediately for detainment and debriefing.  The rest of the troop will deploy to Hawaii for Operation: Catfish.  The trap has been set.  All that remains is to see if the target will fall into it.  If so, then a surprise will be lying in wait for Sonic the Hedgehog.

Final notice: this information has been classified as top secret for Government Employee Purposes only.  Disclosure of any and all documents, intel, digital information, and state secrets is punishable to the full extent of the law.  Agents should expect the penalty if any of this were to make it's way into the wrong hands.  If the reader of these words is, in fact, a civilian...Gotcha!  We here at Olive Garden hope our valued customers enjoy our rollout for a new line of ARG merchandising, and hope you'll drop in for a visit soon.  Have you tried our never-ending Pasta Bowl, by the way?  It just never, ever ends! 

Conclusion: Perhaps the Definitive Movie Version.

I didn't know the first Sonic was a 90s film for the longest time.  I found this out quite by accident, thanks to the efforts of YouTube critic and archivist Mark Bishop.  In his April, 2022, retrospective review of the first movie, he may have been one of, if not the exact first to break the news that the Sonic film franchise as we now have it really was the product of a long gestation period that turns out to be fascinating when you learn about it.  It seems there were at least three previous attempts to bring the Blue Blur to the big screen, and it all got started back in 1993, when the original Sega era incarnation of the character was right in the middle of his ascendency to pop culture icon status.  This idea of the first film as a product of the 90s is something we'll have to circle back to, as I think that Bishop might have just given fans one of the crucial keys to understanding why the blended movie adaptations are so popular.  In order to get there, however, we have to examine a few stand out details of the sequel first.  A good way to describe Sonic 2 is to call it not just an adaptation but also a distillation, of sorts.  It's basic plot is one that draws on a lot of the lore that was established in previous incarnations of the franchise.  In particular (and continuing Bishop's observation about these adaptations as nostalgic 90s centric artifacts) it seems to borrow elements from the 2nd and 3rd games and mash them together.

Like Game 2 93, movie audiences got their first film version of Miles "Tails" Prower, a long beloved fixture of the series since his debut with the second game.  The "plot" of that platformer is best described as a retread of the first Sega release, except now you've got a little Fox friend to help you out.  If I have offended anyone by saying that, please keep in mind, this is a non-gamer talking here.  Try not to hold my obvious shortcomings against me.  Getting back to the film, while it introduces a key figure from the second game, the content of its actual story seems to borrow a great deal from Sonic 3, aka Sonic and Knuckles.  It's not a step for beat repeat of the original source material (I'm not sure if anyone has a budget for that anymore), though there's enough ideas carried over from the cartridge to the screen to the point where it might qualify as a broadstrokes remake, if you want to think of it that way.  Much like Game 2, we have Sonic meeting and teaming up with Tails for an adventure.  A lot like Game 3, said adventure involves an encounter with Knuckles, who's hostile as hell, at first, until it's revealed he's been tricked by Dr. Robotnik this whole time.  What I've just described might almost be called one of the few constant templates that tends to get trotted out for this series.  It's become the franchise's own equivalent of the endless of the death of Batman's parents, it's just turned into the series' most identifiable point.

If I had to take a guess why that is, then it might be down to the initial sense of novelty that came from Knuckles' introduction to the franchise.  By the time he came along, the series was sort of on the way toward cementing it's identity in the minds of both fans, and pop culture in general.  A year had passed between the release of the 3rd entry, and yet it wound up being enough time for the idea of who Sonic was to set itself in stone.  He was seen as this avatar of a very specific aspect of 90s culture that we'll go into further detail later.  It's enough to say that fans back in the day felt that they had been given one of the defining player characters of their generation.  It was a sentiment that was mirrored in Sonic's marketing.  To give an idea of how much of a shadow the 2D era has cast over the Hedgehog's legacy, entertain conjecture of a time when the main theme for Game 2 was famous enough to become part of the official soundtrack of the Jaleel White TV show version.  You may just have to take my word for this, yet for a brief span of time, that was the ID music of the Blue Blur.  It was as inseparable from him as John Williams' score was for Star Wars or Indiana Jones.  I think the fact that we've have lost sight of that particular soundbite of music speaks to just how amorphous the character has become with time.

Anyway, this was the picture most of us 80s and 90s kids had of the Speedster, and then all of sudden we're faced with having to figure out this new character who shows up unannounced by literally bumping right into us, and without even a word of introduction, proceeds to keep us on our toes by causing us all sorts of mischief throughout the 3rd game.  That was my introduction to Knuckles, at any rate.  For the longest time, it was like this new guy became this puzzle you were always trying to solve, or at least wrap your head around.  You'd be trying to work your way through one stage after another, and then he'd just show up here and there at random to taunt and laugh at you before sending you hurtling into a new level full of trouble.  That was how it would go until you reached the end of the second half of Game 3, where someone who up to now had appeared to be this wily Trickster figure out of some lost, forgotten myth shows his true colors, and everything begins to make sense.  In retrospect, it's easy to pinpoint how this strategy of a slow, narrative reveal works in Knuckles favor.  The character is introduced like an impish Jack springing out of the Box, and he proceeds to keep you guessing about his motives until the very end.  It helps to create this sense of mystique about him that acts as a surprisingly effective narrative draw.  It keeps the player plowing through levels to find out more.

This seems to have become an indelible part of Knuckles image with the fandom.  The downside is that the franchise's developers seem to have lost sight of what made the character so unique to begin with.  In the aftermath of Game 3's success, those that have followed after have a tendency to overplay the idea to ridiculous lengths.  They've not only reused the same plot point of Eggman tricking Knuckles into thinking the evil scientist is his ally, there have even been attempts to have the same idea happen within the same story continuity, in spite of the fact that the Echidna Warrior should know by now that the maniac sporting the psycho Stache can't be trusted as far as you can throw him.  To try and excuse this bit of creative laziness, Knuckles will have his intelligence downgraded to a considerable degree, depending on the writer.  It got to the point where the cunning and clever trickster of Game 3 has been reduced to this sort of brainless, Dude-Bro-Jerk-Jock.  Someone who is ego is so big he's never quite aware of what's going on around him.  That's why the film version of the Last of the Echidnas comes as something of a welcome relief.  It's one of those deals where the figure's reputation precedes him, and not all of the publicity has been good over the years.  It makes writing this character like playing a very dangerous game of quicksand.  One false or hollow note will be enough to derail it for the audience.

The good news is that the Idris Elba version of Knuckles makes for one hell of an improvement over the way he was portrayed in previous adaptations (I'm looking at you, Sonic Boom).  Rather than turning him into a clueless buffoon, screenwriters Pat Casey, Josh Miller, and John Whittington have instead allowed commonsense to prevail.  They let Knuckles be an amalgam of all his best traits.  He's no longer a clueless hulk.  Instead, the writers did him a favor and allowed him to have an actual character arc.  The mercurial Echidna of Game 3 was never an NPC to begin with.  However there is still this sense in which he remained something of a blank slate just waiting to be filled in.  It might have taken about 28 years, yet the good news is Whittington, Casey, and Miller have proved themselves capable of the job once they got around to it.  The film's Knuckles is no longer this opaque Trickster.  Instead, he's refashioned into a surprisingly sympathetic figure; someone who's whole life has been shaped to a great degree by personal loss.  The screenwriters make the wise choice of incorporating all those aspects of the character from the games that can be said to work in his favor.  What they improve upon is all those other times when the big red brawler got screwed over for the sake of cheap laugh of comic relief.

This movie version is more than capable of funny moments.  They're just never really at his expense.  Instead, he's granted a level of personal dignity that I don't think I ever recall seeing from his other broadcast media interpretations.  The one valuable attribute that Whittington and Co. chose to keep is the idea of "Knucks" as this skilled warrior.  In fact, they seem to have gone far enough to give him the suggestion of a battle hardened combat vet, someone who's spent most of his life having to learn to survive in a fight.  I suppose this approach has always existed as a potential pathway for this figure.  It's just that for the life of me, I can't recall any time when this was utilized in any meaningful way.  I sure as hell can't recall watching a presentation of the idea that allows the Last Echidna to highlight the inherent sense of pathos that comes baked in to a dramatic concept like that.  I'm also not sure how all these ruminations must sound to even the most die-hard fan of the franchise.  You've got to understand, this might just be the best portrayal of the character for the simple that it's the first time anyone has given his backstory a proper sense of weight.  I don't know if it's right to call the choices made for him Shakespearean, or anything like that.  At least it's possible to see how it edges up to a surprisingly mature reflection on what it means to be a soldier in terms of both dedication, loss, and trauma.

It's pretty clear that all of these qualities sort of work together to make Knuckles the big breakout star of this film.  Nor does that seem like too much of an exaggeration if you take into account the fact that his popularity was enough to spawn his own limited-run streaming series for a time.  You have to become a fan favorite for something like that to work.  Still, while Idris Elba helps make the character into a standout performance, he's just one part of the film's larger equation.  There's also his future adopted little brother, Tails, for instance.  There were several pitfalls lying in wait for him, depending on what kind of job Casey and the others decided to go with.  You could make the mistake of letting him be too much of a plush toy, or you somehow think it's okay to let him be this whiney brat, for instance.  A third no-go would have been to make him this insufferable know-it-all when it's pretty clear that's supposed to be Carrey's role in this picture.  What allows Tails to succeed is that Miller and his writing partners have gone the Spielbergian route with him.  Here's what I mean by that.  If you stop and think it over, you might realize that this version of Miles works as a combination of 80s children's movie tropes.

There was this one specific and recurring archetype that kept itself alive on-screen in the years between the release of E.T. near the start of the decade, and that of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids during it's close.  If I had to find a way to describe the figure I'm talking, then the best way to say it is that he was something like a positive inversion of the idea of a mad scientist.  That's the trope that describes Robotnik to the letter.  You might almost call him the modern poster boy for the idea.  Tails, meanwhile, has been molded into a latter day expression of his exact opposite.  It's what makes him a genre throwback, of sorts.  The movie lets him be this 21st century version of the kind of amateur tech wizard you could find in films like Back to the Future, or Ghostbusters.  This character trope seems to have been very era specific when I think back on my childhood.  Looking at movies that displayed this trope, it's pretty clear that this archetype of the inspired 80s inventor, while never anything like an author's self-insertion, is still very much meant as a stand-in for the kind of Romantic dreamers that filmmakers like Spielberg, Zemeckis, Burton, and Dante used to be when they were kids raising themselves on issues of Tales from the Crypt, Amazing Stories, Famous Monsters of Filmland, and shows like Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone.  By the time the 80s rolled around, these guys dominated the industry for a very brief time.

It's what allowed them to basically immortalize their shared childhood experience as a collective of nerds and fanboys dedicated to works of Fantasy and Science Fiction when they were all growing up as kids.  In many ways, it could just be possible that the movie version of Tails acts as a kind of generational tribute to those guys.  Like the space faring child protagonists of Joe Dante's Explorers, Miles is this awkward nerd who seems more comfortable around computers than other people.  Also like his human counterparts in the Dante film, this outcast status is one that's been enforced upon him, rather than something he's chosen for himself.  At the same time, he's something of a riff on the familiar Spielberg formula.  Rather than finding himself stranded on Earth by accident, Tails makes a choice to invert the path of E.T. by deliberately choosing to come to our planet.  It's all of these subtle character notes that make me think that there's a level of imbedded homage in his presentation that harkens back to older characters like Doc Brown, and Spielberg's own child from the stars.  That just leaves Sonic himself.  It's also the point where it's time to revisit an earlier observation I made about him.  This one is important because it highlights an important aspect of Sonic's characterization throughout the years.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this particular video game mascot is the level of consistency that his various handlers have managed to allow him to have, even as they recast his settings, narratives, and even the totality of his backstory in several cases.  Sonic the Hedgehog as got to be one of the most re-written characters in the history of fiction.  A lot of that seems to be on account of just how much room any writer who takes on those projects has to work with.  Think about it for a second, and you'll see it's true.  He begins as a protagonist whose background and origins are left deliberately nebulous in all three of the classic 2D entries.  He's more or less a purposeful blank slate, for the most part.  It's what allowed Dick Sebast and Ron Myrick to fill in the blanks to their own heart's content with SatAM, while the team of Bruce and Reed Shelley, and their collaborator Phil Harnage can take him in an exact opposite, slapstick direction with Adventures.  It might be that these two diverging, yet somehow complimentary TV shows set an unintentional precedent for how Sonic would be handled going forward.  Ever since then, he's been recast with a number of backstories, while his character remains more or less the same.  It really does seem that we're dealing with the ultimate all-purpose hero figure, here.  This is what allows the movie adaptations to stand out on their own, if that makes any real sense.

On the one hand, yes, it's clear the films continue the trend of recasting the little Speed Machine under an entirely different world-building blueprint.  Rather, let's say that they're just the latest developers to once more take the background maps of the games, and re-configure them into yet another meaning from the last incarnation, while also still incorporating previous elements from the games.  What's key to the uniqueness of the film's version of of Sonic is the way it handles his character.  I've called him an all-purpose action figure, or sorts, and that's not meant as either a complaint or criticism.  It's the mere observation of a fundamental fact about this character.  So is the reality that in each case where he was given a different background to work with, it was always possible to say that the Hedgehog's basic personality settings always remained the same for a remarkable period of time.  The Sonic of the games always gives off this persona of being a laid-back, chill, cool cat type of personality.  It started out as a contextualization of what was considered hip and trendy by the standards of the 90s era that molded him, and from which he emerged.  When you see Sonic's original incarnation, you're also looking through a window back to a time when guys like Bart Simpson typified the idea of the rebel outlaw hero.  The 90s idea of this trope was of a young kid who was always "edgy" yet fun to hang around.

If I had to describe the 90210 years' definition of what the troublemaker with the heart of gold Archetype was like to modern audiences, then imagine a typical John Hughes Brat Pack protagonist, and give him something of the kind of Saturday Morning Cartoon makeover that thankfully wasn't even a part of Home Alone.  In retrospect, it's surprisingly easy for me to see that the whole deal was a matter of corporate commodification, more than anything else.  Perhaps it'll help if I put it like this.  I've posited the 90s "Too Cool for School" personality as a homogenization of more three-dimensional figures like Judd Hirsch from The Breakfast Club, or Michael J. Fox from Back to the Future.  In other words (I don't know how controversial this is going to sound, yet here goes) Bart Simpson is what happens when you take all those layers and boil them down to a simple, digestible essence fit for a half-hour sitcom primetime slot, complete with this message from our sponsor!  Sonic is all you get when you distill the ideas of Bart Simpson down further.  It's funny when you give the whole scenario a bit of historical context in realizing that the Brat Pack matrix out of which all of these later characters were spun off had their own origins further back down the timeline to the 50s hot-rodders and 60s counterculturals of John Hughes' youth.

It's worth bringing all of this up in order to get the sense of just how much of a storied pedigree a simple video game sprite can have behind the scenes.  All Sonic's developers had to do was take all of that background material and whittle it down into this Chillax Dude Bro image that's always sketched down in the most basic of broad strokes, and you can then put him in almost anything and he'd still have the same personality.  The major reason the film version of Sonic is able to stand out from this homogenized pack is because they went with one, simple decision.  They realized they had to allow Sonic to be a character first, before they could ever concern themselves with him being a 90s video game mascot.  It's what allows us to explain the surprising level of dimensionality compared to what we've seen of him before in any of the games.  The main reason everyone seems not to have noticed this key factor is because Whittington, Casey, and Miller have basically ignored a major company policy when it comes to writing for the Blue Blur.  They stay focused on Sonic as a personality, and don't bother themselves with his status as a gaming icon.  That's a distinction that's as easy to misinterpret as it is to overlook.  What we're dealing with here is not like dumbing down a once competent and capable protagonist.  This is more akin to watching a statue being brought to a surprisingly effective level of imaginary life.

That's because Miller and his writing partners understand the crucial realization that some kind of story has to happen around Sonic, and it has to deal with the twin requirements of honoring as much of the pre-established lore of the games, while also making sure the results can entertain.  In other words, Casey and the others had to see if it was possible to give something in the way of characterization to this anthropomorphic violation of the laws of physics.  The logic of their counterintuitive solution is worth looking at in further detail.  To start with, rather letting the hero be this amalgam of 90s cliches, Miller, Whittington, and Casey have opted to start from scratch and, if not rewrite the character whole cloth, then they've at least overhauled a number of his previous traits into what I think must be a new mode of expression for him.  The screenwriters have found a way of giving Sonic a personality that is able to balance out the pre-established aspects of his background, while also finding a familiar mold that is nonetheless new so far as he is concerned.  They way they did it is that they made him into yet another Spielberg protagonist.  In other words, once more we find ourselves dealing with an E.T. style narrative arc.  This version of Sonic is what you get if you swap him in place of Spielberg's star child, and make him a more proactive and shaping protagonist of the main action of the film's plot.  

It's one of those obtuse, left field choices that I don't think most of us would ever consider when trying to write a story around this character.  The fact that Miller and Casey were able to find this avenue to take Sonic down at all is something of a minor marvel all its own.  What they've done is to add a twist to the familiar Spielbergian setup.  The alien figure isn't just stranded on Earth by accident this time.  Here the "E.T." has pretty much lost the only home he's ever known forever, and there's not much of any place left for him to go.  It's funny because while this adaptational backstory does have a lot in common with Big Steve's style of storytelling, it also bears a remarkable resemblance to something you'd find in one of his collaborations with Don Bluth.  The tone and nature of the narrative are a hell of a lot lighter than anything in The Land Before Time, yet the establishing plot beat for the character is almost the same.  Hell, even the way he comes together to form a team/family group with Knuckles and Tails is kind of reminiscent of what the former film's child leads end up doing.  I didn't necessarily go into this flick expecting to be reminded of all that.  Consider that a feather in the cap.  It allows a surprising yet admirable amount of complexity to what we've come to expect as the prototypical Sonic behaviors.

The movies suggest that the Hedgehog's usual devil-may-care, Bad Boy attitude, while still being genuine and innate, are less the product of him being a natural slacker type, and owe their origins more as a psychological defense mechanism.  His way of helping him to cope with the trauma he's experienced as a new made orphan.  As the first film shows, part of the time he'll goof off because it's always been a part of his nature.  At other times, it's clear he does it because the loneliness and sadness of his past is starting to catch up with him, and at one point, even this isn't enough to prevent him from going into a full on psychological meltdown.  It's a simple addition to a previously established character trait.  It also goes a long way toward working all sorts of unexpected wonders in terms of giving this imaginary character the semblance of flesh an blood.  Perhaps that's what makes the movie adaptation of Sonic such a surprise to anyone who had been familiar with this character for such a long time.  It's that amazement that comes from learning you can take a simple video game sprite, and give him the kind of personality and stakes that make it easy for us to cheer on and root for him.  There may be some who will deride what's been done with the Blue Blur as an example of the lack of originality that's plaguing Hollywood at the moment.  The good news for me is that I think these two films have been able to escape that kind of trap.  Besides, it's not originality, but the lack of creativity that's at stake.

Even the original Star Wars trilogy was never the most original thing to hit the big screen, yet it didn't have to be on account of how it was the Imagination on display that was able give a new lease on life for a lot of the mythological tropes that make the whole thing up.  The Sonic films appears on a similar, if not quite the same logic.  To start with, they're coming from a place where it's possible to take stock of where the history of the industry and all its storytelling traditions have come from.  If guys George Lucas were the ones who managed to give a new stage for old tropes, then these Sega pictures are the product of the fans who grew up on it all, and now find themselves wishing that something like that could happen again.  In that sense, these films have this innate sense of looking back in nostalgia, while at the same trying to keep one always angled on the hope that something like that can arrive once again and help shape the future.  I think that's because screenwriters like Casey, and the film's director Jeff Fowler wound up realizing that this is the sort of film that works best as a kind of tribute to the 80s-90s culture that helped birth the franchise in the first place, as well as the filmmakers and artists who helped shape and make it all possible.  It's the reason the film's Sonic comes off as a more adventurous and snarky version of E.T., and why the script's final outlines feel like a mixture of Spielberg and Bluth.

It's Fowler, Miller, and Whittington's way of paying homage to their inspirations.  The final result is a film that serves as part of a trend in recent media.  There's been a lot of attempts at trying to recapture the look and feel of the kinds of films, shows, or as in the case of this story, the video games that 80s and 90s kids grew up with.  This isn't too surprising if you stop that a very similar dynamic was in play when guys like Spielberg, Joe Dante, or John G. Avildsen made their works.  The major difference between then and now is that all of our media babysitters back then were the products of the Boomer years, so if you go back and watch even a then contemporary picture like The Karate Kid, you'll be astounded by just how many callbacks it has to the pop culture of the 1950s.  We're just trying to do the same thing now, except it was the MTV years that is the focus of films like Sonic 2.  That's why it makes so much sense that, much like it's predecessor, it functions as a 90s kids movie transplanted into the 21st century.  Look at the final product as it is, and tell me you couldn't see this exact same being made in, say, 1995.  It could have even been the project that Jim Carrey took on instead of the Batman franchise.  The only thing that would have to change is that someone like Michael J. Fox and an up and coming Halle Berry would have to take the place of Marsden and Sumpter.  Jaleel White, meanwhile would get his big screen break.  Though I'm not sold on Arnold in the role of Knuckles.  

The point is all that speculation above should give you an idea of how much of a throwback this film is.  It's also one of the few examples I've seen of a nostalgic homage done right.  It's got all the hallmarks of the kind of Sci-Fi, Action-Adventure Fantasy that most of us pre-Millennials grew up on when we were kids.  What's remarkable is that part of the reason the film is able to succeed as well as it does is for the simple reason that it manages to avoid the numerous catalogue of pitfalls that have plagued a whole slew of films looking to reach back to those same halcyon days that Sonic 2 is tapping into.  The difference between this Sega adaptation and those others is that this is the first time I've got the sense that the filmmakers had an actual grasp of what made the source material so enjoyable to begin with.  This can be seen in the way the script handles the main lore of Sonic's universe.  For the first time ever, fans of the franchise can enjoy a well made dramatization of the idea of the Chaos Emeralds in such a way that really doesn't seem to have alienated the mass audience who, like me, have had only a casual acquaintance with.  The concept is not made fun of.  The movie's main quest trek in search of the Master Emerald handled with respect, even when it comes to all the tongue-in-cheek moments which are required of a Comedy like this is.  Above all, the heroes aren't cheapened with condescension.

Instead, all of the film's three main players are accorded the kind of dignity they deserve, even as they're cracking jokes a mile a minute.  That's kind of a testament to the skill on display in and of itself.  Good comedy is hard to pull off, even in the best of times.  Being able to blend the roles of comedian and hero into the same personality is almost like piling a migraine onto a pre-existing headache.  If the writers don't know what they're doing, there's always the risk that the protagonist won't succeed at being either heroic, or funny.  Thankfully, Casey, Miller, and Whittington seem to have an intuitive understand for the kind of Wit that Sonic has and is.  He's a modern day incarnation of the hermetic Trickster of ancient myth in a modern Sci-Fi video game masque.  He's a natural born snarker who also discovers how to succeed at being an actual hero.  It's a fine act to balance, and the screenwriter should be commended for making this film Sonic look and sound like someone you might have met in a previous Saturday Morning TV incarnation.  The same goes for the overall plot, as well.  The concept of journeying to find the Master Emerald is the kind of scenario that can span the space of a multi-season series, or else it can all be crammed into the course of a single movie, like what Fowler does here.  If I had to take a guess, then I'd say the right choice was made, though I'll never object if you can do a series version right.

As for the rest of the cast, it's no secret that Jim Carrey is the main scene stealer for just about every moment he's on-screen.  I think by now, most can agree that these films amount to something of a triumphant comeback for the actor.  After a series of breakout successes back in the 90s, Carrey seemed to have hit a moment of identity crisis, and spent a lot of the last few years wandering around, looking to see where he fit in on the entertainment landscape.  I can only hope that working on these movies have done a lot to remind him of what his natural talents are, and what they're best suited to.  There seems to be room for optimism in this case, as it's clear the guy seems to have rediscovered the kind of wild and inspired enthusiasm that made him a household name long ago.  His version of Robotnik has to be one of the most enjoyable portrayals of the crazy Eggman that we've gotten in a long while.  In fact, now that I think about it.  The portrayals that have managed to stick in the minds of both fans and pop culture at large seem to boil down to two.  The first is John Baldry from the 90s animated series.  The second turns out to be Carrey himself.  Fans just seem to prefer their Eggman as this goofy yet threatening clown.  This is a job Carrey seems tailor made for.  The guy can do this sort of thing in his sleep.  This Robotnik is an amped up version of Chip the Cable Guy on with the volume yanked out.

He's this capering yet calculating and manipulative schemer with a surprising amount of sophistication that's just intelligent enough to keep you on your toes.  Carrey forces you to pay attention to his performance because you're never quite sure what tricks the character may have up his sleeve.  With all due respect, no matter what ups or downs Carrey might have experienced in his career, the amount of skill he's able to put into his portrayal of one of most well remembered mad scientists in the history of video games stands as a testament to a genuine talent.  The only criticisms I could have for this picture are of the minor, nitpicking variety.  There's a scene where Sonic and Tails have to compete in a dance contest just to keep their scalps, and while I've read debates about the necessity of this scene, I'm willing to defend it on the whole.  I just think an opportunity was missed by not having the Hedgehog and the Fox perform to one of Michael Jackson's greatest his, like Bad, Smooth Criminal, or even more appropriate, Blood on the Dance Floor, which is where Knuckles his original drum beat theme tune.  It would have made so much sense for a film that's trying to be a nostalgia trip.  Hell, the lyrics are almost a match for the kind of attitude Sonic takes to life in general.  Still, that's a small thing.  A more interesting debate I've heard about is the sort of subplot involving the side character of Maddie.

She's Rachel's sister in the series, and part of the movie's runtime concerns the events surrounding her upcoming wedding.  It ties into the main plot well enough, yet after that, it's open for debate whether at least some of the rest of her scenes beyond a certain point could have been removed.  I'll it's almost possible to see the logic of where some in the audience are coming from.  What gives me pause, however, was something I might have picked up on with a recent re-viewing.  Is it just me, or does the character of Randall (Shemar Moore), Rachel's fiancée, have something of this kind of thematic connection to the main figure of Knuckles?  Just here me out on this.  What similarities might these two figures in the cast share?  Both of them qualify as soldiers and veterans.  Both are implied to come from a military background.  Knuckles gets this naturally, from being born into a culture that places a high value on concept of honor on the field of battle.  We don't get as much backstory for Randall, yet the way he talks about his fellow squad mates indicates that he's pretty much dedicated his life to the job of soldiering to the point where he takes it about as seriously as the talking Echidna.  What happens next is that both men find themselves facing a situation which makes them, not give up the martial profession so much as realize it's possible to rediscover the joys to be had in civilian life in a way that is able to balance out both aspects of their lives.  It works as a condensation of Knuckle's struggle in miniature.  It's things like this that make me willing to give this curious little subplot more of an honest chance.

Beyond this, there's the over-arching question.  Did I have enough fun with the picture that I'm able to say I was entertained?  Well, let me put it like this.  After a while, I just couldn't get this goofy, delighted, grin off my face as I watched the story unfold.  This has got to be the first time I've been able to say anything like this about a modern movie in a long while.  A lot of that is down to all of the ingredients I've just discussed.  This is a film that wants to pay tribute to the 90s pop culture that birthed the Blue Blur, and it does so by following one simple rule.  It never loses sight of what made the 2D video games of Sega's flagship mascot so fun and enjoyable to begin with.  As such, Fowler, Miller, Whittington, an Casey are all to be congratulated for doing the one thing necessary for any good work of storytelling.  They make sure to get whatever ego issues they may have out of the way, and let the characters just be themselves.  In the case of a longstanding franchise such as this, it means letting the main cast be true to their established lore, and to just have fun with it.  The fact that Fowler and his crew are able to succeed as well as they do is a testament to the shared respect they all have for this Secondary World, and the value of the people in it, no matter how Imaginary.  Would that the efforts of other studios were able to do the same.  It's for all these reasons that this film is recommended by me.