“The Godfather,” “Interstellar” and “Sonic the Hedgehog 3.” This is what many consider to be “The Big Three” of cinematic excellence, and anybody who says otherwise is plain out wrong. I believe it was Socrates who said “the unexamined life is not worth living,” but to truly examine life, you have to examine art. So, on Dec. 20, 2024, 28 of my buddies and I all went to the local theater to watch magic unfold on the glistening silver screen, and I can tell you with full certainty that not a single one of us regretted it.

When the first trailer for “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” came out, I thought it looked pretty cool, but my long-time Sonic fan friend, sophomore Gustav Mt. Joy, was thrilled. I have always loved big movie watch parties, and he loves Sonic. So, we put our heads together and organized a large event, buying out two whole rows of the AMC Theater, as we gathered the largest group of people possible to watch a blue hedgehog fight Jim Carrey.

Now, if we are being completely honest here, I’m not even the biggest Sonic fan. I think a few of the games are pretty good, but Sonic has always been a character I associated with other franchises. I never really played an official Sonic game until I was probably 13; my only knowledge of the series was through “Super Smash Bros” and “Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games.” But since I’ve played a few of the games, I’ve grown to enjoy it for what it is. When the first movie came out, I thought it was a pretty okay movie, and the second movie was slightly better, but I think that had to do with it being seen with a friend. I’ll be real, I didn’t have the highest hopes for the movie. I expected a pretty average, run-of-the-mill video game adaptation, but I couldn’t be happier that I was wrong. So, with that being said, here is my detailed review and retelling of “Sonic the Hedgehog 3.”

First, let me talk about the intro itself. We start the film on the brilliantly named “Prison Island,” the holding cell of our antagonist, Shadow the Hedgehog. The two security guards who are watching over Shadow notice that their system has been hacked and alert more guards that Shadow is escaping from his liquid stasis chamber. Shadow then proceeds to wake up, explode his chamber, beat up 11 armed guards to death, and it hasn’t even been four minutes into the movie yet. I cannot stress enough how perfect of an introduction this could have been, as this shows the raw power of Shadow the Hedgehog, proving how much of a threat he truly is. This creature has been locked away, was asleep for 50 years and he still has all the energy in the world to beat up large military conglomerates.

Now, it would be insane for me to retell and summarize the whole movie, as the article would be way too long, so I will just touch on specific plot points that stand out the most.

The initial fight between Shadow and Team Sonic is absolutely amazing. There has never been anything like it before. They give Shadow the Hedgehog a gun and a motorcycle, and he absolutely mops the floor with Sonic. The destruction, the atmosphere and the action is all so intense and was captivating the whole way through. Afterwards, we got to the Chao Garden scene, and this was when I knew I was watching the best movie ever made. It’s about 18 minutes into the movie, everyone is heavily injured and we hard cut to a Chuck E. Cheese-like establishment that is based on my favorite part of Sonic Adventure, the Chao Garden. Everything is happy and cheery, and then a government official walks into frame and has a sit down conversation with Sonic. There was no introduction to him, you just had to remember who he was from the previous movie. After talking for a whole five minutes, he gets crushed under a collapsing building, and gives Sonic a key to the most powerful weapon mankind has ever seen. This is the kind of storytelling that you just can’t get anywhere else. I absolutely lost it after seeing that, it was the funniest thing to ever happen.

The entire dual heist scene is also a standout moment. It takes up pretty much the entire second act, and not a moment is wasted. Seeing both Team Sonic and Team Robotnik go head to head as they try to regain the key to the superweapon is really well paced and also genuinely funny. Jim Carrey plays two characters at the same time for pretty much the entire movie, and it pays off. They let him do just about anything in this movie. During the high stakes heist, we take a two minute long break to see Jim Carrey dance with himself, and it was the highlight of the movie by far in terms of comedy. No 60 year old has broken it down like that before, and no 60 year old ever will again.

The final act culminates into a final showdown between both Robotniks against each other and Sonic versus Shadow. Both are equally entertaining for different reasons, as the Robotnik fight is a lot more humorous, and Sonic versus Shadow share a more serious exchange. This is the best fight in all three of the Sonic movies, both delivering on speed and action. It causes for a weird dissonance between the two fights when cutting back and forth, but I think it adds a lot of charm to the film. People in the theater were cheering and clapping the whole time. This was over a Sonic the Hedgehog movie. 

Now, while all of the main characters were pretty compelling, all of the side characters did an excellent job pulling their weight. Commander Walters has some great exposition lines, Maria was exactly what she needed to be for the movie and Director Rockwell was played by Jane from Breaking Bad – these were all equally valuable assets.

Despite a few plot holes here and there, I think I can safely say that this was my favorite movie to come out this year. Is it the best? Absolutely not, there are probably several other movies that I haven’t seen that are remarkable. But this movie was something special; maybe it was the build up to the movie, the planning of the gathering or just the experience of having many of my close friends all watching something together. What matters to me is that I had fun, and that is all I would ever want from a Sonic movie. There is so much more to say about this movie, but I have a deadline to reach, and I’ve already missed it. So with that, I have one last thing to say: 10/10, Masterpiece.