Straight home from the cinema, wanted to write my thoughts down, and it goes without saying, but I am spoiling the movie rotten, including post-credits, so yk, decide for yourself if you're clicking.
Okay, I thought the movie was... fine. Not great, leagues ahead of the first one obviously, although in comparison to the second one I think it reaches higher heights and avoids its lowest lows, although is perhaps overall less balanced than the second one? No, that's not quite it. I think the second one did Sonic and Knuckles' arcs better and as a movie was more focused on that so felt a bit more balanced, whereas movie 3 is more exciting and like cooler as an action setpiece but maybe not quite narratively as fulfilling? Something? I don't know, gonna need to weigh that in my mind a little.
I guess breaking it down into more specifics I wanna probably talk Sonic first, because I think he was a bit of an odd link in his own movie. Sonic at this point has his team with Tails and Knuckles, so he needs to be sure he's trusting them and making the right decisions. Eventually of course Shadow hurts Tom and Sonic loses his cool, goes against the team, and pretty much tries to kill Shadow, before doing a "this isn't who I am" thing and calming down, having a heart to heart with Shadow, remembering Longclaw exists, the whole shebang. It's fine, I understand fundamentally that this movie version of Sonic isn't his game self and is going to have more of an active character arc, and obviously in the context of the movie it serves to put him on the same arc Shadow has so they can both grow together. When I spell it out like that even I think it's pretty good, but I think it probably needed slightly more time to feel more convincing? Again it wasn't bad I was just not all that engaged with it, honestly makes me wonder if I even can take this version of Sonic all that seriously, cause at some point I do have to consider that I might just not like him.
Tails and Knuckles are pretty much fine. Tails honestly has more screentime than he did in the second movie it feels, I think he was a better executed version of his character across the board. Knuckles is a little closer to how he felt in movie 2 than he did in his own series, and I appreciate that he's broadly very capable, but also it really does feel like they're doing dumb Knuckles again except warrior mode. Maddie I have basically nothing to say about here but Tom is fine, contributes to Sonic's arc, has his like one speech, they've got an okay infiltration scene together that didn't drag too long and fortunately had Sonic and friends constantly on the mic to remind us who we're watching for. Stone's fine, nice jealousy arc for Gerald and Eggman before the latter remembers that Stone is the only one who ever cared for him and the two reconcile and it's sweet and everything. Eggman's doing the same shtick he's been doing all these movies, with a noble sacrifice at the end that makes me question how he's gonna be used in future. The big thing for him is Gerald being there, and Gerald...
I think Gerald, and by extension the entire backstory relating to Project Shadow, is where this movie goes the most wrong for me. I'll talk about Shadow on his own in a bit, but in the context of Project Shadow, Shadow is an alien who landed on earth as a meteorite and was recovered by and subsequently experimented on by GUN. Gerald is the one leading the experiments. They're not inhumane experiments at all, seems to just be routine tests and making him run to power generators and test his Chaos Energy. Maria is of course also there. When it becomes evident that Shadow is really powerful and they can't necessarily control him, GUN hunt down Gerald, unintentionally destroy the lab, and put Shadow in stasis. Present day, Gerald has managed to remotely awaken Shadow, remotely get Eggman to find him, and they're all gonna work together to blow up the entire earth and also suicide pact themselves in the process, a detail Eggman obviously doesn't know about. The thing is, fuck man, I do need to do that other paragraph next.
Maria doesn't have NIDS. or AIDS. Or some nondescript terminal illness. She doesn't have anything. She's literally just a normal girl. Why is she here at the research lab, which is distinctly on Earth? Just kinda because. Sees Shadow, befriends him, they're really cute, nothing but props there. But Maria is just a normal girl. Gerald basically never interacts with her. Or speaks positively of her. He's on a path for revenge for a granddaughter we're not convinced of his fondness for. I'm not out here to fault this movie for not just being SA2 and even in having said that SA2 doesn't exactly show their relationship very well either, all you have there is a sad old man on his execution day talking about how he was driven insane and is getting his revenge. But like. He's working on Project Shadow because he's a brilliant scientist who wants to use the research on immortality to help find a cure to his own granddaughter's illness. Through that motive alone we get the impression that Maria means a lot to Gerald. That's not there in this movie, at all. Shadow isn't an artificial being as far as we know, he isn't immortal as far as we know, he and Gerald don't really have that intrinsic link to one another that Maria completes, they're not a family. Fuck Gerald's alive but he and Shadow basically don't even talk to each other here. They very vaguely imply that Gerald's whole being 110 years old thing is connected to Shadow (as in have him say he's old and then do the licking Shadow's quill and getting a shock thing) and that's as close as they get. Again I don't think it's automatically a bad thing for them to go their own direction with this story but also the way it's written originally works for a reason and the ways in which they abandon that story only serve to hurt what they came up with instead. Gerald being alive could've worked. The research lab being a ground based facility could've worked. Maria not being terminally ill... I don't think that's salvageable. Certainly not in the form we saw it. But if that's what you're gonna do you need to sell me on Gerald, on his investment in any of this. I don't care about Gerald's revenge, that's the problem.
Anyway, uh, Shadow. He's fine. Good, even. Keanu's voice acting in this is leagues above what he did in the Shadow Gens DLC, I'm glad that wasn't a bad sign of things to come and instead literally just a false alarm. It's his SA2 arc but with the suicidal ideology amped up and Sonic choosing not to kill him being what makes Shadow realise he shouldn't be doing all this either. Sacrifice himself to save the world, post-credits scene shows he's obviously fine, good stuff. I'm honestly surprised how little he gives me to say.
Everything that happens when Sonic turns Super onwards is fucking awesome. First of all, sure, Super Sonic is consumed by rage and is out for blood and tries to fight Shadow. Shadow in base knocks the Emeralds out of Super Sonic with a sick fighting game ult looking ass wrist blow thing. Cool as fuck. Actually seeing Super Sonic fight base Shadow at all was honestly hype as hell in its own right, I think that's a very real sell us on the strength of Shadow. But of course, one Super hedgehog isn't enough. They both go Super. And they fight each other. Unbelievable. Absolutely raw as fuck. Not literally a series first because two Super characters fighting happened a few times in Archie, but close enough to be exciting. Also I mean all in space, btw. And yeah Live and Learn plays. More of the song than I was expecting but not really enough to be completely pogging. Choreography's great, absolutely the best the movies have shown off, one hell of an impression of speed seeing them fly across the literal planet fighting each other. Some sick fucking locations they end up in, tons of wallpapers. Super Sonic getting the edge because he has the fury of god while Shadow's conviction is currently lacking but also Sonic has experience with the form and Shadow doesn't is hype. After they talk things out they grab hands and transform together, it's raw as fuck, another wallpaper, clear out GUN robots by the hundreds, Shadow gets a smorgasboard of Chaos Spears in, I'm having the time of my life. I am barely able to sit down. This is the most excited the room gets. Oh btw it's a packed audience, everyone's wearing a Sonic shirt, families and dudes my age with their friends. Nothing very annoying throughout as a cinema-going experience despite lots of horrible signs at the start. Whenever this movie's 4K blu-ray comes out I am going to torrent that and I am going to steal some screenshots from these scenes because there are wallpapers to be had. Loved this bit. Finale is very good. No idea how Tails and Knuckles got to space but I'm glad they manage to play a substantial part here anyway. Gerald also dies here so like yeah things are just going well for me.
Overall I think, again, solid. Characters are mostly pretty good but unfortunately Gerald is kinda bad and is also very very much the central antagonist despite being kinda bad. There aren't any obvious "please cut this" scenes like in movie 2 except the two Eggmen dance sequence but it was better than the Sonic and Tails one in movie 2 and I mean no wedding scene. Climax is great. Shadow is good. Visuals are good. I think the pacing is pretty much fine, it gets into it very quickly. But it might genuinely have needed another 10 maybe 20 minutes to just flesh out particularly Gerald's backstory a lot more, although really I think they should've just done the SA2 faithful approach. Especially since fuck this is the year of Shadow right? They want to get everyone up to speed on everything to do with him. So why is the movie - the climax of said year - not giving us one of the most important facts about Shadow, that being that he's artificial? God unless the game plan is to cover Shadow being artificial and being partially Black Arms in one go. If we get a Shadow spinoff series is the plan to explain that his origins are he was created entirely by the Black Arms? Fuckin who knows man. I don't think the Black Arms needed to be in this movie I think that would've been a little too busy and a little too muddled for one film, but you gotta get the fact that Shadow was made by Gerald, surely. And Maria needs to be terminally ill! I don't even care that she wasn't actually shot man it's just the fact that she's terminally ill is the entire reason the Project Shadow story works. Whatever. This is the main thing holding the movie back for me.
Also goes without saying but these are indeed "just got home from watching it" thoughts. I haven't seen the movie more than once, I haven't spoken about it to anyone else, I haven't read or watched reviews, nothing. I am quite literally rambling. I don't think this is nearly as coherent as I was aiming for, but I was struggling enough to find the words to where I've given up really caring about being coherent. 6 maybe 6.5 out of 10.
Post-credits! Metal Sonic appears. Is jobbing. Way more Metal Sonics appear. I guess that's one way to make him threatening. Amy appears, takes down like 10 of them, Metal is full on jobber. But hey, Amy looks cute. Part of me wanted Silver too much just in some hopes of getting a year of Silver and a Silver game and seeing his character finally be redeemed in the public eye but yeah no Amy makes more sense and definitely needed to be done lol. We're a long way out from seeing what she'll actually offer these movies in terms of story, but hey.
