Name: Sonic the Hedgehog 3
Released: 2024

Dan Reilly

+13 clout

Sep 11, 2026

I fired this one up on a rainy Tuesday after work, the kind of night where you just want something loud and dumb and blue running around at Mach speed while you finish the leftover chili. Still humming that old Genesis loop in my head the whole time—da-na-na-na-na-SO-NIC—except the movie version is bigger and punchier and my neighbor probably heard me tapping along on the coffee table. My kids grew up on the cartoons and the handheld games, so the second the title hit I was already half in 1991 and half watching a grown-up CGI hedgehog pull spin-dashes that looked like they cost more than my first car. Sonic shows up again with Tails and Knuckles, the usual trio, and right away they're dealing with this new black-and-red guy, Shadow, who just lands like a bad mood with rockets. Keanu's voice on him is perfect—calm, a little dead inside, like he's been waiting fifty years to settle a score and the coffee went cold. I remember renting Sonic Adventure 2 back when the Dreamcast was still the coolest thing in the living room, and Shadow's whole tragic Maria flashback hit me the same way it did when I was a teenager staying up too late. The movie doesn't soft-pedal it; they give you the lab, the girl, the gunfire, the orbital drop, and it lands with actual weight instead of just being another origin checkbox. For a second I forgot I was watching a family comedy and just felt that old game sadness again. The unlikely alliance bit is the part that made me grin like an idiot. Once Shadow starts tearing through everything, Sonic's crew has to swallow pride and team up with Robotnik—Jim Carrey chewing the scenery so hard you half expect him to spit out bits of set dressing. He's back with the mustache and the ego and the weird little dance moves, and somehow pairing him with the blue blur against a bigger threat just works. There's a stretch in the middle where they're all stuck on a plane or a base or whatever and the banter flies: Knuckles being a stone-headed walrus of a warrior, Tails fretting over gadgets, Sonic cracking wise like he's still twelve. I groaned at a couple of the dad jokes, the ones that feel written for the trailer, but then Carrey would do something completely unhinged with a laser or a disguise and I'd forgive it. Reminds me of those Saturday mornings where the show would cut from serious hedgehog angst to pure slapstick and nobody complained. Action is the real juice here. They throw Shadow's Chaos powers at the screen in big cascading fights—teleports, spears of energy, bikes that look stolen from a cooler universe—and Sonic has to level up his own speed just to keep pace. There's a chase through London that had me leaning forward so hard the recliner creaked, cars flipping, chaos energy lighting up the bridges, Knuckles punching things that should not be punched. I kept flashing on the old 2D levels, green hills and loop-de-loops, and how this 2024 version just multiplies that feeling by a hundred without losing the cartoony bounce. The effects hold up; nobody looks like a floating blob against a green screen the way early CGI sometimes did. Even the quiet beats between punches feel earned—Tom and Maddie still playing the surrogate parents, throwing in human-scale worry while the animals save the planet again. No lectures, just family noise and leftover pizza energy. I sat through the whole thing twice that week, once with the lights off and once while folding laundry, and it held both times. The Maria scenes still catch me; the final showdown on the moon or the asteroid or wherever they end up still makes me yell at the screen like I'm twelve again. It's not perfect—some of the human side plots meander, a gag or two lands soft, and if you've never touched a controller you might miss why Shadow's brooding hits so hard—but the movie knows what it is. It's a big dumb joyful race against a cooler, sadder version of the hero, full of old game DNA and Carrey mugging and the kind of friendship speeches that don't make you roll your eyes too hard. My kitchen still has the theme stuck in it. I'll probably throw it on again next time the weather turns and I need that blue blur to remind me why we ever fell for these little guys in the first place.

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Dan Reilly
+13 clout
Sep 11, 2026
I fired this one up on a rainy Tuesday after work, the kind of night where you just want something loud and dumb and blue running around at Mach speed while you finish the leftover chili. Still humming that old Genesis loop in my head the whole time—da-na-na-na-na-SO-NIC—except the movie version is bigger and punchier and my neighbor probably heard me tapping along on the coffee table. My kids grew up on the cartoons and the handheld games, so the second the title hit I was already half in 1991 and half watching a grown-up CGI hedgehog pull spin-dashes that looked like they cost more than my first car. Sonic shows up again with Tails and Knuckles, the usual trio, and right away they're dealing with this new black-and-red guy, Shadow, who just lands like a bad mood with rockets. Keanu's voice on him is perfect—calm, a little dead inside, like he's been waiting fifty years to settle a score and the coffee went cold. I remember renting Sonic Adventure 2 back when the Dreamcast was still the coolest thing in the living room, and Shadow's whole tragic Maria flashback hit me the same way it did when I was a teenager staying up too late. The movie doesn't soft-pedal it; they give you the lab, the girl, the gunfire, the orbital drop, and it lands with actual weight instead of just being another origin checkbox. For a second I forgot I was watching a family comedy and just felt that old game sadness again. The unlikely alliance bit is the part that made me grin like an idiot. Once Shadow starts tearing through everything, Sonic's crew has to swallow pride and team up with Robotnik—Jim Carrey chewing the scenery so hard you half expect him to spit out bits of set dressing. He's back with the mustache and the ego and the weird little dance moves, and somehow pairing him with the blue blur against a bigger threat just works. There's a stretch in the middle where they're all stuck on a plane or a base or whatever and the banter flies: Knuckles being a stone-headed walrus of a warrior, Tails fretting over gadgets, Sonic cracking wise like he's still twelve. I groaned at a couple of the dad jokes, the ones that feel written for the trailer, but then Carrey would do something completely unhinged with a laser or a disguise and I'd forgive it. Reminds me of those Saturday mornings where the show would cut from serious hedgehog angst to pure slapstick and nobody complained. Action is the real juice here. They throw Shadow's Chaos powers at the screen in big cascading fights—teleports, spears of energy, bikes that look stolen from a cooler universe—and Sonic has to level up his own speed just to keep pace. There's a chase through London that had me leaning forward so hard the recliner creaked, cars flipping, chaos energy lighting up the bridges, Knuckles punching things that should not be punched. I kept flashing on the old 2D levels, green hills and loop-de-loops, and how this 2024 version just multiplies that feeling by a hundred without losing the cartoony bounce. The effects hold up; nobody looks like a floating blob against a green screen the way early CGI sometimes did. Even the quiet beats between punches feel earned—Tom and Maddie still playing the surrogate parents, throwing in human-scale worry while the animals save the planet again. No lectures, just family noise and leftover pizza energy. I sat through the whole thing twice that week, once with the lights off and once while folding laundry, and it held both times. The Maria scenes still catch me; the final showdown on the moon or the asteroid or wherever they end up still makes me yell at the screen like I'm twelve again. It's not perfect—some of the human side plots meander, a gag or two lands soft, and if you've never touched a controller you might miss why Shadow's brooding hits so hard—but the movie knows what it is. It's a big dumb joyful race against a cooler, sadder version of the hero, full of old game DNA and Carrey mugging and the kind of friendship speeches that don't make you roll your eyes too hard. My kitchen still has the theme stuck in it. I'll probably throw it on again next time the weather turns and I need that blue blur to remind me why we ever fell for these little guys in the first place.
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Sonic the Hedgehog 3

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