Sonic the Hedgehog 3 got a new trailer this morning, and it really underlines how this movie is an adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2. We knew it would be taking pieces of the Dreamcast game, such as introducing Shadow the Hedgehog and delving into his tortured past, but this new trailer really brings home that some of the biggest story beats from Sonic Adventure 2 are making their way to the big screen. If you’ve never played the game or need a refresher, we’re here to break down the trailer scene by scene.
2 / 17
Chao are little alien-like creatures in the Sonic universe, looked after by the blue blur and his friends. These guys debuted in Sonic Adventure and have been a mainstay in the franchise since, but they’ve never appeared in the movies, until now…sort of. It looks like Chao will debut in the live-action films as mascots—in the trailer we see Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles hanging out in a Chuck E. Cheese-like establishment in Tokyo, where performers and servers are dressed as the little guys. The place is then shown being attacked by what we assume are Doctor Robotnik’s machines. Between this and the fact that Sega refuses to make a standalone Chao Garden game, Chao can’t catch a break.
3 / 17
Regrettably, the Sonic movies love a pop culture reference. So when three anthropomorphic animals show up in Tokyo, a child is shown asking if Tails is Detective Pikachu. Knuckles responds, “He does look like a Pokémon,” before imitating the little yellow guy with a “Pika, Pika!”
If you ever wanted to hear Idris Elba do that, I guess that’s for you.
4 / 17
Gerald Robotnik, the grandfather of series antagonist Eggman, is a bit of a wildcard in Sonic 3—he was long dead by the time Sonic Adventure 2 begins. In Sonic 3, Gerald is still alive, apparently working with his grandson and Shadow toward world domination. There’s some inherent deception in Gerald and Shadow’s plans in the game, so things might not be all that they seem.
We see Gerald in what appears to be a jail cell, looking at schematics of the Eclipse Cannon drawn on a wall. This is a superweapon attached to the Space Colony Ark, the space station he and Shadow lived on at some time before the events of Sonic Adventure 2.
5 / 17
In the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Jim Carrey’s Doctor Robotnik was shown teaming up with Sonic to take down Shadow, as he and his friends deemed the antihero too powerful for them to take on by themselves. However, the second trailer has dropped this facade, and it looks like the villain will be teaming up with his grandfather and Shadow. I’m less surprised by the turn than I am by Paramount marketing one thing and then undermining it one trailer later.
Ultimately, it leads to a more true adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2, but I was interested in seeing the begrudging team-up lasts the whole film, instead of just part of it.
6 / 17
Tom and Maddie Wachowski are both returning as Sonic’s human parents, and while the last trailer showed Tom in what looked like a real dangerous situation, we do see the two relaxing in their Green Hills home. Well, before Sonic and the others teleport into their living room and tell them they need help fighting Shadow and the Robotniks. Tom is also seen wearing a knitted Donut Lord sweater covered in donuts. These movies sure do commit to a bit.
7 / 17
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 introduced G.U.N., the Guardian Units of Nations military group that was founded to protect Earth from aliens like Sonic and his friends. The organization was revealed through an extended wedding subplot revealing Maddie’s sister Rachel was unknowingly getting married to an undercover agent. While she wasn’t thrilled, it seems like she and the rest of the human cast are shown working with G.U.N.
8 / 17
Next we see shots of both Sonic and Robotnik’s teams, but there’s something a little fishy about one of them. While Sonic, Knuckles, and jetpack-wearing Tails all look fine running through the forests of Green Hill, it’s the line-up of both Robotniks, Shadow, and Agent Stone that’s odd. There’s a noticeable gap between Stone and Robotnik that looks strange from a shot composition standpoint. If Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is an adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2, there’s one major player who appears absent from the film: Rouge the Bat.
The treasure-hunting double-agent acts as Knuckles’ rival in the Dreamcast game, and it’s a bummer that she doesn’t appear to be in the movie that adapts her debut alongside Shadow. Unless this is a Spider-Man: No Way Home situation in which she, or some other Sonic character, is meant to be standing in that empty space but has been edited out to surprise fans when the movie premieres. There’s also a possibility this could be Metal Sonic, as fans have been theorizing since the first trailer that the synthetic hedgehog could be making his debut in either this film or the next one.
If Robotnik is turning coat in this movie, it would make some sense for him to build the robohog. But I worry the film could feel pretty bloated if Paramount smooshed another Sonic storyline into an Adventure 2 adaptation, and we already have one villainous hedgehog. God, let it be Rouge.
9 / 17
One of the big plot points of Sonic Adventure 2 is that the Chaos Emeralds, gems of near-limitless energy, were used to power the Eclipse Cannon. From what we can see in the trailer, it looks like Shadow himself is the weapon’s energy source this time around. The Chaos Emeralds were used in the second movie, but haven’t been shown in the trailers for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 yet. So this might be one of the embellishments the movie is taking with the source material, although there is reason to believe the Chaos Emeralds will appear elsewhere in the movie. We’ll get to that in a minute.
10 / 17
Carrey’s portrayal of the Egghead has been getting progressively closer to his in-game design with each movie. While he’s had the black-and-red throughline in each of his outfits, he got the bald head and long mustache in Sonic 2, and this time around he’s got the gut and the long red coat. He still keeps his goggles on his forehead, because you don’t pay Jim Carrey millions of dollars to hide his face, but his transformation into the Doctor Eggman we know looks pretty much complete now.
11 / 17
One of Eggman and Shadow’s power plays in Sonic Adventure 2 is demonstrating the Eclipse Cannon’s capabilities by blowing a hole through the moon. This plot beat has become kind of a meme at this point, as most Sonic games that follow don’t reflect it. Sega tried to explain this as the moon having turned, so every time we see it in subsequent games we’re just seeing the side that isn’t broken. [The moon is in a synchronous rotation orbit with the Earth, and as such never turns from our perspective—Nerdy Ed] But more recently, the Shadow Generations: Dark Beginnings animated series has shown the moon broken with a ring of shattered pieces around the remaining satellite. In Sonic the Hedgehog 3, it looks like they’re slicing off part of the moon’s lower hemisphere, to which Sonic responds, “Somebody better call Google Maps.” Groan.
12 / 17
Shadow’s tragic backstory centers around his friendship with Maria Robotnik, Eggman’s terminally ill cousin who he was meant to save as a research subject on immortality. We see a couple of scenes of Shadow reflecting on their friendship, including what looks like a dream sequence in which the two imagined living on Earth. They lived on Space Colony Ark most of Maria’s life, but we see a shot here of the two sitting together in a field of flowers.
Maria wanted nothing more than to be able to live on Earth again, and she and Shadow would dream of going down there until her untimely death acted as the catalyst for the events of Sonic Adventure 2. It’s still unclear just how Sonic 3 will portray her death, but the trailers aren’t subtle about her demise.
13 / 17
Shadow’s brief affair with firearms in his 2005 self-titled game is one of the more regrettable things Sega has done with the character, but I will not deny that I popped off when the new trailer showed him on a motorcycle, holding a pistol. It’s so stupid, but these movies are the only thing that gets me near an MCU level of “I understood that reference” sheepdom. I have to clap and cheer.
14 / 17
Lee Majdoub’s Agent Stone is probably one of the only universally liked human characters in the Sonic movies, unless you count Carrey’s Robotnik. He’s mostly characterized by his homoerotic devotion to Robotnik, but the glimpses we’ve seen of him in this trailer imply he might not be able to follow the ol’ Egghead to the places this story is taking him. He remarks about how dark the plans are getting, and we even see him roughed up alongside civilians as he looks on at the carnage Shadow and Eggman are causing. Could he break out of this toxic relationship in this movie?
15 / 17
The final important shots of the trailer show Sonic and Shadow locked in a fierce fight. It seems like they’re fighting at a volcanic eruption site. There are two important shots that fans think might imply something big for the climactic fight: At one point, we get a close-up on Sonic’s eyes, which, if you look closely, reflect multi-colored light that could be the Chaos Emeralds. There’s another shot where you can briefly see what looks like a golden streak of energy dashing past the volcanic eruptions.
Fans think this might mean Sonic and Shadow may use the Chaos Emeralds to change into their Super forms. In the Sonic Adventure 2 game, Sonic and Shadow change into their Super Saiyan-like forms to team up and reverse Gerald’s plan to destroy the world, but it would be a twist if we got two superpowered hedgehogs facing each other in the final moments. Along with the conspicuous space in the Team Dark line-up, it does imply the movie may still have surprises in store when Sonic the Hedgehog 3 premieres on December 20.
16 / 17
The final scene in the trailer is a gag between both Robotniks, with Gerald shown dressed up as Santa Claus as his grandson excitedly tackles him into a Christmas tree. It’s unclear if this is a real scene in the movie, or just a little something Paramount paid Carrey to do because the movie is coming out so close to Christmas. Maybe Eggman is thinking of all the childhood family time he missed out on that made him the way he is. Or maybe Sonic 3 has a Christmas subplot.
17 / 17