Finally, after what seems like a million years, the Sonic The Hedgehog movie has finally sped into theaters. And, gauging all the opinions we saw online up to now, people expected a trainwreck. But, honestly, we kind of loved it. It's just a good family film! It has a lot of problems and the VFX still isn't amazing but it's not a "bad" movie. And, the main reason for that is how faithful it felt to the Sonic games we all grew up with. There are a ton of easter eggs, details, and other aspects to this movie that the audience might've missed or not picked up on, so let's look into a few.
10 His Shoes Make A Later Appearance Than The Trailers Suggested
The biggest thing we retroactively noticed after seeing the film on Valentine's Day is how the final film felt different from the trailers. Basically, throughout the entirety of the movie, Sonic is wearing some pretty run-down throwaway shoes he probably found in someone's trash. It's only during the third act in San Francisco that he's given his trademark red shoes by Jojo, the daughter of Tom's wife's sister. But, if you go back and look at all the trailers, they show the Blue Blur wearing these stylish kicks at multiple scenes earlier in the film.
9 There Are A Few Neat Musical Inclusions
This movie references little bits and bobs from the Sonic canon all over the place! But, one thing we wished it had was more of the music. Whether it's Crush 40's memorable tunes from the Gamecube era of Sonic Games or the classic tunes from the Genesis titles. Although we did get a few neat inclusions that plenty of moviegoers didn't pick up on. The CG Green Hill Zone beginning of the movie has Hyper Potion's "Friends" playing in the background, a song used in Sonic Mania's Opening as well, And, at the end of the film where Sonic is being shown a particularly important attic, a sweet little melody plays in the background that's a remix of Green Hill Zone by John Baptiste.
8 Baby Sonic's Flower Plucked Right From Sonic 1
As we were walking out of the theater on release night, we ourselves and plenty of others were all asking the same question out loud, "Was that owl part of the Sonic lore or something?" Basically, was Longclaw, Sonic's surrogate owl mother from the film, part of the canon in the games or Archie comics? Short answer, no. She was made up expressly for the film. And honestly, she looks like the style they were going for before Sonic's re-design, but that hasn't been confirmed.
But, one part of her short time on screen that was canon was the flower baby Sonic gave her in the first couple minutes of the film. This odd-looking sunflower is actually the first flower players see starting Green Hill Zone in Sonic 1.
7 Sonic Mania Made Portal Rings Canon
Video Game movies have a bad habit of changing the canon of mechanics from the games in order to make it more convenient for the film script. Stuff like Pyramid Head being a "good guy" in the Silent Hill films, The giant claw Animus from the Assassins Creed movie, or Rings being portals to other dimensions in the Sonic Movie. Oh wait, it turns out that last one is false. There has already been a precedent for these "rings" Sonic carries as travel devices. In the intro to Sonic Mania, one of the best Sonic games of the decade, we can see Tails, Knuckles, and Sonic all traveling to different Zones through giant rings. Neat!
6 No Duh! Sonic Is A Flash Fan
The first scene with Sonic in his bachelor...cave has a ton of easter eggs. For one, Sonic's headband that he wears during his nunchaku training has the classic Sonic logo on it. Two, the table that Sonic plays ping pong against himself on is an exit sign for Hill Top Rd, which is harkening towards Hill Top Zone from the games. And, lastly, when Sonic sits on his bean-bag chair and talks about his comic collection, we can see him reading through a whole bunch of Flash comics. It makes sense that the fastest creature alive would be a big fan of DC's fastest man alive. Where's that crossover movie?
5 This Unique Hero Is Uniquely Left-Handed
Boy howdy that entire baseball scene, in the beginning, was something else huh? Kind of funny that in order for that scene to work, Sonic would dive to slide for a base, get up, run over and act like the guy in the outfield, then run back and continue his slide. We'd love to see a zoomed-out version of that scene in the blue-ray or something.
Anyway, something else we discovered in that scene, other than Sonics crippling loneliness, is that the Blue Bomber is a lefty! Sonic holds his bat in the classic left-handed way, and that puts him right up there with Link and Sol Badguy as a rare left-handed game protagonist.
4 The Badniks Easter Egg
So, we're just going to give it to you straight, Jim Carrey is great in this movie as Robotnik, despite the difficulties in the portrayal. The professor has never been more energetic, comedic, or charismatic. And, during the command center dance scene (one of the best moments in the movie by the way) the power goes out as the electricity from Sonic's Spine overloads his circuit breaker. And, when Eggman goes to reset it, we can see another breaker switch above written on Duct Tape that simply reads "Badniks". Where are they Eggman!? Let us see em! Get these dumb Amazon drones out of here and bring in the Badniks!
3 Sonic Doesn't Pack Any Punch
It happens more than twice in the movie so we're almost positive it was intended, but Sonic has an incredibly weak punch. Outside of Super Smash Bros, no big company wants to show off their iconic kids character punching someone in a bar brawl, right? What we're referring to is the multiple times in the movie where Sonic tries to punch or kick anything, it has no effect.
The bald guy in the bar barely even notices he's been hit and apparently, Cyclops AKA James Marsten is the only one able to punch Robotnik. The implication is that Sonic can only do damage with his Spin dash or by using his speed against their opponent, and we're absolutely down for that narrative.
2 Crush40 Lives And Learns
In the beloved dance scene we mentioned before, Jim Carrey uses a variety of different machines to "test" Sonic's electrified quill and use it as a sort of pseudo power source. While the machines are doing their thing, Robotnik puts his headphones on and starts jamming out to one of his playlists. But, what many people missed, probably because it was only on screen for a second, is that the band Crush 40 appears in one of those playlists. This is a nod specifically for deep fans of the franchise as Crush 40 is the band who did a lot of the music for the first 3D sonic games and are most known for songs like Live and Learn from Sonic Adventure 2 or the Sonic Heroes theme song.
1 The Final Fight Is Reminiscent Of The First Game Boss Fight
And finally, we'll talk about the final fight. The showdown between a charged-up Sonic (not Super Sonic, that's probably for the sequel), and a murder-hungry Robotnik. During this sequence, Sonic uses the buildings and terrain to his advantage to beat the bolts off Robotnik's jet-like they're in a pinball machine. This felt familiar and we couldn't quite tell why. But, after thinking about it for a bit, we've figured it out. This series of Spin Attacks feels very familiar to how players would beat Robotnik's inventions in the 2D games, even down to the way he bounces off the machine with each hit. Plus, that jet shares some similarities to the first boss fight against Eggman in Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone.