{"id":2325,"date":"2020-11-17T15:00:48","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T22:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=2325"},"modified":"2022-12-28T16:48:03","modified_gmt":"2022-12-28T23:48:03","slug":"movie-sonic-the-hedgehog-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2020\/11\/17\/movie-sonic-the-hedgehog-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/4\/45\/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_film_poster.jpg\/220px-Sonic_the_Hedgehog_film_poster.jpg\" alt=\"Sonic the Hedgehog\" width=\"220\" height=\"325\">Sonic the Hedgehog<\/strong><\/span><br>\nYear: 2020<br>\nRating: PG<br>\nLength: 99 minutes \/ 1.65 hours<\/p>\n<p>As someone who grew up with the original <em>Sonic<\/em> video games, I was highly skeptical of this film adaptation. There&#8217;s not much plot behind a game that&#8217;s basically: move right as fast as possible and defeat a robot-making madman. Granted, Sonic has developed a little more depth to its lore over the years&#8230;but not much. The appeal of the character in the &#8217;90s was his attitude, and I have to admit that his movie does capture that attitude quite well.<\/p>\n<p>For a video game adaptation, <em>Sonic the Hedgehog<\/em> (2020) isn&#8217;t terrible, which is saying something. I can only imagine the nightmare-inducing original design for Sonic, though. However, it&#8217;s still not the greatest movie ever for the genre of video game adaptations. I did appreciate the little &#8220;slow-motion&#8221; moments, as well as the practical use of the rings as teleportation devices. Jim Carrey&#8217;s Dr. Robotnik was passable, if not a little too goofy\/sinister at times. This movie probably won&#8217;t age well, though, as there are plenty of cultural references included in it\u2014not all of which are directly linked to the source material.<\/p>\n<p>What really gets me about this film was how generic it felt. All the major plot points, characters, and jokes felt like the same tropes I&#8217;d expect of any other &#8220;an alien coming to Earth and learning to live with\/save its inhabitants&#8221; plotline. For my money, I&#8217;d probably watch <em><a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/09\/movie-bumblebee-2018\/\">Bumblebee<\/a><\/em> (2018) again instead. Of course, many of these problems stem from the &#8220;origin story&#8221; trope that all these franchises feel they need to produce to get those who aren&#8217;t &#8220;in the know&#8221; to understand their franchise moving forward.<\/p>\n<p>A standard origin story with generic characters and jokes, I give <em>Sonic the Hedgehog<\/em> 3.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\"><\/strong>&nbsp;<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\"><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/bmw-the-critic\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"820\" height=\"312\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1821\" srcset=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic.jpg 820w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic-300x114.jpg 300w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic-768x292.jpg 768w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BMW-the-Critic-640x244.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sonic the Hedgehog Year: 2020 Rating: PG Length: 99 minutes \/ 1.65 hours As someone who grew up with the original Sonic video games, I was highly skeptical of this film adaptation. There&#8217;s not much plot behind a game that&#8217;s basically: move right as fast as possible and defeat a robot-making madman. Granted, Sonic has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,2],"tags":[2282,2568,13,2569,2570,2567,906],"class_list":["post-2325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-movie","tag-2282","tag-jim-carrey","tag-movie","tag-sega","tag-sonic","tag-sonic-the-hedgehog","tag-video-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2325"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3342,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions\/3342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}