After being pleasently surprised by the first film, I dove straight into ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’ without any real idea of exactly where they were going to take the series. The first film struck out with a new origin story for Sonic and Robotnik, a new location and light references to the expanded universe of Sonic media, but no direct ties. But it seems like this time around, they were quite a bit more open to diving more into the Sonic franchises lore and history.

The plot of this film opens with Robotnik still trapped on the mushroom planet after the events of the last film, but he’s rigged up some kind of communications satellite and using one of Sonics quills he sends an energy signal blast off the planet and deep into space, some time later his message is seemingly ‘recieved’ when a ring portal appears on the planet and from it walk some guards (who Robotnik takes care of reletively quickly) followed by ‘Knuckles’ the Echidna, the last of a fierce warrior race who is searching for Sonic and a mysterious gem known as ‘The Master Emerald’.

Meanwhile, back on earth, Sonic has decided to take up ‘hero-ing’ as a profession, with mixed to poor results. After a pep talk with Tom, Sonic agrees to reign in being a hero, and rather than chasing the goal, to wait for the right moment to present itself. With that Tom and his partner leave Sonic in charge of the family home for a few days, as both Tom and Maddie are going to Maddies sisters wedding in Hawaii.

Once they’re gone, Sonic tears the house up eating junk food and partying. But all that comes to a close when Eggman shows up WITH Knuckles and violent fight ensues. Sonic is nearly destroyed, but help arrives in the form of Miles ‘Tails’ Prower, a plucky little fox who’s one of Sonics biggest fans, who manages to rescue Sonic and get both of them to a place of safety.

Its here where the full plan is revealed. Tails saw Sonics antics from the first movie using advanced tech and decided to leave his village to team up with Sonic as help, Tails then reveals a secret in a map given to Sonic before he was sent to Earth which reveals that, many years ago a war between the Echidnas and the Owls over the master emerald nearly spilled over into widespread destruction. But that the Owls managed to secure the master Emerald and hide it on earth in a secret location, and that Sonic was supposed to become the Emeralds new guardian, but late on the job. The map given to sonic will lead him to a compass, which in turn will lead him to the Emerald. But Knuckles knows all of this already and Robotnik has convinced him that Sonic is an evil entity bent on using the Emerald for total universal destruction.

And so a race ensues with Sonic and Tails teaming up to try and track down the Emerald before Robotnik and Knuckles can find it, and…as you can imagine an inevitable betrayal is on the cards…

The first film pretty much created its own springpad with only very loose cosmetic references. But ‘Sonic 2’ here seems to have decided to try and pool elements of Lore from ‘Sonic the hedgehog 2, 3 and Sonic & Knuckles’ into a semi-coherent movie.

What I mean by pooling lore, is that there are several scenes in the movie that are meant to be ‘homages’ to levels within those sonic games ‘Ice Cap Zone’, ‘Water Labarynth Zone’, ‘Marble Hill Zone’ etc…and that elements from those sonic games such as end level bosses and game mechanics are also very present.

Obviously the big additions here are Tails and Knuckles, both of whome are VERY in line with the characterisations in games, comics and on screen. and I do have to compliment the team behind this picture for really getting to the core of what these characters are, and managing to distill all the qualities these characters have across their various media appearences into one, I would say fairly definitive’ characterisation.

Sonic, Tails and Knuckles here are polished examples of the last 30 odd years of there appearences, and its absolutely delightful to see them interacting in ways that have previously only been available in a limited capacity. While I still arnt 100% happy with Robotniks characterisation. I will admit that here, he’s closer to the good doctor than he was in the last film.

The script for this one is again, kind of generic, and once again it opens and ends strong, but the middle does sag just a little bit as we get bogged down in the logistics of the great treasure hunt. I will say this feels a lot tighter than the first film in many regards, but at just over 2 hours long, I do feel it could have lost 10 minutes from the middle and been all the stronger for it.

The humour in this has been polished up a little more, while I still loath the ‘meme’ humour and fart jokes, they are a lot less present here, and theres much more of a focus on the type of dry ‘alternative’ humour I enjoyed in the firtst film. Which was nice.

A reduction in the ‘NPC’ characters here was also welcome. But I dont quite feel the set pieces were as interesting as the first film, or as emotionally invested. I think the finale is stronger than the first film, but everything else is tighter, but less dramatic. Which is a shame.

Other than that, the cine direction and editing is the same as the first film, largely rock solid, but the visual effects again are surprisingly starting to creak a little only 3 years after this one came out, which is wild. There were also some moments where it all felt a little ‘TV Movie’ esq…which im not sure if its the result of a rushed production, or whether this had been considered for TV movie purposes…but some bits just looked a bit less polished than others.

The performances are great with the addition of Colleen O’Shaughnessey, the voice of Tails in the sonic games since the 2010s being a VERY nice tie in to the game universe, and Idris Elba absolutely OWNING Knuckles as a character, honestly; he’s the absolute best of this movie, really helping pull the production up quite significantly. While I still have some issues with Jim Careys turn as Eggman, I accept at this point that they’ve at least tried to work a bit more Robotnik into his performance, and this is likely the best we’re going to get. It may not be the Robotnik I want, but I cant deny that he’s at least entertaining.

Sonic the hedgehog 2, in my opinion is marginally better than the 1st film, while I dont think the story is quite as engaging and the grander set pieces are a little more underwhelming, I think the characters have gotten a lot stronger and more engaging, and the pacing has had quite a tightening up. I do prefer this one more than the first outing and would be much more happy to recommend this one to people, Though I think watching the first film would almost certainly be needed in order to fully get the benefit from this entry. With that in mind, I’d say watching these first 2 films is definitely worth your time!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/sonic-the-hedgehog-2/