The Ringer-Verse - 'Sonic the Hedgehog 3’ Instant Reactions | Mint Edition

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Jomi and Steve are joined by Ben Lindbergh to break down the third installment of the ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ trilogy. Along the way, the guys discuss what worked for them in the movie and where the film franchise can go from here. Hosts: Jomi Adeniran and Steve Ahlman Guest: Ben Lindbergh Producer: Jonathan Kermah Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast, 60 songs that explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, Jalo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 songs that explain the 90s, colon the 2000s. Wow.

That's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me. That's 60 songs that explain the 90s. in the 2000s, preferably on Spotify. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphia today.

Call 1-800-526-773. to learn more or visit trimfire radio.com. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need weather tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer.

You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Hello and welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things, fandom. And unfortunately, a place where you can't find any more teleportation rings. I'm Steve Alman. I'm Jimmy Dinerang. And welcome to Mint Edition, joining us today to talk about us and guide us through at Lightning Fast Spees, Green Hill Zone. It's Ben Lindbergh. How are you doing, Ben?

Hey, guys. I'm doing great. I feel like the argument in Sonic the Hedchock 3 about whether to call it Team Sonic or Team Knuckles. We're doing a video game adaptation today. Is this a mint edition? Is it a button mash? Is it a mint mash? I think it's a monster mash for what we can do it. It's really just the pod about the pod that inspired the dance. And that's really the best thing that we can do for you. And the final pod of the year on the ringerverse feed, Coming to you on a Friday on one of the final pods for the year, very excited to have you, Ben. We're going to get to talking about the blockbuster, CGI animal-filled adventure that isn't Mufasa.

And don't worry, we won't be talking about that at all. Nope. But before we get to that, we have some programming reminders for you. Next week, Button Mash is going to be bringing you their Game of the Year draft. Ben feels really good about how that turned out and has no. further comments about anything Matt James did during it. You'll be there, Steve. I will.

You can say our, not there. You were included. Yes, I was. And it was an absolutely fun time. And we played for keeps. We played from the horse. Yes, yet another crossover episode. Absolutely.

Along with House of R doing their Skelet and Crew deep dives on Thursday. And then closing out the week, the Midnight Boys will be giving you their midnight mulligans and reassessing their favorite things from the year. But today's show is filled with. spin dashing and Keanu Reeves acting his ass off and an inspired dance sequence by two Jim Carries for the price of one. What's not to love? Let's talk about Sonic 3 but spoiler warning before we begin. Everything in the

dare I say sonic extended cinematic universe is on the table for us. Well you can't already spoke to movie with the two like the two Jim Carries dancing. I mean to be fair that isn't in the marketing. I saw a giant like makeup filled Jim Carrey at LAX before we even got here. So yes. Yes, that's one of the main selling points of the film

that we get multiple Jim Carrey characters this time. Would that have been a selling point for you if that was the Grinch, Ben? Absolutely. If he was also Cindy Lou Moos. Yeah, of course. Whatever guys, whatever mask, whatever CGI face,

give me more Jim Carrey. That's what we need as a nation. Absolutely. All right, let's begin. Ben Lindberg, you're a video game freak. Sonic has been in our lives pretty much since the beginning. Sounds derogatory, but okay, I'll take it. Sorry, yes, you're a video game freak, cult parentheses derogatory, Ben Lindberg.

You've seen all three Sonics. When the first Sonic outing happened, were you thinking, okay, this is going to be the next cash grab? we had the ugly Sonic controversy into the character redesign, and now we have three movies now on. How are you feeling about Sonic as a film franchise and seemingly continuing on in infinity? I'm feeling better about it as time goes on, somewhat surprisingly. I am surprised to be saying that after seeing the third film in this series,

and it doesn't look like it will be the last or even close to the last. But yeah, when Sonic first graced us with his presence, This was 2020, early 2020 pre-pandemic. And I guess we had had Detective Pikachu at that point. So there was some proof of concept for a decent animated video game adaptation. But it still felt very much like this could be a disaster. There's a lot of precedent for these things being bad. And then I was pleasantly surprised.

I went into it with pretty low expectations. But I had a fun time. I would say it was a slight film. But I've revisited it multiple times. And I've enjoyed the ride. the literal road trip ride. Remember when the first trailer came out and Sonic had like teeth?

Well, yes. When that happens, that was somewhat that was a true video game freak. But it also truly feels like a moment in pop culture history where everybody banded together to say that we hated something and then they actually went back

to the drawing board to fix something. Yeah. And because in like in no small amount to that, like would it have been a fine movie if they didn't change Sonic's design? possibly, but I don't think that we would have gotten two more if that decision wasn't made.

Yeah, that's the crazy part of it is that that's where they started from and we're here now and we're not only, we've talked about two Sonic movies, we're talking about a third, they had a spinoff show, that's absolutely going to be more Sonic. And we love this stuff. It's literally, it's actually great to talk about. It's fun, it's engaging, it's entertaining. It's just so, so, so crazy that it started there and now we're here and we're looking forward to having more in the future.

So let's talk about the third one specifically, Ben. What do you think is the overall, like overall improvement would you say of this in the franchise? Like, do you think this is the best one they've done yet? And what makes it up? I do. I definitely do think so. I was pleasantly surprised again by how it flew by. and that is not an attempt to make some sort of play on words here with Sonic going fast. It just felt fast to me in a good way where when it was over,

I think the official running times 149. So it's kind of in between the running times of the first two films. And it just felt light and breezy and it never really got bogged down. And I was actually kind of surprised when the credits rolled. I guess one big difference here is that this is more lore-based for better or worse, I think probably mostly for better, right? because the first two movies were kind of loosely maybe based on games, but not really. It was more about Easter eggs, and you had a lot of reliance on the human characters as a result.

And they kind of take a back seat here because this is more based on sort of your Sonic Adventure to, you know, following the video game plot line to an extent. And that might turn some people off if they kind of were into early Sonic and maybe by this point they're already out of Sonic. and they don't particularly care about that generation of characters, but it really foregrounds the hedgehogs and Team Sonic and Robotnik and Shadow. The human characters, we don't see so much of them this time. And I think that's fair enough. Yes.

Sorry, Tom. Sorry, Maddie. There are just a lot of characters that we're juggling at this point in the franchise, and there's going to be more the longer this thing goes. And I guess that would be one potential critique that because this thing is not super long, which I appreciate, it does feel like some characters are getting short shrift or just not a ton of time devoted to them. But overall, great action set pieces. It moves.

There's some heartfelt relationship stuff. It feels like a superhero movie, right, in many ways. And I'm not, and I'm not being derogatory when I say that this is very much a movie that is designed for children and designed for, like, younger audiences in particular. And I think that while there's not going to be any sort of, you know, Last of Us level video game adaptation, Gravitas, or longstanding lore or even MCUification of like heightening of stakes with a lot of these characters, keeping them in the realm of children's level storytelling, albeit blockbuster, albeit, you know, fairly high budget and with lots of legitimate Hollywood stars,

I think that this is still like incredibly enjoyable and I keep thinking this like with myself now being an uncle and Ben being a father yourself, you think about watching this with your kids and whether or not we even get to, we were like, oh, we can easily see the onboarding of getting them into movies like these because I would put this amongst anything else

that I would want to show my nephew or my niece. Yeah, tried to get my daughter to catch up with me as I was rewatching the first two Sonic movies. Didn't work. She's three. She's a young three. She's going through a phase right now where she's scared of every movie for some reason.

I understand the concept of a young three. Yes. It matters. Like old three and young three, we're talking a big percentage of her entire total lifetime, right? So it makes a difference. But I was showing her like, look, it's a cuddly cute little hedgehog,

and he's fast and he runs around. And she noped out of there pretty quickly. But someday, I'm sure we will watch it together and we will enjoy it. But it is, I mean, it's pretty high stakes. Yes, it is a kid's movie that has some elements that are appealing to adults, but the earth is at stake. Part of the moon gets sliced off. We've got a super weapon and a cannon and everything is about to be blown up.

So there's definitely a lot of that going on here. This is not just a small little slice of life movie here. We definitely have some evil villains and even more than we have before. So, Jomi, I'm curious. When you saw this, did you have any notes? coming out of this, of possible things that slowed this movie down or possibly might have, like, eaten up a bit too much screen time for characters getting short-triff,

because I have mine. I don't think so, if I'm being completely honest. I think the movie does a really solid job of balancing the characters, right? Because we have to get to no shadow, right? Like, that's part of the movie's mission is. You have to understand why Shadow is the way he is. And there's a lot of time for that. But we spent, this is our three movies with Sonic.

We've spent a couple movies with tales, right? We've spent a movie and a TV show with Knuckles. We're supposed to know these characters enough, right? Now, I didn't watch Knuckles. Ben, I know you did. And I heard it was all the gas. You didn't miss that much, really. Oh, okay.

I was just making sure. Because, look, they made sure to pay it off. We saw Wade, right? Hey, frankly, a big payoff if you did see Knuckles. Paid it and paid it all the way off. That's true. Right. And so we know these characters.

So Shadow has to take the forefront. And I think they did a really good job of giving, and Keanu Reeves was doing his thing, the emotions, just how Shadow felt watching Maria get blown up. Sorry. Our audience did not laugh, by the way. It was really emotional. It was genuinely serious.

It was genuinely serious, right? But just having Shadow be the emotional, guide through the film, I think, worked for me. Can we know, like, I don't need more time or more Maddie. That's cool. They can have their little five seconds where they pretend to be Shemar Moore and Natasha Rockwell. That's great.

We really want to spend time with Sonic and his homies. And we did that. We also got Shadow to Carriers through the emotional journey of the film. I think it worked for me. I think that this is probably just a more of a double-edged sword with me with my one note here. I feel like we might have dipped too far into the use of Jim Carrey in this person. Oh, wow. Now hold on.

Now, hold on. Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. No, no, no, no. I'm not letting you get that takeoff. I'm not letting you get that take off. I'm not letting you get that take off. No, no, no, no. This stays in the podcast. Yes, it does. But you, you know, no, no. Here's a thing, right? I'm fine with this area. I'm not letting you get this take off. I'm not letting you get this take off because, like, it's a movie. Like, we talk about how like,

you know, again, Shadow being very serious. Sure. All that stuff. This movie needs some sort of like physical comedy that the hedgehogs just can't do, right? That the 3D animated characters can't do. Yes. And Jim Carrey brings that in spade. And I completely agree.

I completely agree. I think that it's only at the slight behest and sacrifice of any sort of better team dynamics that we would have had with Sonic Tales and Knuckles. While I admit that those relationships are kind of supposed to be not so much thin but more surface level and easily digestible, it's just a lot of scenes where Jim Carrey cooks and is goofy and is going to be

wacky and crazy with himself. You say that like it's a bad thing. Yeah, but here's the thing, none of it offends me. None of it I thought could be like sparing. Like I get it. Like Jim Carrey is a legend. I'm never going to take that

away from it. Yeah, but you're not watching that going like, man, I wish we could have more time with knuckles and tails, man. No. Well, no, and I think it's because of the main sort of, like, lesson and earnest, heartfelt moment that we get at the end of this movie with Sonic and Shadow kind of, like, reconciling and basically making it a lesson about learning about the hate that you keep inside of you and letting that change with you.

Now, hold on. Almost like it's, you got to live and learn. Exactly. You got to live and learn. But when I see that kind of being eaten up just a tiny bit with a couple of more Jim Carrey scenes. I like the idea because I'm only thinking about it more so for the sake of the kids. Yes, Jim Carrey is very funny and he gets to play his older grandfather. And it's a real fun time.

I think one of the best jokes that I found in this film was just like him. him tossing his grandpa into that arc reactor and then it's just going But Bro, let me tell you so, man, that was great. The kids not worried about no Sonic and Shadow finding themselves. You know what I'm saying?

That's like, that's for us. You know what I mean? The kid's not worrying like, man, I hope that Sonic and Shadow can weaken the differences and work out that even though they are different, that they're quite the same. They're not worried about that at all, man.

They're here to see Jim Carrey make funny faces and be a praying mantis. You know what I mean? I think that's if you don't like the dynamics of Team Sonic, then you've got Jim Carrey making funny faces. But the dynamics of Team Sonic are, look, it's nothing too crazy. I do think the Sonic Shadow stuff is very, very, very interesting, right?

They set that up from the beginning with, you know, you didn't let it change you, all that happens to you. And then all comes around full circle. I think that's like a genius thing that they did in this movie and having them come together at the end obviously. We knew that was going to happen, but like how they tied that bow, I think is very, very well done.

But the team Sonic stuff, yeah, it's pretty surface level, but like, you know, hey, we got to work as a team. Oh, my fault guys, I went up there and I got my ass kicked. My fault guys, I will be better in the future. Like, I don't need, like, how many times does he run off by himself multiple times? He literally, like,

him and Knuckles almost go to a fight to do it, but because they're a team. Yes. It might as well. Look, you feel like I got to make this call. I'm going to make this call. But no matter still, though, even though Sonic was wild a little bit, they still went up to go get them.

Why, Ben? Because they're a team. Their friends, their family, they're going to put their differences aside, ultimately. Yes, I agree that there's only so much to that that we haven't seen in the first couple movies. And you hope that you can get that out of the Sonic Shadow relationship. and you do to some extent. And the flashback stuff, the backstory for Shadow is quite compelling.

Yeah. But after that, there's only so much for him to do beyond the predictable arc that you know you're going to get, which is essentially the same arc that we got in Sonic 2. With the locals. Right? We've seen that story before. We know that the war and the adversary. I will protect.

I am signing with Eggman. Yes, exactly. We know how that's going to go. And so it's true that Jim Carrey is sort of off on his own. and in his own movie at times and kind of doing a one-man show as two different men. But he's just so good at it that at no point did I mind that. And we don't get that much Jim Carrey anymore. We have to savor whatever Jim Carrey we get.

We don't know if we're going to get anymore. The man's almost 63 years old and he's made all sorts of noises about retirement. And he had talked about retirement prior to this movie. And then they asked him, why did you come back? And he's basically like, I spent a lot of money. And I needed to- iconic answer. That's real.

I respect the hell out of that, but to know that you've effectively retired and then only will come back for Sonic, it really is the most Jim Carrey move I might have ever seen. It is. Yeah. Right. And, you know, he walked that back a little bit. And, hey, he's a funny man. He's a comedian. Of course, of course.

He's kidding to some extent. But I also hope that he does spend a lot of money so that he feels the need to come back and work again. But at no point, does it seem like he was doing it for the paycheck? Like, if he's in your movie, he is giving your, his all. giving you twice of his all in this case. 110%. Yeah. 200%. Right? He's playing multiple characters. And it feels like something he should have done before that we should have seen him playing opposite himself because who else can keep up

with Jim Carrey and match his energy? And I guess it's borderline impossible. Right. And so he's done this, I guess, in some movies where he's been one person with multiple personalities, basically, right? He's done that a few times. I mean, he's been in the mask. He's been in liar, liar. He's been in me, myself and Irene. Right. And so they've never quite done the thing where he is actually playing multiple characters. And there's a fourth wall breaking joke. I love that joke. Acknowledging how often this happens in movies. But he does do it well and does inject some actual heartfelt sentimentality into the robotic relationship here, which you might not expect. And he differentiates the characters, too. Like we have different gradations of villain and

different mannerisms and weirdness, even though they both have the mustache, different colors. So yes, he is off kind of hogging the screen a lot of the time, but because he's just so good at it and he's so committed to it, at no point did I say, bring me back to Team Sonic or to Tom. Sorry to Tom. Yeah, don't a Lord.

It was cool. I think the movie's so good, guys. It's so good because at the end of the movie, we talk about Robotnik he's sacrificing his life I don't think he's dead but okay we're supposed to die the last one right now we truly believe he's dead

again we really it's really at the behest of Jim Carrey's spending habits are we can we expect him again did Robotic die I don't know it was pretty unclear but he has that moment with Dr. Stone and that entire

like through line of their relationship man I didn't have tears of my eyes. I'm not going to lie to y'all. I was not crying. But I was like, that's real, man. When he said you're not a, what was it? You said you're not a hench, a hench man or something like that.

You're a hench friend. Yeah. You weren't a sick of fan. A sick of friend. I was like, come on, man. All Dr. Stone wanted to me was the homie, man. Doesn't it feel a little underdeveloped that he clearly is in love with him? He's clearly in love with him.

They said of those were like three more. movies. You're not paying attention. You're not paying attention. I'll tell you my one. I'll refer to the previous text, Steve. Yeah. Okay, but on the real,

I think the only actual disappointment that I thought of, which is a petty one, admittedly, and it's the, like, slight lack of embracing of a, well, no, this is actually,

I'm going to walk this back as I make this claim, but, like, the embracing of Sonic's, like, internet meme culture persona in these films,

has been actually a very interesting tightrope balance to like give Sonic chili dogs and like call Shadow Hot Topic and stuff like that. There are so many small winks and nods to not only like Easter eggs that are in Sonic lore but in Sonic internet lore. They pissed on the moon. They pissed on the moon.

They pissed on the mood. But the idea of the like the idea of that coming from like the reason that Sonic has endured itself for so long is in part because of that. And to have those types of references in a movie that is made for kids, while also, you know, meme-savvy gigacads will also be sitting down in the theater waiting for Eggman to calm the screen saying, I'm come to make an announcement. Like, those things will kind of breadcrum it.

And I kind of wish that there was just like the smallest, like, few more like little bits of cilantro of adult humor in there. Jim Carrey does a lot of that. Jim Carrey does a lot of good winks and nods to the camera. But as far as like the internet meme knowledge that comes with being a Sonic fan in 2024,

it feels like I could have just gotten a little bit more of that. Ben, what do you think? I think that this movie is made and this series is made. It is for hardcore Sonic fans to some extent, but there are a lot of people who, if they played Sonic at all, maybe they played the Genesis games way back

and they're taking their kids to this thing, or they just weren't into the latter games and they're not as excited about that. I think most people who are seeing this are not that tightly tapped into the lore of the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog or Sonic Adventure 2 or whatever it is. And so you have to give people a smattering of that,

but also something else. And I think there is enough. I think they've found a decent balance where it's not really just for the hardcore Sonic fans. It doesn't feel exclusionary. you're not really up on the sonic lore, if that doesn't mean that much to you. There's a lot of meta-humor and there's a lot of references to pop culture, some of which can be kind of corny or cringy or probably will just be dated. I think actually the joke that got the

biggest laugh in my theater, which maybe says more about just who was in this theater in a pre-released screening, but was the one about hate watching Green Lantern in 2011? Yeah, it actually was a very big joke. That one went crazy. Yep. That was very targeted to the people who I think were in that theater seeing it with me. And that really resonates with people. It's true. It's such a strange and pointed joke. I'm like, Jim, did you make that up on the day or was that in the script?

I hope that was in the script because that was funny. I mean, we talk about like the relevance of Sonic through memes in today's day and age. I mean, I've seen they gave Shadow a gun. they had the blicky on them. They did give Shadow a gun but only for like 30 seconds and then it's gone forever because we really can't have our antagonist soon to be hero

carrying a gun around that long. He's on a gun, he's riding a motorcycle which by the way... Which inexplicably came out of nowhere with a gun in it, we don't care. That's fine. When he picked the gun up off the more he like he flipped it into his hand, it was cool as hell

and then he takes a bike, he doesn't Akira slide up the token? Tokyo Tower? Come on. That's that's similar to me. It was incredible. It was incredible. And so like they're doing this thing.

I think it's a great blend of giving us enough of the jokes that like us who's who have consumed Sonic as internet fans understand and get and can can jive with. But then also just giving a solid story. You don't want to overdo it because then you risk any nanny folks who aren't as familiar with the stuff. They come in, they're like, yo, I don't get this. This isn't funny.

I'm not laughing here. You do just enough. You pepper in. Again, you talk about cilantro. You don't want to just do it too much. For some people, it tastes like soap. Right? Right.

You do it enough. You get enough people to be like, I know this. I know this. And then the whole thing comes together really well. I think that's the magic of this movie. Aside from the shadow stuff, aside from the relationship stuff,

it's just a really fun time overall. And I'm laughing at stuff that I know some people aren't laughing at, but it's still really, really well done, still really, really well done film. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business.

They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start.

Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required. wired. Tremfaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about

Tramfaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiara Radio.com. This episode is brought to by Nass Energy. Introducing new Nass Energy Grand Prix Guava. For those that want to be fueled up and fired up with a hundred-bound hour tropical tasting power, ignite your taste, start your engine, shift your flavor to high gear with new Nass Energy Grand Prix Guava. Hit the street, grab a can, and get after it. Ben, I want to talk about the possibility of the Sonic expanded and cinematic universe here. The possibility, brother. It's happening.

We have now a third and inevitably, it seems, a fourth Sonic film coming. Talking about this post-credit scene, we introduce Amy and we introduce Metal Sonic. Why? It feels like that this franchise has infinite gas in the tank for continuing on. Do we think that this is going to be some sort of like flagship ongoing franchise, not only for Paramount, but for like the essence of video game adaptations, question mark? Yeah, you'd think that there would be diminishing returns at some point because you're going to run out of characters that are near and dear to the massive fan base that you're catering to with the first few movies.

And they've done a decent job, I think, of introducing characters in moderation. They've shown some restraint. They're not just throwing the entire cast in there right away. They're kind of, you know, in drips and just here's a new character and here's one or two per movie. And so, okay, we got Metal Sonic and we get Amy and maybe that sets up Sonic 4. And then you start looking how deep in this bench are we going to be digging. You know, you got your Silver the Hedgehog and Rouge. the bat and SBO the

Chameo the Chamele and Cream the rabbit and Vector the crocodile and Big the cats? Yeah, please. Big the cat would be toward the top of my list. Frankly, I'm shocked that we did not get an allusion to Big the Cat.

Brother, no, Big the Cat's way too deep on the bench, bro. No, it's not. No, it's not. Are you kidding me? Roosh, Silver? Like, come on, man. We can push.

We got time before Big the Cat. Yeah, we can push Big to Cat to Sonic like seven or eight, man, like, don't worry about that. I'm curious because in the time that we have gotten one singular animated Super Mario Brothers film, it feels like they just emptied

the barrel on the things that are more... In less than five years, an entire trilogy. I know, and now we've had an entire trilogy with Sonic, and I still feel like there might be more meat on the bone here. What makes that difference? Is it because they kind of work on this with an

expediency? Is it too much of a, like, I think a storytelling lift to have the likes of Mario or a more digestible IP for kids to get in line with it because Sonic seems to just have the right amount of

edge to it. Ben, what do you think? I think it could be Nintendo being particular about things potentially. They are busy doing people. Yes, they are. And, you know, they didn't want a repeat of their first Mario movie mishap. And so...

Honestly, just swing for it. I don't care. So that could be a part of it. And, you know, there's just, it feels like the stakes are a little bit higher with Nintendo and the potential of those characters. And Sonic has always been sort of, you know, since the Genesis day is kind of running behind despite the speed of the character. And so maybe it was a little less being precious about this. And we have to worry about the canon. As I said, it's a superhero movie. It's a fast and furious movie, essentially. That's what we're building here. I mean, these hedgehogs, all these characters, they go to space and they're breathing.

They don't have helmets or anything. No one cares. They're aliens. They don't count. Sure. Exactly. Yeah, I'm not losing the water to sleep over that. They are doing that.

It was a little jarring at first, but then I just went with it because, you know, it's Sonic. So whatever. So if you could keep rolling out these characters. Now, I don't think you have so much built-in fan affection for some of the ones we named. We didn't mention Tikal. I guess another option here. So there's like a lot of them, but they're not going to mean that much to that many people.

And so then it's kind of incumbent upon you to establish these characters and introduce them in a way that people actually get invested in them and not come in pre-invested. And that might be progressively tougher to do, but then again, once you have this whole bench built up and you have all of their adventures, then you're a little less reliant on people's pre-existing affection

for these characters. What I question, though, is if you don't have Robotnik holding this down, because Jim Carrey is carrying these movies, no pun intended. And despite the slander that Steve spread earlier on

this podcast, like he is... I feel like I'm upset too much. He is... Dude, way too much. He is the foundation of these films. Like, his performance is the main draw. Like, that is the star power here. And without that adversary,

now is he actually dead? Who knows? Obviously, they could easily revive him. Oh, of course. I guess, you know, canonically, I guess, Eggman doesn't die, but there are like all these alternate endings in Sonic Venture 2 where he does die.

Like, you know, alternate realities, whatever, right? Like, you can bring him back. There's lots of ways you could do that. If he is willing to do that, if he decides that three is the max for him, and either he does want to ride off into the sunset or maybe he actually wants to work on something

other than a Sonic movie at some point, then what do you do at that point without that adversary and that performance to build these things around? I think that's a tough loss. I agree. I think that is tough, but I think the things the movies have done really well

and something that I always, I'm like, I'm noticing and getting super excited is they set up the sequel, excellent, every single time. First one comes out, the end, tails. You're like, hey, tell's coming. You find out later Knuckles is in it. Ben.

Then Shadow comes out, and the end credits of the second one. You're like, yeah, we're going to go crazy. Let's go. And then in this one, they give you metal Sonic and Amy Rose. I'm going to be there. No matter what, I'm going to be there for Sonic 4. And hopefully, again, maybe next time it's Rouge, silver. You know what I mean?

Like, there's so much, to your point, meat on the bone. that obviously you want Jim Carrey come back. I think the movies do need him. But at the same time, I look at what they could offer me, and it seemed like, oh man, Metal Sonic, Amy, let's go. I feel like if you weren't to have Jim Carrey in this franchise ever again, there would have to be some kind of pivot away from a main,

human-based performance that makes this into probably a more hardcore kids film rather than something that might appeal to both kids and adults. And I don't quite know how to do that. The storytelling balance of those things

really is the magic that makes movies like this happen. I think the biggest part about the Sonic's formula of success obviously is Jim Carrey and is the thing that grounds us in an albeit cartoon niche still human performance that is come from us.

And knowing that these, like these CGI hedgehogs still inhabit the real world and interact with humans and there are the equivalent of superheroes in, on planet Earth, as we know it, there's a suspension of disbelief to where if we were to just be interacting with CGI characters ad nauseum in the real world, we would have to find either some other human actor to... bring that around for us or kind of go back to where Sonic came from and have adventures in the Green Hill Zone or in where places that are more akin to seeing many characters like this. I don't know if that's the success to these movies or not, but I think that's probably where

we would have to go. I mean, how deep in the villain roster could you go, right? Like, after Robotnik, you already have, we already saw Gerald, right? He's definitely super dead. we go black dome you know what I mean Methylese You know what I mean?

I'm not gonna lie man I'm not gonna act like I know who that is You don't what I'm saying? Right But it's tough But at what point in a kids movie Does it matter? Because at that point you're just like

Okay well Kung Fu Panda has a new villain It's a bull Or a water buffalo Or a water buffalo I get it But to the uninitiated It doesn't matter Because you can give us

Any sort of character That is like All right well this is Okay if you're you're making Super Mario Brothers 2 right now, who's the bad guy? Oh, goodness. Right? Yeah.

I mean, these franchises have one iconic villain. There's nowhere, if you want to go completely original, you can try. You could recast robotnik, but anyone else. Absolutely not. Right. It's just not going to, it's going to be a pale reflection of what Jim Carrey pulled off, even if you take some different approach to the character. Coleman Domingo as Eggman.

Always happy for him to get work. He can do it. He can do it, right? Yeah, this movie made me want a cyberpunk movie. That's what I want. Having Idris and Keanu together. They've talked about that. Such an interesting movie.

Give me a cyberpunk movie if we don't get another Sonic. But we will. But the point is, yeah, now that those characters who are your villains for part of a movie each, now they're on your side. So who are you fighting? And what are you fighting? and you've got your chaos emeralds and everything. Like the problems are solved. And so you have to invent some other existential threat here.

And I don't know where you go if it's not robotic. And as you were saying, Steve, I think you need that live action grounding. You may not need that for us for Mint Edition. This is a very animation friendly safe space here on this podcast. We're trying to get CR on here, but apparently it's just a tougher journey for him to walk. It's hard. We'll get them. We'll get CRR. There's a lower societal ceiling seemingly.

Maybe, you know, we're doing the work here, and maybe we will persuade people to get on board. But there's something about an all animated project that just turned some people off. And Robotnik, the Jim Carrey performance, that's as close as you can get to a cartoony animated character who is a live action character. But if you lose that, then you're just talking about an animated movie, more or less. And we might watch that. But I think that hurts your box office. That hurts your reach. I don't know.

Mario made a billion. It's true. Yeah. Is Mario more classical than Sonic, though? I mean, it is, is Mario. So, Mario is like, Mario was going to make a billion dollars regardless of what it was. And they took that movie. It did the first time, but anything other than that.

I mean, okay, yes. But they took that movie, they played that movie so safe. They hit all the right notes. Yes, exactly. They didn't take no, like crazy chance. It's kind of a paint-by-numbers. Exactly. And it feels like this, as far as an IP, as far as Sonic goes, can be a risk.

It's not exactly as well known as Mario. The subject matter, especially for the third one, can get quite dark for children. There's a lot of themes that you're juggling. There's like a lot of references or things that are balancing. It's like, okay, so they're in the real world, but they're from a fake world. And Jim Carrey's here just being in a different movie, yet the same one. A lot of things could have gone wrong here. I'm still willing to call this movie a success and something that I could recommend

if you're genuinely interested. When I posted the fact that I was seeing this movie, I probably got like five to six people in my DMs asking me, how is it? How is it? I need to know how is it. Real cinema. I'm like, do you, like, I'm shocked at how many people are invested in knowing how good Sonic is.

Because again, the first two surprisingly excellent films. So can they keep it going? I think I agree with Ben. He said this at the top. This is probably the best one. I would think this is the best one because I did not expect Shadow to go so hard. I did not.

I knew Cassad of Keanu Reeves, not really a risk per se, but I want to see what he would bring to the role and he nailed it and then some. Yeah, he's going to bring Keanu Reeves to basically every role, which we like. And he has that sort of monotone delivery, the classic Keanu,

but with this intensity that seems like it's hiding. some inner turmoil. Exactly. And that's not bullshit. Shadow the Hedgehog is a character that is supposed to just be edge lordy and like a darker

punisher version of Sonic. And it's what it was designed for. And it was like it's supposed to be comedic and a tongue in cheek. And again, it's fan base, Sonic's fan base took it and ran with it

into a beloved level of intrigue that kind of just tilted the humor of that entire IP pre-sonic films into a wildly like crass and adult and cartoonish way and that's being embraced and kind of echoed here in Keanu Reeves and I genuinely love it. It was awesome. See Steve? Now if you were riding it and you wanted all of adult jokes and internet stuff in there, you would have had

Shadow say, I love Latinas. You'd have been there like, I love Latina Sonic. Let's go. Let's go to Mexico. Yo, I got my passport. I love Latinos. That's what you would have did. See, now, it would be great if that wasn't something that the internet actually had, and you were just making that up on the spot. That's real.

You can look it up. It is real. Conodical. We're putting that audio in right now. Why do you want to go to Mexico? I just love Latinas, Sonic. What? Adios, Amigo.

Do you guys remember in the first Sonic movie? Kianu is already canonically in these movies. Yes. Because when Sonic is still on his own, and he's having movie night with Tom without Tom knowing it. He's just watching from the window outside over his shoulder, and they're watching speed. They are.

Sonic at the time says, yes, Keanu, you were a national treasure. So even then, it was established that Keanu was bound to be in these movies. This was just destiny. I always wonder with these things when the actor is in the franchise in this universe and then the actor gets cast to play a part in that franchise. If we're willing to have Jim Carrey play opposite Jim Carrey, I think we're could have Shadow the Hedgehog watch the Matrix. I think it's okay.

And we can, we're talking about putting audio in here. When we did the Sonic 2 podcast, I was like, who should they get to play Shadow? And you did say Keanu Reeves. And I said Keanu and look at him now. You know what I'm saying? Who needs the Matrix? Who needs speed? You know what I'm saying?

He Shadow the freaking hedgehog, man. Yeah. And it's baller. Sometimes the fan casting, it's just simple works best. and sometimes there's a right choice. Now, how about this? So one way you could go if you want to get weird is you could go with a romance angle,

the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic making out with the human Princess Elise, which I think deeply disturbs. I do remember this. I do remember this. It's a notorious moment in the franchise, but you know, you could always give our guy a love interest.

Or how about this? Here's the pitch. What if we elevate Agent Stone? What if he is the new robotnik? What if he is the he occupies the egg man costume or he's just his own thing? Is he ready to be upgraded to supervillain? I think Princess Elise actually would be an incredible, incredible elite ball knowledge pull for this. And like if it was a reverse love triangle, which that doesn't really make sense.

It's just a love triangle in a different direction. but if it's a reverse love triangle of Princess Elise and the possibility of Amy and Amy gets left out to drive that actually would be... That's her lot in life. It's always unquited with her. So who do you think he's going to play Amy?

We get Amy and Metal Sonic, right? Who do you think could play them in the sequence? Honestly, and I, pardon me for double dipping on Amy's, but Amy Polar might actually be a good pick for this. Amy Polar's... Okay. Because it is bright and bubbly Because she's been inside out, she's joy.

She's joy. Yeah. Or like an, yeah, like an Alison Bree kind of. Yeah, somebody that's like light and fun. I'm mainly curious as to how if Shadow is indeed alive, which in the post post credits,

we do get that. Picks up the thing. That there is a, you know, an echidna wearing the shoes, not an echidna. Hedgehog, excuse me, wearing those classic shoes. Big up his wrist bracelets. Exactly.

Who could that be? I don't know why he took them off, by the way. I'm curious as to why. So that he can go pick him up later so we know he's alive. Exactly. That's why he dropped them. That's exactly why. Silly me.

That's so good. I don't think I'm going to get off the Princess Elise angle now. Jomey, do you have any possible ideas? If you want to get weird with it, that's the way to go. And if you're concerned about not having enough of a live action component, that would be one way to do it. Yeah, but, you know, there are other like the Anna Kendrick kind of Kristen Bell kind of figures who could probably play Amy pretty well. There's so many choices, right?

You know, Bryce Dallas Howard. You know what's interesting. Somebody had to build those metal sonics, right? They didn't just show up out of nowhere, right? Unless they're from the future in which silver, oh, man, I'm cooking right now. I'm cooking right now. Come on. Come on, because this thing, the movies do a very good job.

of slowly doling out the stuff. At some point, you got to, you know what I'm saying? Lock it, lock it in. You know, next one, boom, Amy Rose. Boom, Metal Sonic. Boom, Silver. Yeah. You know, maybe, I mean, the movie probably saves Silver for five,

but somebody's got to be making those metal Sonics. Maybe it is from the future, and maybe that's the cliffhanger of Sonic 4 is like, guess what, guys, it was silver. I was behind it the whole time. I guess in the lore, I guess the metal sonics are like secret robotic creations, right? So maybe posthumously they live on. And on his death, they get unleashed.

Exactly. Right. Because this movie did try to introduce some human characters and it didn't really work so well. You can feel the movie giving up on it as it was happening in real time. Oh, Christian Ritter? Kristen Ritter is in this movie. Bob Benson from Madman's in this movie. Yeah, no, I'm happy to see them, but they just did not have much to do here.

Man, I thought for sure Christian Ritter was going to be rude, man. I thought that was the whole thing. Oh, we cast Christian Ritter. Oh, she's human. Just kidding. It's Ruge in the movie. But, I mean, you could double. I think you could double dip there.

That's totally fine. They have that scene. Because I thought Metal Sonic would be in this movie. I thought, like, that was the big bad. They're going to have to come together to face, obviously. Right? And so when they're outside, when they get in London, they all come up off the, out of the sewer.

there's like a spot right next in between Eggman and Dr. Stone where I was like, ah, that's where Metal Sonic should have been, but y'all decided to cut him for the end of the movie. So he's not there yet, but that's where he should have been, you know? But I can't wait, man.

The future of this franchise is always, always interesting. I can't wait to see what they do next. We don't know who the big bad is going to be, obviously. But hopefully Jim Carrey comes back because are we getting Amy Rose in the sequel, guys? man, we finally here, guys. We hear fellas, come on.

We did it. I'm optimistic. It's great that it's gone this well so far. And I don't know if we'll look back in the future and say this was the peak. And everything after that was diminishing returns and you're not going to get the same. Like, who's going to give you the same applause in the theater with the reveal in the mid-credit scene? Are you going to have to start stacking three different characters together to get the same buzz that you're getting from. I don't know.

I don't know. It is a shadow, you know. You could do it for silver. You have, like, because after that, then, like, okay, if we are theorizing, if we're, like, looking ahead, you do have to, because once we get to Big the Cat, all right, bro, there's not really anybody else you could. No, because that's, again, that's when they lean into Internet and memes and everything. Like, once we get to Big Cat, yes. After that, we got to, you know what I'm saying? I would put money down that Big the Cat will at minimum.

be in the post credits of Sonic 4. Yeah. What could be bigger on the internet than cats? Big the cat. And I'll tell you what. And I'll tell you what. I still have yet to see like a musical sequence of Sonic snowboarding in San Francisco or skateboarding in San Francisco

to escape from the city. And I really think that they're leaving money on the table if they don't do that. There's a lot of game left. We haven't heard his world in there yet. There's a lot to do. There's a lot to do. There's a lot to do, but I do think that you have at some point, like, when Sonic A. Come out, you can't be like, look, it's cream. We got cream in here.

Like, that's that. That already moved to me to. I think, if I'm going to be honest, give me five movies, right? This one, give me Sonic 4, Amy, obviously, Metal Sonic. You could do Rouge, I think. Or do you say, but then, like, you end four. it just is a silver and then you bring

the whole gang over big cream like everybody sticks everybody comes through vector the crocodile everybody comes in and then you just end it with a big family

fun they have to go back to their world but they can also come visit Tom and Maddie because they have to despair forever I think that would be

really really sad and like I'm not I can't handle that emotionally you know I mean but it does to your point Ben diminishing returns

you can't always be like yo man hey we're getting Vector Sonic 10, maybe. Let's go. That's not, I don't really move the needle. I'm going to eyes at you. It's not really. That don't put buses. Making money, that is what they do. Rarely does someone say, all right, let's end the franchise here. Let's leave on a high note. Let's leave them wanting more. That's generally not how these things work. So you got a, you got to hit a slump at some point before you sort of face the music. But they have the blueprint here, and you have your roster built up,

And you've got your kind of guardians-esque crew, Knuckles is Drax, more or less, right? And you have your Fast and Furious kind of family, friends, speed. I guess it took fast nine movies to get to space. So Sonic is ahead of schedule here, right? But that's kind of what you're looking at is the foundation for how can we keep reconfiguring these characters. And we'll have different team-ups and alliances and spinoffs. I don't know that we'll get to that point with Sonic, but frankly, it's an upset that we've gotten this far,

and that it's not diminishing returns thus far. It really is incredible. When Sonic 15 come out, and we're in a post, it's a post credit, and we see, we see Blaze the Cat. Like, oh, we get to Blake! It's going to mean something to me, man. And I will be right there with you, Jomey.

I think we did it. Sonic 3. Sanic 3. A hell of a fun time. Sonic 3 legitimately compelling and emotional. an excellent film. Hey, Mufasa,

get out the way. It's Sonic three time, baby. Get out the way, baby. All respect to Barry Jenkins, I'm afraid Mufasa is cooked. It's over. Rest in peace.

Hey, yo, Scar, you dying twice, honey. Mufusza, rest in peace again. Honey? It's done so. It's time to come up for them blocks. Pride rock. Who?

Who? Hell no. Nah, man. We out here. Sonic 3, baby. Let's go. All right. Thank you again.

It sounds like he's done with Mufasu too. So I don't know that he would mind. But, uh, but, uh, tracking. Murray Jake is that. Barry Jake is that shit cashed? And my man was like,

Hey, yes. I did what I could, man. The press tool was on. It's like last day. Yeah. And he's like, I'm out.

It's like, oh, you said, oh, you said the 20 million here? Yeah, man. You know, I did what I could. You know, it's tough. You know, no people there. Hey, but, uh, appreciate you. I'm gonna go make another moonlight.

Y'all got it. Yes. As we record, the projections are for Sonic to take the head-to-head battle over Mufasa. Domestically, domestically, but Mufasa may take the global title. Okay, cool. The streets know. The streets know who won the weekend. The streets go know who ran the end of the year.

I'll really be proud to be an American when Sonic takes a patriotic. When Sonic made $3 billion worldwide, we're going to be like, we was here. Yeah. We were right here. Absolutely. And we'll be back again. But for now,

thank you so much to ButtonMash host extraordinaire and writer extraordinaire for The Ringer.com. What a great website. Ben Lindberg for joining us once again. Thank you, Jomey at Dinner on. Thank you, Junior Mints,

for listening once again. We're going to be back with Jess Clemens next time for the things that we missed in 2024. Thank you to our producer, Jonathan Kerrman. Not in the studio with us, but as a parting work,

Jomi, take us out. Hey, man. Shout out to all the junior Mints. We love y'all. We don't have our next time we do this, we got to make our Sonic 3 fan characters. You know what I'm saying? Right.

You know, you could be Steve. Steve, you want to be a hedgehog or a cat? Ooh, I think I'm a cat. I want to be, I got to be a hedgehog. Okay. I got to be a heteron. Ben, what about you? You want to be a crocodile?

More of a dog guy? Is that an option? I mean, I don't know. I guess not. Could be. Could be why not. That's what we'll do next time. Shout to everybody.

Got to give a shout-out to our incredible, incredible producer, Maria Robobot. Keep it in. Maria Rokernick. Dr. Roe Kermenik? What was it? I said Maria Rokubnick. Okay.

Okay, great. Shout up Maria. You know, we're talking about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maria's out there. She got blown up. She's not going to get blicked down, though. You know what I'm saying?

She got blown all the way up, bro. You know what I'm saying? We got a shout, throw some love. I'll say even if it's saying love to Kerm and we'll see you guys next time Living Lancho tomorrow y'all don't know you're not happening It should have been the punk version of 99 Red Balloons

Come on man that was crazy That was great that was wild I was like 99 Red Bullets y'all walked here for real Ozzy the dog Ozzy the dog there it is All right He came around we got it We're out