Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Has The Chance To Finally Get One Character Right
The news recently broke that Keanu Reeves will be joining the cast of the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie, playing Sonic’s dark counterpart, Shadow the Hedgehog. Like a lot of Sonic fans, I really liked Shadow at first when he debuted in the games. But the more his story developed, the more I worry that Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has a very tough task in bringing his character to the screen and should take the opportunity to largely rewrite his convoluted backstory.
Shadow’s Sonic Story
To the unfamiliar, you might assume Shadow can’t be that complex. I mean he’s a talking hedgehog in a children’s game after all.
But no, as any Sonic fan knows, Shadow’s story unfortunately became increasingly bizarre, tonally out of place, and honestly just plain stupid. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 would be terrible if they accurately depict his story from the games.
The Problems
For a quick recap, Shadow debuted in “Sonic Adventure 2” and was created by Dr. Robotnik’s grandfather, Gerald Robotnik.
He was designed to be the “ultimate lifeform” but was really just an evil version of Sonic who could use the chaos emeralds to stop time.
However, once a greater threat came along, he teamed up with Sonic to save the day, but died in the process. All of this so far isn’t too bad, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 would be fine adapting this much of Shadow’s story.
Sonic Heroes
Where it gets bad is in the next game, “Sonic Heroes”. In this game, Shadow reappeared, seemingly unharmed aside from having amnesia.
The game had multiple endings depending on which team you used, and in one of them Shadow’s friend Rouge discovers evidence that the current version of Shadow is actually just a robot cloned from the original character.
At this point, his story was already getting too complex, and I really hope Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ignores this portion onwards. But wait, it gets worse!
Shadow The Hedgehog
He then got his own solo game, “Shadow the Hedgehog”. In this, an alien race invades the planet, led by their leader, Black Doom.
In one of the game’s many endings, Black Doom declares that he is actually Shadow’s father, because Shadow was genetically created using his DNA.
Oh, and this is also the game where they had Shadow start cursing, was given a gun, and had him shoot and kill Sonic. Yeah, this is definitely not the version of Shadow anyone wants in Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
Story Is Needlessly Complex?
Honestly, Shadow’s whole video game backstory is so needlessly complex and dumb that I think it can all just be ignored and no Sonic fan would even care.
In the current games, Shadow is one of the good guys who just happens to be brooding and moody. That’s really all the characterization he needs for Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
Just have him start out as Sonic’s evil counterpart and leave out all the laughably bad melodrama that got added over the years. Learn from how The Super Mario Bros. Movie handled Bowser and Shadow could be one of the most fun parts of the movie.
A New Shadow
It’s honestly a wonder how Shadow has endured as one of the Sonic franchise’s most popular characters despite how much he has been mishandled.
Whatever Sonic the Hedgehog 3 does with Shadow will be remembered by this generation of kids as his official backstory.
I just hope they keep it simple and have him be cartoon character levels of evil, and not a robot clone alien who shoots people levels of evil. Nobody wants that.
