Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Projected To Be The Biggest Video Game Movie Ever: What This Means For The Franchise And Video Game Movies
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 earned $71 million for its opening weekend and has now jumped up to $72 million, easily topping the preceding film's opening weekend figure of $58 million. The movie is fastly approaching being the biggest video game-based movie ever. Many involved in the film's production have celebrated this achievement on social media. Jeff Fowler, the film's director, tweeted on April 10th that the "response to #SonicMovie2 has been EXTRAORDINARY," thanking fans for the tremendous support over the film's opening weekend. Colleen O'Shaugnessy (Tails) quote tweeted the tweet from the official Twitter account for the film celebrating its status as the #1 film in the world, thanking fans for their support.
The video game giant's official Twitter quote-tweeted the same tweet, likening the movie's success to the Genesis/MegaDrive game Sonic the Hedgehog 2's success 30 years earlier. The film even got praise from the former voice of the hedgehog from 1998 to 2004, Ryan Drummond, praising his counterpart's performance and stated O'Shaugnessy "deserves every good thing" that happens to the voice actress.
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What was once seen as a sure indication of a movie not doing well may no longer be so. Video game movies have been seeing a rise in critical and commercial acclaim since 2019's Detective Pikachu and 2020's Sonic the Hedgehog. In addition, video game movies have come a long way since 1993's Super Mario Brothers: The Movie. Many publications state that the second entry in Sonic's film career has the potential to be the biggest video game movie ever. Paramount already signed off on a third movie and a Paramount+ spin-off show based on Knuckles the Echidna. It seems that similar cinematic universes based on video games might also become of interest to other studios.
However, equally interesting are the implications for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise as a whole, which has had an interesting history over its near 31-year run. The franchise began with the 1991 Genesis/MegaDrive game Sonic the Hedgehog, and it skyrocketed SEGA and its new spiny blue mascot virtually overnight. This first outing was followed by 1992's Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and the brand quickly became a hit amongst young gamers, getting its own long-running comic series, and two cartoon shows the following year. It continued to enjoy success through the mid-90s, but with the switch to 3D games in the latter half of the decade, Sonic was, oddly enough, a bit slow to catch on.
With SEGA's troubles and Sonic Team, the developer responsible for creating the franchise's flagship hits, wanting to take a break to focus on other projects, it took until 1998 and the death of the Saturn for Sonic to truly speed into the 3rd dimension. Arguably, the hedgehog has had a "rough transition into 3-D," but contemporary reception to 1998's Sonic Adventure was actually quite positive. A review posted on GameSpot by Peter Bartholow in April of 2000 gave the game a 9.2, stating it to be a "must-have game for the Dreamcast" and "a blast for the entire twenty-odd hours of gameplay."
Its sequel, Sonic Adventure 2, received similar praise, with Anthony Chau of IGN stating, "If this is the last Sonic game in these declining Dreamcast years, it's satisfying to know that the DC didn't go out with a bang, but with a sonic boom." Though the games began getting mixed reception when SEGA went third party, critical opinion of the franchise didn't start to plummet until 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog.
The title, meant to celebrate the franchise's 15th anniversary, was met with near-universal negative reception. Though the series had arguably been declining in quality and popularity until this point, the 7th generation outing, according to Juan Castro of IGN, "all but eliminates his [Sonic's] chances of a second coming worth remembering." Though the franchise has attempted to bounce back with titles such as Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, and the 2011 20th anniversary title Sonic Generations, the franchise is, to this day, marred by the reputation of this near the 16-year-old title.
Things began to look up for the franchise in 2017 with the release of Sonic Mania, a valid return to form that is styled after the games of the Genesis era. However, the 3D title released alongside it did not fare as well. Critics praised the create a character feature but lamented that the game "doesn't advance the series' design, nor does it handle classic 2D action as well as the recent Sonic Mania." It seemed the series, according to some, had begun to grow stale.
However, that was the case until very recently, with the success of both 2020's Sonic the Hedgehog and the recently released Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and the announcement of both the upcoming open-world game Sonic Frontiers and the upcoming Netflix cartoon Sonic Prime. As of this writing, the future of the franchise is looking bright. Fans of the franchise have plenty to look forward to. In fact, the film's success may lead to better sales for the upcoming game and a general rekindling of interest in the brand in general. Though the "Shadow" of his past failures may still look over the blue blur, it appears he may be speeding toward a brighter tomorrow and new heights for the franchise relatively soon.
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