Sonic 3’s New Trailer Is Ready to Live, and Learn

This year has been a decent on as far as video game adaptations go and the new trailer for the highly anticipated Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film, starring Keanu Reeves as the iconic villain Shadow, promises to be the cherry on top.

First off, here’s the new trailer, giving us a great new look at the movie:

While the new Sonic trailer came as a surprise for the normies of the world, die-hard fans saw the trailer coming days in advance thanks to Paramount Picture’s nifty bit of gameplay marketing. In the lead up to the trailer’s premiere, Paramount Pictures released a special Sega Genesis cartridge to influencers and members of the press. While the contents of the cartridge appeared to only have character posters and a cute little mini game wherein Shadow chases Sonic down a road while riding a motorcycle it also hid the trailer release date. In typical video game fashion, folks were only able to discover the trailer release date by entering a cheat code. Who says physical media is dead.

Here’s a closer look at the Sonic 3 Movie Genesis cartridge and the content on it! Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/UPjxyOil5e

— Brielle Garcia (@tacolamp) November 21, 2024

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 will see Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails battle Shadow and prevent him from ending the world. Shadow isn’t just one of Sonic’s biggest long-time rivals, he’s also a fan-favorite character thanks in major part to his edgy persona. However, Shadow isn’t the only video game character making his way to the silver screen. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, director Jeff Fowler teased even more characters appearing in the film.

“It’s fun to see the fan debates online about who’s coming up next, who’s going to be teased at the end of the film. We have a lot of the same conversations,” Fowler said. “We’ve all got our favorites on the filmmaking side, and we’re all making great cases for ‘it should be this one or that one.’ It is fun to keep that anticipation. This movie is no different in terms of teasing new characters.”

While Fowler has kept mum on who fans should expect to see either during the film or a part of its stinger, fans already think the big surprise character is going to be Metal Sonic. Much of their theory crafting has to do with Dr. Robotnik’s nature to double and triple cross those he’s aligned with. Subsequent trailers have seen Robotnik receive one of Sonic’s super-powered quills in exchange for aligning with his team to defeat Shadow to Robotnik leading Shadow as the leader of Team Dark to defeat Sonic. Robotnik ain’t shit, but his quid pro quo quill might manifest in him creating Metal Sonic should his hair-brained scheme blow up in his face once again.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 releases to theaters on December 20.

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