Sonic Movie 2: Trailer breakdown and theories

With the arrival of the highly anticipated sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog, that came out in 2020, hitting theatres in April 2021; it was about time for a trailer.

Said trailer, presented by Ben Schwartz and Jim Carrey at last night's game awards definitely stole the show, with hard hitting action, massive character reveals and snippets of actual plot.

So just like The Batman, today we’ll be diving through the trailer and possibly asking more questions than answering them.

We first start with a shot of the blue blur doing a some-what parody of the Dark Knight, brooding on top of skyscrapers, presumably still in San Fransisco.

We see him chow down on a chili-dog, a call back to the previous movie where he tries one for the first time as well as being a signature trait of the character in previous games.

We hear James Marsden’s character, Tom, voice over the footage. This most likely comes from the boat scene that appears later in the trailer.

We then cut to some shots of Sonic in Maddie and Tom’s house; he’s using a skateboard which could be a call back to the spinoff titles: Sonic Riders.

A shot in space shows us some form of a pod, this looks very similar to Eggman tech, and one could assume it is his Eggmobile shown in the official movie poster that released on Wednesday.

We see Maddie and Tom standing amongst a crowd in a street, again this could be the same town as the last movie. They’re staring up at this huge, green tornado swirling ahead of them while Eggman’s laugh plays over it.

This suggests he’s the reason for the tornado to be there in the first place, the green further suggesting it’s something to do with the Chaos Emeralds or Master Emerald, which we see later in the trailer.

We see the continuation of the boat scene, very strange to me since it’s pretty much canon that Sonic is afraid of the water. Unless this version of him isn’t, we have seen him race into the ocean before only to return mildly annoyed by it.

We see another continuation of the space pod scene landing on earth, it’s still a mystery as to what’s inside. This could be Eggman or perhaps his robots, there could have been a protocol that if he ever went missing or something happened to him, his robots would activate.

This could also be the Chaos Emeralds or the Master Emerald, or a small lab or workstation that he uses throughout the movie.

To me it definitely seems like it’s related to Eggman, as the shot after gives us a close up of his costume and another shot immediately of his ‘sidekick’ from the previous movie shouting “He’s back!”

This is followed by a glowing entrance to Jim Carrey’s Eggman leaving a ship, this most likely is the pod we see, swarmed by robots he’s created. Fans of the franchise might recognise some familiar designs, with one of the robots being Stinger.

Stinger is a Badnik created by Doctor Eggman and dates back all the way to the original 16-bit game back in 1991.

You can tell Jim Carrey had a blast with this role, especially since he doesn’t do many sequels. I can’t wait to see his far more zany side and lean into his crazier personality that we get in the games.

The room lights up green and we get our first shot of a Chaos Emerald/Master Emerald. We hear Eggman say: ”Since I’ve been gone, I’ve discovered the source of ultimate power.” while the music gets more extravagant telling us that somethings about to go down.

There is a small argument in my mind about whether this is a Chaos Emerald or the Master Emerald, the key difference being that the Master Emerald essentially provides power to the Chaos Emeralds and it’s also just a pretty big guy.

From the colour and the size, I’m leaning towards Master Emerald, but then again, we don’t know what a Chaos Emerald looks like in this world.

Are they bigger than what we assumed them to be? How do we know this isn’t just the size of an ordinary Chaos Emerald?

Personally, I think this is just a regular Chaos Emerald. I don’t think they’d go too into detail about the Master Emerald although I could be wrong because of a later appearance.

We finally get to see more of Tails in this trailer after being teased in the 2020 movie’s end-credit scene. It was only revealed a few days ago who would be playing Tails and luckily it is the wonderful: Colleen O'Shaughnessey

To the average audience member this name might not mean much to you, but to anyone who has been a fan of Sonic from 2011 and onwards will know her very well.

As stated, Colleen has been voicing the two-tailed fox since Sonic Colours back in 2011. Personally, I think she provides the best Tails’ voice, making the character sound innocent but snarky effortlessly.

And while I do love this decision, I do find it very bizarre that she is the only voice actress from the original games to transition into the movie-verse. Why have big names like Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz and Idris Elba as three of your leading characters, then have an unknown voice actress as your fourth main character.

Again, no offence to Colleen I’m super excited that she’s Tails, I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing him. But It’s still a very strange line-up, I’d love to know their reasoning for it.

The classic Tornado One comes into shot with this seemingly being the first time Sonic and Tails meet, although this could just be for trailer purposes and not actually play out the same in the movie.

However, if this is the first time they meet, I imagine Sonic was trying to stop the glowing green tornado we see in the background, perhaps he’s riding a Stinger bot and falls. This leads to Tails coming out of nowhere in the plane and saving him.

Also, the inclusion of the glowing tornado here implies this happens fairly early in the movie, assuming Tails and Sonic don’t meet ten minutes before the end.

While sonic is doing some spin-dashes on what I can only assume are Eggman’s robots we hear the ring sound playing in the music, a classic reference for fans.

(On a closer look, Sonic appears to be bouncing off of spike balls while evading lava.)

This looks like it’s set in a cave tunnel or volcano, if team Sonic are hunting down the Emeralds before Robotnik maybe this is where one resides.

The traps we see, like the swinging axe, look almost similar to the Echidna Tribe we see in the first movie. There looks to be encryptions on the axe and an owl insignia, along with more tribal-looking pictures hung up behind Eggman.

The bar scene could be set in Germany as there is a German flag in the background. We see Sonic and Tails dressed head-to-toe in winter clothing, only being able to see their eyes. This might be them on the hunt for more Chaos Emeralds with Sonic saying: “Today’s forecast calls for 100% chance of adventure.”

The trailer next cuts to a shot of an old temple surrounded by waterfalls, a green beam shooting from the roof of this temple while Sonic is stood across from it near a jungle.

This could be a heavy reference to Sonic Adventure, the first 3D Sonic game that was centred around the Echidna Tribe and the Chaos Emeralds.

But does this mean it paves the way for villains like Chaos?

This obviously shows we are going to get a deeper backstory of the Echidna Tribe, as we only saw them briefly in the previous movie, and a possible origin for Knuckles.

Now the question is: What could be inside this temple? Is this the movie’s version of Angel Island?

If that is the case, this could be the location of the Master Emerald and where Knuckles was possibly from before he became involved with Sonic.

Maybe Eggman using the Chaos Emeralds alerts Knuckles and that’s how he’s introduced into the movie?

This also could be a typical movie cliché of having to go to a temple to ignite a thing and it beams into the sky to reveal a big threat from the clouds. We know clearly that Paramount are taking a risk with including much more Sonic-related aspects seen in the games, but could this be like the first movie where the story itself is very safe?

More references to previous games with Sonic snowboarding down a mountain side. Things that come to my mind are stages in Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Unleashed, there are possibly hundreds more but those are the ones I could think of.

We’ll be getting another Eggman vs Sonic fight within this icy haven, with the two scenes working in parallel. We saw Sonic snowboarding away from Eggman’s robots then immediately see them fighting within an icy cave, pretty confident it’s the same place.

Now the fans all gave out a collective scream of relief when Idris Elba’s Knuckles was unveiled. The scene looks to possibly take place in Tom and Maddie’s house, maybe Knuckles crashes the party and demands to fight Sonic?

I was a little uncertain how well Idris Elba could portray Knuckles, especially when fans seemingly casted the role to Dwayne Johnson and watching fan edits of his voice over Knuckles really worked. But it’s safe to say Idris seems to know how to handle the character, the roughness in his voice is chilling.

“Do I look like I need your powers?” was possibly the base way to introduce the voice to an audience.

Fans of the character have complained for years that Knuckles hasn’t been portrayed correctly in the modern Sonic titles, some going back to the Sonic Adventure era. But the way the Sonic Movie has portrayed these characters, even if on screen for a fraction of a second, seems way better than any of the games have been able to achieve in the last ten years.

Even though Knuckles has always been the strongest Sonic character to exist, I definitely think this version packs a punch!

He’s able to block Sonic’s spin-dash with one hand and equally pummel him to the ground.

And that’s the end of the trailer, with the release date being April the 8th 2021. But I still had so many questions that hopefully will be answered either by the movie itself or more trailers and marketing.

We still don’t know what G.U.N have to do with the plot, but set photos show them to be there, could this lead to a possible Shadow the Hedgehog story line?

With the addition of more Eggman bots and the Chaos Emeralds, not forgetting Eggman still has one of Sonic’s quills, could this imply Metal Sonic?

Will Sonic return to his home planet with Tails and Knuckles when the movie ends? How much of this movie takes place on Earth and how much is ‘game-world’?

Who was Tails talking to in the end credits of the first movie and will they play a role in this one? Was it the owl lady that raised Sonic?

Will Eggman be defeated in this movie? Are they going to include bigger bads from the games like Chaos, like Shadow and even possible Mephiles the Dark.

Watch the trailer below and see if you notice anything I didn't!