With the upcoming release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, fans have been eagerly awaiting the debut of Keanu Reeve’s Shadow the Hedgehog. The movie sets up the inevitable dark backstory of our antagonist, with characters such as Maria (Alyla Browne) and Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carrey) joining the mix. Many have raised questions regarding the integration of Sonic Adventure 2’s story, with some pointing at the role of Rouge the Bat. While it seems that characters such as Rouge would make sense, Director Jeff Fowler has denounced the rumors behind why some fan-favorite characters won’t be appearing in the movie and revealed why not every familiar face from Sonic the Hedgehog have appeared.
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Many Sonic fans speculated that Krysten Ritter would voice Rouge the Bat on the big screen, given her casting has so far been in an undisclosed role. However, the rumors were laid to rest when official posters were released, confirming that the actress is set to play a human character. Speaking with ComicBook in an exclusive interview for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, director Jeff Fowler explained his reasoning behind the exclusion of others from the series.
“I think we were all very focused on Shadow. When you have a cast that’s already of this size, there’s four CG characters in this movie, you want to be careful and not throw too many in the mix. (Shadow’s) backstory is so important that we get that right. But those elements are within the Sonic movie. So it really has to be balanced. Everything, story-wise, needs to be in proper proportion. And then also adding Gerald (Robotnik), obviously, into the mix. So very quickly, your screen real estate shrinks, as you bring in these interesting characters and you want to do interesting things with them and give great story arcs.”
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As Fowler points out, it was important for them to get Shadow’s backstory right, so adding more characters into the mix would detract from what they’ve been essentially setting up throughout the last two movies. As for the story-telling aspect of the movies, Fowler notes that this careful choosing of which characters to include has been his philosophy since the first film.
“What’s served us really well in these films I think it this slow, purposeful rollout. Going back to movie one, it was just Sonic and Robotnik. We started so simple and then just kind of taking our time and bringing the characters in one by one and just making sure that we do a great job with telling their stories. I think that’s always been the best blueprint.”
When it comes to undisclosed characters still to be announced, actor Cristo Fernandez’s role is still up in the air. However, it is unlikely that we will be hearing him voice any Sonic characters in the upcoming movie. This doesn’t mean that the film won’t have any new characters added into the mix, since Tails and Shadow were introduced at the end of the previous films with limited screen time.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 arrives in theaters this Friday, December 20th.
