The creative leads behind the next live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie have just made the bravest artistic decision possible: They gave Shadow the Hedgehog his gun back.
Directed by Jeff Fowler and distributed by Paramount Pictures, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is the third movie in a series of live-action feature films that adapt the video game series created by Sega. Previous films have focused on Sonic himself or friends like Knuckles, but this time around, all eyes are on Sonic’s rival, Shadow, who will be voiced by Keanu Reeves. Paramount released a new trailer for the movie on Monday, and the new look had plenty of nuggets for fans to chew on — Sonic gets to go to a Chao-themed attraction, for example. But for me, I was obsessed with the a moment where Shadow picks up a gun.
The image of Shadow using a gun refers to an odd era of the Sonic series. In 2005, Sega released a spinoff game called Shadow the Hedgehog where the development team explored a darker, edgier side to the Sonic series. Shadow appeared on the cover with a scoped gun and the game contained third-person shooting gameplay. According to Jason Griffith, a voice actor who played Shadow in the game, the development team was planning to create an M-rated game and had him record alternate lines where Shadow dropped the F-bomb, although these did not make it to the final cut of the game.
“They had me record two takes for every line, and I swear, the version that was for the M-Rating, they had me say fuck in every single line.” Griffith said in an interview to Inverse, “It was just every sentence, I would be yelling ‘Sonic, give me that fucking Chaos Emerald!”
Since then, Sega has walked back the darker side of Shadow and the series as a whole. Most notably, the recent Sonic x Shadow Generations game, which contains gameplay from Shadow the Hedgehog, didn’t have any guns and most certainly did not have any cursing. When asked about why Shadow doesn’t wield firearms, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka told Video Games Chronicle that while Shadow will use a gun, he doesn’t need one since Shadow himself “is a weapon.”
I agree that Shadow doesn’t need a gun — in the lore he was created in a lab to be the ultimate weapon — but he sure does look a hell of a villain with one, and some fans even celebrated the return of the gun. Although the game series as a whole has drifted away from this more mature side of the Sonic series, it’s fun to see pop up again in a movie.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is coming out to theaters on Dec. 30.
Source：https://www.polygon.com/entertainment/484793/shadow-the-hedgehog-sonic-3-movie-trailer-gun
