Knuckles Brings Sonic’s World to the Small Screen in Fun, Superfluous Adventure
Photo Courtesy of Paramount+
The “video game curse” is an old adage that has existed for decades, referring to the inherent difficulties in adapting videogame stories for film and TV (we’re looking at you, 2005’s live action Doom movie). But a whole lot has changed in the past decade or so.
The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Fallout are bona fide hits—and Paramount Pictures has turned everyone’s favorite speedster hedgehog into a full-on movie franchise that not only survived but thrived after Sonic’s design was mercifully redone following that infamous first trailer that terrified fans across the globe.
We’re now two movies into the Sonic the Hedgehog cinematic universe, a hit franchise starring Jim Carrey, James Marsden, and the voice of Ben Schwartz as Sonic himself. A third film is slated to open around Christmas, but before that, we have this: Knuckles, a live action streaming miniseries following Sonic’s echidna warrior pal Knuckles, voiced by Idris Elba. Yes, that Idris Elba. The six-episode series basically functions as a quasi-sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 2, filling the gap with a smaller-scale story focusing on Knuckles and Adam Pally’s live-action character Wade Whipple, a bumbling deputy in the same small town Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles call home.
It’s worth noting the first two Sonic the Hedgehog films were both critical and commercial hits, though watching Knuckles, it feels more clear that the scene-chewing charisma of Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik and affable charm of James Marsden’s Tom are key pieces of what make the silly puzzle work so well for this world. Knuckles features some cameos and connective tissue to the film side (yes, Schwartz’s Sonic does pop in for a bit!), but the absence of those two A-listers is strongly felt in Knuckles. In their place, Pally’s Wade Whipple steps into the starring human role, as he teams up with Knuckles to go on a cross-country road trip where things… let’s just say, don’t go as planned.
The idea of following Knuckles as he tries to find his place in this universe after saving the world in Sonic The Hedgehog 2 isn’t a bad one on the surface, but the set-up itself for this particular story feels forced in how he’s teamed up with Wade to go on this adventure—especially when it’s fairly clear the goal is to get the action away from the big screen heavyweights like Sonic, Robotnik, and Tom because they are (understandably) set to headline the next big screen installment.
Then there’s the challenge of building a story around Knuckles himself. Casting Elba for the role was beyond inspired in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but Knuckles is essentially a very serious warrior without much of a sense of humor. Yes, this provides a roadmap to make him more fun across six episodes, but it makes for a weird tonal shift for fans used to the slapstick silliness of Schwartz’s Sonic headlining the films. Compound that with the seemingly random addition of a few generic new villains, and you can feel the creative team trying to thread the needle of playing in this world but not doing so much that it competes with the movies.