This week, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 became the second highest-grossing video game movie at the domestic box office. The Blue Blur may be fast, but he still can’t catch up to one other video game star turned movie icon: Mario. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a massive hit in 2023, becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year — the goofy meat in the middle of Barbenheimer’s box office-dominating sandwich. Just like in video games, Sonic never had a chance against the Mustachioed Marvel.
The Console Wars Comes To The Big Screen
As someone who grew up at the tail-end of Mario and Sonic’s ’90s video game rivalry, it’s oddly poetic to see it recreated in cinematic form. Just like in video games, Mario got to movies first. The first Mario movie hit theaters all the way back in 1993, while Sonic took much longer to reach the silver screen, with his first live-action adaptation hitting theaters in 2020 and inaugurating the second wave of video game adaptations.
Though Sonic hadn’t starred in a theatrically released film until then, the World’s Fastest Hedgehog has been a fixture of animation for decades.
If the ’90s were the NES of video game adaptations, the 2020s have proven to be the Sega Genesis. Like the NES era, the ’90s video game adaptations had their stinkers. Super Mario Bros. — a colossal bomb that seemed like a sure thing until it became apparent that it failed to properly adapt the source material — is a whole lot like that E.T. game that ended up getting buried en masse in the desert. The ’90s, like the NES-era, were a time for throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck.
The Blue New Kid On The Block
When he debuted on the Sega Genesis in 1991, Sonic was the cool new kid on the block. The Genesis had to prove that it could compete with the established competition, and Sonic’s speed and devil may care attitude quickly cemented the Spiny Speedster as a viable alternative to Mario. While Super Mario World was slower and focused on jumping, Sonic was so fast the screen sometimes couldn’t keep up. Those early Sonic games being good, and equally important, cool, gave Sega a foothold.
Sonic filled a similar role in 2020, proving that video game movies could be, well, if not cool, then profitable. Thanks to Covid, Sonic the Hedgehog — which opened on Valentine’s Day of 2020, about a month before lockdowns hit the U.S. — finished the year as one of the highest-grossing movies of 2020. It did well enough to warrant a sequel, and that sequel did well enough to warrant a sequel and a spin-off streaming show. Along with Pokemon Detective Pikachu, it helped prove that video game movies could work.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a bit like Super Mario 64 arriving on the N64, redefining the platformer genre forever. Sonic still starred in successful games after Mario 64, and did make the transition to 3D in the Adventure games, which 2000s kids love. But Mario 64’s success was the beginning of the end. Mario made the transition to 3D look effortless and, nearly three decades later, Sega still doesn’t have a formula for consistently good 3D Sonic games. If there was any question about who was the number one video game mascot, Super Mario 64 answered it definitively.
The box office mirrors Mario’s long-standing dominance. Though the Sonic movies have put up solid numbers, Mario cracked a billion dollars. It was the second-highest-grossing movie of its year. The only thing that could beat it was Barbie, an even older, even more ubiquitous IP. Sonic 3 may be number two but, just like in the ’90s console wars, Sonic will never be number one. But, hey, number two is still way past cool.
Related
Sonic X Shadow Generations Gives Us The Best Levels And The Worst Bosses
Sonic X Shadow Generations shines brightest with its Shadow levels, but its boss battles were a janky walk through memory lane.
