Sonic the Hedgehog has been around for nearly 30 years and there have been a lot of variations on the character in that time. His key characteristics are generally summed up as "runs fast," "is blue," and "has attitude." The Sonic we see in the live-action-meets-CGI Sonic the Hedgehog, thankfully, abandons the emphasis on '90s buzzwords for something a little more real and vulnerable. Sonic in 2020 is quick with a quip and a pop culture reference, but he's also just really excited to be here.

Sonic the Hedgehog foregoes pulling much from the video game and cartoon takes that came before it, choosing instead to set up something new for the character. Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) in the film is something of a Superman character: an orphan with incredible power he's not quite sure how to handle. It's an interesting setup that the movie should have leveraged more, especially after a very brief opening that shows Sonic being chased from his home planet by a bunch of unknown bad guys for unknown reasons, who never come up again.

That backstory serves to get Sonic out of the video game world and into ours, where he's been hiding out for years, observing everybody in the small town of Green Hills from afar and wishing he could reveal himself and end his loneliness. In his frustration, Sonic accidentally taps into his latent super-speed-induced powers, and the resulting explosion alerts the US government to his existence. Cue an ET-like story of shady G-men hunting an alien, who then happens across a friendly human--local sheriff Tom (James Marsden), or Donut Lord as Sonic knows him from afar--who helps him evade the men in black and their maniacal, mechanically inclined leader, Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey).