Sonic The Hedgehog 3: The Metal Overlord
Directed By: Hajime Kamegaki
Written By: David Hayter and Joss Whedon
Produced By: SEGA/DreamWorks/Tokyo Movie Shinsha
Based On: Sonic the Hedgehog by SEGA
Cast
Jaleel White as Sonic the Hedgehog/Metal Sonic
Alex D. Linz as Miles "Tails" Prower
Terrence C. Carson as Knuckles the Echidna
Christina Ricci as Amy Rose
Peter Kelamis as Mighty the Armadillo
Samuel Vincent as Ray the Flying Squirrel
Tim Curry as Dr. Ivo Robotnik
Release Date: October 8th, 2000
Budget: $55 million
Box Office: $510 million total, $218 million domestically and $292 million in foreign territories
With Star Fox and Crash Bandicoot dominating the Summer Box Office, Dreamworks made the decision to push Sonic 3 to October giving it less competition. Fox's X-Men however refused to be pushed aside despite Sonic's hype.
Before the movie begins, a 1 minute teaser trailer for Dreamworks next project with TMS was shown. In the snippet, we see a windmill on a floating island, below it is the entrance to a valley. We then zoom forward taking in the sights of the valley itself before stopping at a gazebo holding 5 orbs colored red, green, blue, yellow, and white. The scene then turns to black.
Plot:
The film opens with a command line rebooting the internal systems of Metal Sonic. He flickers back on and immediately takes a look at his surroundings. He's on a platform in sky sanctuary with no one else around but a warp portal. He activates the portal only to be taken back to the Hidden Palace. Once inside the palace and a bit of exploration, he finds the Master Emerald alter with all seven of the super emeralds. A new order activates within his programming:
“
Take the Emeralds and return to base intact.”
Once he reaches Robotnik's Hidden Base, The Veg-O-Fortress, he sees that the base has been creating a new series of robots.
Once he reaches the inner sanctum of his master, he finds something that shocks him to his core. His master hooked up to a machine that's converting him into metal.
Robotnitk:
“You have the emerald? (Metal Sonic turns over the Emerald.) Good work.”
He puts one of the emerald in his chassis and feels the energy course through his body. He throws his head back into a maniacal laughter.
After a montage of Sonic running through Hill Top Zone at top speed, he reaches Tails Skydock, where Tails maintains the Tornado, studies the properties of the Chaos Emeralds, and works on ways to convert Robotnitk's machines into something environmentally helpful and safe. There the two talk about their plans for the future. Sonic hopes to head off to the alpha continent to visit Amy at her home, Vista NeverLake. As for Tails, he's meeting with his new assistant to continue the conversion process. It's just at that point they hear an explosion. The two rush outside to find much of the forest on fire and people running away from it. The instigator of this fire:
Sonic and Tails instigate the fight, but find themselves unable to harm Metal Sonic glowing with a green aura around him. He grabs Tails by his tails, swings him into the ground repeatedly and then throws him into Sonic. He looks over to the defeated heroes and prepares to finish them off when he is given a new order from Robotnik.
“
Throw them into the portal.”
He obeys, opening a portal to an alternate dimension.
When Sonic and Tails come to, they find themselves floating in what seems to be a strange mountain range. They look for a way out or just some ground to stand on but find nothing. Tails begins to panic for a while until Sonic grabs him and shakes him till he calms down, telling him he'll find a way out of here. That's when a red and black ball spins past them. Sonic decides to spindash to follow the ball and he starts to move forward. He uncurls himself only to land on a asteroid floating in the way, Tails lands next to him, having spindashed after him. They proceed to do this with asteroid after asteroid until they reach a large asteroid that seems to have life growing on it. The two take a couple steps only for the red and black ball to bounce in front of them and uncurl itself, revealing an armadillo.
Armadillo:
“Travelers? What brings you here to the Discord dimension?
Sonic: “
Discord dimension?”
Armadillo: “
This dimension used to be pretty normal, but 5 years ago, a jewel came here and changed everything. Animals began to walk upright, The ground began contorting into screws, and finally the sky turned into this. I've been trying to reach the discord jewel to make it stop all this changing but it always manages to warp me somewhere else.”
A green blur zooms past the three and causes the ground to disappear. Tails expects to fall but Sonic and the Armadillo managed to grab each of his arms. When he opens his eyes, he sees that they are all floating.
Tails:
“We have a way to move around, let's try and catch this thing.”
The three begin to spin, bouncing and landing on any bit of solid ground in the area. The emerald doesn't let up telephoning each of them around the dimension, transforming the trees into spikes, or other shenanigans. Finally, the armadillo manages to grab the blur and reveals that its a chaos emerald. He yells at the jewel to turn everything back and it seems to comply, opening a portal back to Mobius.
Sonic: “
Well that helps, come on let's give Eggman a shiner for that ambush.”
Armadillo: “
But my dimension?”
Tails: “
There are other emeralds in our world too, maybe we can use it to fix this.”
Armadillo: “
Okay then, by the way my name is Mighty.”
Tails:
“I'm Tails and this is Sonic. Now let's move.”
Upon coming through the portal, Sonic is in complete shock for 3 reasons. 1. They're not back at Hill Top Zone, instead their at the very place Sonic was planning to go to: Never Lake. 2. The lake is a polluted mess with several factories dropping toxic waste into it. 3. The entire villa is under a metallic dome that blocks out the sun and has no iota of plant or animal life.
They only have a moment to take in the horror before their attacked by a full platoon of robots.
Despite their speed, power, and flying abilities, Sonic and co can't stop the legion that's being thrown down on them. Cornered between the city and a cliff overlooking the lake, the legion goes in for the kill, only for the front 2 waves to be struck in the legs by a fist. It's good old Knuckles to the rescue. He tells Sonic and co to jump off the cliff. They do so only to be caught by the Tornado, now piloted by Amy. Knuckles continues breaking through the legion with help from a flying squirrel named Ray.
The 6 manage to make their escape out of the city and end up back to their base on Angel Island, surprisingly a regular island rather than it remaining above the clouds. The 3 explain what has happened, 2 years have passed since you disappeared. In those 2 years, Robotnik's forces took over the world with minimal resistance due to not just robots like the ones we fought, but Metal Sonic who just ended up being completely invulnerable to all harm. The only thing that's managed to stop them is the master emerald, which Knuckles has kept on his person ever since he fought Metal Sonic to a standstill. They want to take out his main base on Mt. Mobius, but it is guarded by Metal Sonic and his special squadron of badniks, the metallic scramblers.
Sonic:
“I say we make the trip and bring down Eggman once and for all. Mighty, do you still have that emerald we caught?”
Mighty hands the emerald over to Sonic and Knuckles feels the energy within it. It feels just as much as the Master Emerald.
Knuckles:
“I want to try a ritual that could either ruin us or give us the edge to bring down The Veg-O-Fortress.”
Sonic hands Knuckles the emerald and he asks everyone to hold hands together. He begins a chant to transfer the two emeralds energy into themselves.
Knuckles: “
The seven emeralds are the servers. Chaos is power enriched by the heart. The one who unifies the chaos is the controller. EMPOWER US!”
A flash of light spreads in the room as Sonic and co feel the emerald's power coarse threw their body. When the light finally subsides, all 6 of them are glowing green with sparkles.
Meanwhile,
Motobug rolls into the lair of Neo Metal Sonic trembling in fear. He fears because Lord Robotnik has disappeared and he was the only one who kept the cobalt violent madman in check. The last time he went cruel like this was when Knuckles managed to get away and he punched a hole through the guardian, Nyxus.
Motobug: “
Lord Metal, I have a visual report from the egg soldiers last patrol. Please prepare for fell news.”
Metal Sonic looks at the screen and sees the destruction the resistance managed to inflict on his forces. But the one thing that gets a rise out of him, is the fact that Sonic and Tails are among those who are in the raids. The robots eyes narrow into slits and he immediately turns over to Motobug, demanding where have they gone now. According to his spy, Sonic and co are on their way to Veg-O-Fortress. Metal sends Motobug off to gather the metallic scramblers. They are going to put an end to this, like he should have done had Robotnik hadn't pulled him away to stroke his ego.
Back with Sonic and co...
The tornado felt very cramped as they headed out to Mt. Mobius. While flying out, Tails and Ray are chatting over how he joined up with the resistance. He was actually from South Island and was inspired by Sonic did to fight off Robotnik. When Robotnik's forces returned to South Island, he did what he can to help evacuate his friends and family by divebombing the robots. When he came to, he was back on the mainland with no word from the people of south island but also no robots. Just as Tails began to reply, a series of shots burst through the air. He spins the tornado into evasive maneuvers only for one shot to break through the left wing, sending sonic and Amy falling through the air. Ray and Knuckles managed to catch them and land through at the base of the mountain. Once there, they are greeted by the welcoming committee.
Amy pulls out her hammer, Knuckles puts up his dukes, but Sonic rushes towards the robots mostly so they can get back and find Tails. The robots however are not just built for a fight, but programmed to work together. They manage to cap Sonic in the knee while he was rushing towards them. Amy would follow with a hammer shot to the face of the red robot and Knuckles would take on the green robot with rocket anchors. Ray had to hold it together with the three Sonic lookalikes advancing on him at once. The gold robot would hang back transforming his arm into a cannon and aiming at Sonic. He fires a net from his cannon and misses as Sonic managed to get back to his feet and flip out of the way. He continues to dodge and jump until he reaches Ray, spin dashing through two of the lookalikes. The gold robot changes his ammo to energy and that only makes the problem worse as it cleaves through Metal Sonic chest and sends him careening into the ocean. Sonic and Ray then run towards Knuckles, who's grabbed the green robot's rocket anchors and is swinging him around in the air. Amy has jammed her spiked hammer into the red robot's rifle which leads to a divebomb from Ray to finish him off.
Sonic: “
Alright, now that this distraction is done, let's go find Tails and Mighty.”
Another shot rings threw the air as the same robots they just took down immediately rise up and prepare to fight once more. Our heroes just look annoyed at the turn of events only for another squadron to flank them from the side. Not too long a third squad appears, but this one has Tails and Mighty in stasis fields. Floating above all of them is Neo Metal Sonic.
Neo:
” SO THE INFERIOR ORGANIC RETURNS. MARVEL AT WHAT I HAVE ACHIEVED WITHOUT BEING SHACKLED BY THE ORDERS OF MY CREATOR. MARVEL AT THE PERFECTION I HAVE BROUGHT TO THIS WORLD BY TURNING IT INTO A CHROME PARADISE. DESPITE YOUR RETURN, YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING TO STOP THE TIDE OF MY VICTORY. NOW SURRENDER OR PERISH AT THE HANDS OF MY LEGION!”
Seeing no way out of this, Sonic decides to use the ace in the hole. He turns into his chaos form and promptly hands the legion its own destruction, frees Tails and Mighty, and proceeds to clash against Metal. The fight dashes in and out throughout the mountain and the base with kicks, punches, parries, spindashes, and lots of blurs before Sonic managed to catch Metal's talon and shoves it into an engine. IT only keeps Metal down for a second as his arm turns green and he assimilates the engine into his arm and punches Sonic with it.
Sonic: “
That's how he's keeping up, he's powered by a chaos emerald. I just got to get him over to Knuckles or Mighty and we just might be able to stop this.”
The battle continues back outside as Knuckles leads the rest of the resistance against Metal's legion but unfortunately they haven't figured out how each of the Metallic Scramblers manage to regenerate themselves. It's only when Knuckles manages to see the gold robot glow and assimilate one of the Metal Sonic clones that he figures it out. He does the chant once again which drains the chaos energy out of his enemy and finally punches the chaos emerald out of his head. Knuckles does the same to each of the other bots which shuts down the legion. When Sonic and Metal fly back outside, they see the results.
Neo:
“NO NO NO!!! YOU HORRID ORGANIC, WHY IS EVERYTHING I DO THWARTED BY YOU?!”
Metal lashes out at the closest robot to him and assimilates him into his mass. He continues to spread and assimilate every single metal thing on the mountain until he rises again as a Kaiju sized monstrosity.
The robotic hedgehog opens his assault with two swipes with his arms, followed by shooting a barrage of missles from his back, and completing this assault by shooting a laser from his chest that blows a hole in the ocean. Knowing that this could lead to the end of the world, Sonic's friends proceed to channel the energy of the chaos emeralds and the master emerald into Sonic, transforming him a giant version of Super Sonic now called Ultra Sonic.
He catches Metals arms and then tears them out of their sockets, reflects the chest beam back into Metal's mouth, and finishes it up by spin dashing through his chest and taking back the final chaos emerald he had been running on the entire time.
Metal:
“CURSE YOU ORGANICS! I HATE YOU ALL!!!!!(explodes.)”
With Metal's destruction, every single robot around the world shuts down and the organic parts of the world rejoice. The credits show Sonic and co doing their part to fix the world after this brutal war. Tails getting to implement his converted tech to save the world. Ray beginning his search to find refugees of South Island. Knuckles returning the master emerald to Angel Island with a new group of people choosing to live on the island and protect it with him. Mighty returning to his dimension with Tails's chaos converter to get all of that under control. As for Sonic and Amy, the two head on an adventure of their own honestly hoping for a future without the scourge of Doctor Robotnik, ever again. But in a post-credit scene, we cut to an underground lab where a mind upload completes and Robotnik bursts from a tube. But no longer a human, but a complete robot.
