Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie trailer jammed with classic references

As teased, The Game Awards brought a couple of Sonic reveals our way. Perhaps the biggest Sonic announcement of the night was the first official trailer for the second Sonic movie, Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The trailer features a lot of familiar faces for Sonic fans, and it suggests that this new movie will follow the plot of the games a lot closer.

Just a word of warning to those who haven't already seen the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie: you might want to hold off on watching this trailer and reading this article for now. Both will spoil certain parts of the film by necessity, so stop reading here if you don't want story details to be spoiled for you.

With that out of the way, the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 shows us that Sonic has remained on Earth and fancies himself as some kind of superhero. Dr. Robotnik has found his way back from the mushroom planet he was stranded on at the end of the last movie, and this time he has a friend backing him up: Knuckles the Echidna, who proves to be a match for Sonic's power.

Sonic has a friend of his own in Tails, who appeared on Earth at the end of the last movie in search of Sonic. Tails even has his biplane that debuted in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – the game – way back in the day, so the movie clearly has some throwbacks to the classic video game it shares its name with.

One departure is in the introduction of Knuckles, who didn't appear until the third game in the original Sonic game series. The narrative of this movie seems to follow the narrative of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 at least a little bit, in that Robotnik and Knuckles have teamed up to find the Master Emerald and Sonic and Tails need to stop them.

In Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Knuckles instead serves as the guardian of the Master Emerald, and Robotnik convinces him that Sonic is attempting to steal it. Of course, Sonic and Knuckles eventually become allies in the video games and set out with Tails to stop Dr. Robotnik for good, which is something we're likely to see in the inevitable movie sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

So, the first official trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will probably please a lot of Sonic fans thanks to its similarities to the games. While the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie was pretty good as far as video game movies go, it did feature an original story, so it's nice the see the movies pull closer to the games in terms of narrative.

At the end of it all, we're just happy that the producers weren't afraid to give Robotnik his killer mustache from the games, which is prominently displayed in this trailer. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 arrives in theaters on April 8th, 2022.