Bringing Shadow the Hedgehog to life on the big screen has been a two-decade journey for Jeff Fowler, the director of Sega and Paramount’s live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movies. Fowler finally got his wish with his 2024 movie Sonic the Hedgehog 3. But he first got his hands on Shadow back in 2003, when he worked on the dark hedgehog’s first stand-alone game, Shadow the Hedgehog — a project that goes almost all the way back to the character’s inception.
At the time, Fowler was working at Blur Studio, an animation and visual effects company situated in Culver City, California. Blur has worked on dozens of trailers and cinematics for video games, and most recently released the Prime Video series Secret Level.
“We got hired by Sega for the game Shadow the Hedgehog — Shadow’s second game,” Fowler recalled to Polygon. “Sega knew they really had something in him, and so they wanted to give him his own game. [Blur] wanted to create some cool, really splashy cinematics to help support it. The piece I remember the most, because it was the most dynamic and had a lot of great action, was the intro, where the city is being invaded by the Black Arms forces.”
As Fowler recalls it, “There are all these big alien creatures running, wreaking havoc on the city. Shadow rides in on his motorcycle. The motorcycle smashes into one of the attackers, and he goes backflipping, somersaulting through the air. He’s got a submachine gun, and he’s just being awesome and doing very, very awesome stuff.”
One of Shadow’s big scenes in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has some of that cinematic DNA. Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails confront Shadow in the heart of Tokyo’s Shibuya district — only this time it’s the dark hedgehog wreaking havoc, tossing cop cars, and throttling our hirsute heroes. Shadow gets his gun and escapes on the back of a motorcycle, all while doing extremely awesome stuff.
At Blur, Fowler also worked on the more low-key cinematic moments seen in Shadow the Hedgehog, including tragic moments from Shadow’s backstory, like his relationship with Maria Robotnik. Those same moments are also woven into the narrative events of Sonic 3, which draws from Shadow’s first solo game and his debut appearance in Sonic Adventure 2.
Thanks to that early animation experience, Fowler said, “I really loved the character. So the idea that now, 20 years later, we’re offering up this movie version with Keanu [Reeves as Shadow] is just — it’s incredible. It’s such a full-circle moment, and very surreal.”
Shadow’s debut in the Sonic cinematic universe was teased in a post-credits sequence in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, before the production had landed Reeves for the role. But Fowler said Reeves “was the top of the list” to voice the edgy ’hog.
“His characters tend to have a little bit more of an edge, and a tone to them that felt like it would be a really great fit for Shadow,” Fowler said, pointing to Reeves’ breakout John Wick films. “He’s that antihero that’s still really likable, [who] you’re rooting for all the time.”
Fowler suggested that Shadow and Maria’s relationship is one of the key reasons Reeves signed on for the role — not just the John Wick– and The Matrix-inspired guns-blazing action. The director pitched Reeves on what’s “under the hood of the characters, and what’s being asked from a performance standpoint.”
“With Shadow, it all comes down to this backstory,” Fowler said. “The Shadow/Maria relationship, it’s so important to the fan base, and so important for us to get right. […] Keanu really connected with all these elements, the depth of Shadow, his dramatic backstory. I think he really saw an opportunity to do something that would be a challenge. Of course, he had a lot of questions — he really, really wanted to get it right.”
According to Fowler, Reeves approaching the character of Shadow from an outsider’s perspective was a boon in finding the cinematic version of the character. “A great example is just the very first meeting between Sonic and Shadow,” Fowler said. “We had written it a number of different ways. Should it be jokey? Should it be serious?”
Reeves’ pitch was somewhere in between, with Shadow taking the introduction seriously and somewhat dismissively, compared to his then-rival Sonic. Recalled Fowler, “When Sonic says, ‘Who are you?’ And Shadow’s like, ‘Who am I? Who are you?’ Sonic says, ‘Why do you look like me?’ He says, ‘I don’t look like you. You look like me.’ It was just very simple — funny, but not trying too hard to be funny. Everybody loved it.”
Fowler also acknowledged that Reeves’ approach to Shadow was not to compete with or match the voice work of his co-stars — Ben Schwartz as Sonic, Idris Elba as Knuckles, and Colleen O’Shaughnessey as Tails — but to find his place among the furry friends.
“The thing that [Keanu] did that was really smart is, he looked at the spectrum of the characters, with Sonic being higher than Ben’s normal speaking voice,” Fowler explained, “and Tails being very high, being sort of the high end of the register, and Knuckles being very low — so low that it’s a great source of comedy. Keanu didn’t want to be anywhere near Ben, or anywhere near Idris. And so he just found the sweet spot in between the two of them.
“In terms of delivery, one thing we really discussed upfront was that Sonic and Ben are so animated, Knuckles is bombastic, and Tails is very energetic and youthful. Shadow is, like, still waters run deep, right? He doesn’t say a lot, but when he does say something, it has a lot of weight to it. So it wasn’t about creating a caricature, or even changing his voice much. Oftentimes when actors come in, they’re like, Oh, I’m playing an animated character, so I have to do something stylized with my voice. The character didn’t need that, but needed to be taken very seriously.”
Given that Fowler has spent 20 years thinking about Shadow the Hedgehog — a long time for someone who doesn’t work on the games anymore — I asked him what his favorite bit of Shadow trivia is.
“It’s that Shadow’s favorite food is coffee beans,” Fowler said. The dark hedgehog eats them by the spoonful. “Which is very bizarre and I couldn’t even tell you [how I know that], but it stuck with me and I don’t know how many people know that. He chews on raw coffee beans! That’s how tough he is.”
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