The Sonic The Hedgehog movie reveals the purpose and meaning of the gold rings SEGA's blue speedster loved collecting in the video game series. Sonic's journey to becoming the world's most famous hedgehog began in 1991 with the release of the franchise's first video game entry on the SEGA Genesis console (known elsewhere as the Mega Drive) and immediately captured the imagination of the fledgling gaming market with colorful, high-speed platforming action and a cast of iconic characters centered around Sonic and his evil nemesis, Dr. Robotnik.
Although Sonic's video game career might've tailed off in recent years, the character himself has remained eternally popular, particularly within the realms of animation and merchandising. 2020, however, marks Sonic's long-awaited debut on the big screen. The titular spiked mammal is voiced by Ben Schwartz, while James Marsden plays Sonic's human best pal, and the evergreen Jim Carrey takes the coveted role as Robotnik. Despite early issues that forced a complete redesign of the CGI main character, Sonic the Hedgehog has received more praise than criticism thus far, and is performing modestly at the box office.
Perhaps the biggest key tenet of the Sonic the Hedgehog video games is collecting the abundance of gold rings dotted around. Just as Mario has coins, Spyro has gems and Crash Bandicoot has apples, being successful with Sonic requires the player to horde gold rings like they're... made of gold. The movie adaptation carries this theme over, but in a vastly different way.
Gold Rings In The Sonic The Hedgehog Video Games
Sonic's gold rings serve a variety of functions in the Sonic The Hedgehog video games. Immediately as the first stage begins, players are drawn to the spinning gold rings scattered throughout Sonic's mad world of booby traps, cute animals and molten lava. The rings act as Sonic's lifeline. If the Blue Blur gets hit by an enemy or a rogue spike during his adventure and isn't carrying any rings, the character will die and the player will lose a life, with the dreaded Game Over screen arising if those are also depleted. If Sonic is lucky enough to be carrying some rings among his fur when he takes damage, he'll survive, but drop every ring he's collected thus far. The more rings a player possesses, the better chance they have of hastily reclaiming the lost gold before it disappears. Every 100 rings collected (and not lost) yields the player an extra life.
Another version of the gold rings in the original Sonic the Hedgehog video games are the giant ones used to carry the player to bonus levels. If Sonic reaches the end of an Act and meets the required threshold of 50 rings, a giant golden ring will appear at the finish line (the exact rules change throughout the series). If the player can maneuver Sonic through the ring, he'll be transported to an even stranger world that contains the powerful Chaos Emeralds, the very things coveted by Robotnik.
In terms of the video games' mythology, there's no real explanation as to why the rings exist or how they came into being. Sonic hails from a simpler time when Hideo Kojima wasn't using 30 minute cut-scenes between levels to explain a labyrinthine plot. The only lore behind the rings is that they contain a mysterious energy that can be used to power machines, and they seem to disappear when picked up. In some of the Sonic the Hedgehog video game entries, the gold rings act as currency in Sonic's world.
The New Purpose Of The Gold Rings In The Sonic Movie
The Sonic the Hedgehog movie takes a wild departure with its own interpretation of the familiar gold ring mechanic. Sonic's guardian, Longclaw the owl, believes Sonic should remain hidden due to his unique powers and provides the hedgehog with a bag of golden rings. Longclaw provides a demonstration to Sonic (and the audience), revealing that the rings can act as portals from one part of the universe to another, creating a method of instantly moving between worlds. This is how Sonic travels from his own home planet to Earth and then later, when his presence is discovered by Dr. Robotnik, he attempts to traverse to the mushroom world, once again using the rings as portals. Sonic explains that the rings work by simply thinking about a destination, which allows him to move rapidly across Earth during the final fight with Carrey's evil genius.
Although the rings are clearly important to Sonic, both as a sentimental reminder of Longclaw and as a means of survival, his life doesn't depend on them in the literal sense, nor do they seem to protect him from attacks. Furthermore, where the original rings would be just lying on the ground or floating in the air waiting to be picked up, they are much less common in Sonic's Hollywood debut. Interestingly, the Sonic the Hedgehog movie also gives the character a little purse to keep his rings in, solving one of the mysteries from the video game series.
How The Sonic The Hedgehog Movie's Rings Relate To The Games
Generally speaking, the rings in the Sonic the Hedgehog movie are vastly different to those collected by gamers since the 1990s, but there is a string of continuity that at times is obvious, and elsewhere is more subtle. For example, when Ben Schwartz's Sonic loses his rings on the big screen, he doesn't die as in the video games, but there are two points in the movie where Sonic faints and loses his rings simultaneously. The first comes when Tom hits Sonic with a tranquilizer dart, causing Sonic to drop his rings through a portal to San Francisco, while the second happens during the final battle, when Sonic is knocked down fighting Robotnik and drops his rings on the ground. Although it isn't losing the rings that hurts Sonic here, the scenes are a nice allusion to the video games, especially in the second instance where the hedgehog rushes around to pick the rings back up again, just as gamers would.
The rings' teleportation properties in the Sonic the Hedgehog movie are also (very) loosely adapted from the video game series. In SEGA's world, the small rings would be Sonic's lifeline, and then the giant rings at the end of the level would whisk him away to find the Chaos Emeralds. The film's rings are essentially a combination of the two; Sonic's small rings grow larger and turn into intergalactic portals, not necessarily to the Chaos Emeralds, but to Egypt, a mushroom planet or wherever else Sonic can think of.
Although Sonic's rings aren't directly linked to his life in his movie adventure, Longclaw does create this very impression, figuratively speaking. The gold trinkets might not physically protect Sonic from bullets, lasers or robots, but they were given to him as a means of escaping danger, albeit by running away, allowing them to serve roughly the same function as in the video games. Despite the obvious deviations, it's clear that the movie takes rough ideas from the games, but gives them a deeper explanation. Even better, the ring mythology in the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film could potentially work as an addition to the games; perhaps collecting 50 rings on the Genesis allows Sonic to create a giant teleportation ring at the end of each level and he uses them exclusively to find the Chaos Emeralds.