Summary
Sonic 3director Jeff Fowler confirmed in a recent interview that Keanu Reeves actually did “his homework” for his role as Shadow the Hedgehog.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was already a big step up from the first movie, but it was the ending that teased Shadow the Hedgehog that really stuck with fans. For months after it was confirmed that Sonic’s edgy rival would be the star of the next movie,fans were going wild trying to figure out who would be brought on to voicethe iconic ultimate lifeform.
It took a surprisingly long time to find out officially who was playing Shadow, but it was eventually confirmed to be Keanu Reeves, who has made a name for himself when it comes to the crossroads between gaming and movies. We’ve only heard a little of Reeves' performance so far, but it seems that, as ever, he’s rather committed to the role.
Keanu Reeves Researched Shadow For Sonic 3
This was easy enough to guess since we know how seriously Reeves takes his work, but it was confirmed by Sonic 3 director Jeff Fowlerwhen he made an appearance on Day 2 of Sonic Revolution’s Shadow Revolution stream.As pointed out by GamesRadar+, Fowler talked about Reeves' work on the movie and said that he was “so fantastic to work with”.
Fowler also revealed that Reeves gave a lot of different takes and versions of line readings instead of just showing up and reading the script as it was. Reeves went as far as doing research for the character, with Fowler pointing out that he’d “done his homework” on the character and knew what he was about.
He thinks the character is awesome and he definitely understood what we were going for and he was very excited to do his version of it. Like all the cast, [he] really wants to get it right and really cares. - Jeff Fowler
Fowler doesn’t go as far as confirming what kind of research and homework Reeves did for his role as Shadow in Sonic 3, but it’s very fun to imagine him scrolling through the Sonic the Hedgehog wiki and finding out as much as he could about Shadow. There’s even a chance he actually played through Sonic Adventure 2 or Shadow the Hedgehog, which would absolutely make my day.
Knowing the internet, though, there’s also a good chance that Reeves was subjected to some truly scary stuff if he was doing research on Shadow.We all know the problems with the latest game being named “Sonic X Shadow”, after all…
