![]() It’s a score which teems with energy and good humor, is full of themes, has an upbeat and positive attitude, and is awash in nostalgia. ![]() Sonic the Hedgehog is, by some large margin, the most fun score of Holkenborg’s career to date. Many people will credit his recurring collaboration with Conrad Pope, who has often served as his lead orchestrator and usually conducts the ensemble, as a determining factor in this improvement, and while I’m sure Pope has indeed brought a depth and richness to Holkenborg’s overall sound, the music still has to come from Holkenborg in the first place, so I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt – especially here, as the official credits do not mention Pope’s involvement at all. Terminator: Dark Fate stuttered a little bit, but now with Sonic the Hedgehog he’s back on track, with his fourth good score in less than three years. All of Mortal Engines was good, and then he followed that up with the equally impressive Alita: Battle Angel last year. Parts of Tomb Raider in 2018 were really very good. Parts of The Dark Tower in 2017 were quite good. But then, something slowly started to happen. Black Mass in 2015 showed some glimmers of promise, but beyond that his music struck me as a competence-free void. Prior to this, and for the first few years of his career, I made no effort to hide the fact that I found his music to be generally quite terrible. Over the past 18 months or so, in my opinion, composer Tom Holkenborg has been getting better and better. So, now I have another confession to make. Sonic runs fast, there’s action, comedy, hi-jinks, heartwarming pathos, and a set-up for a sequel… you get the idea. Robotnik who wants to capture Sonic, and James Marsden plays a kind-hearted cop who helps Sonic escape from Robotnik. It’s directed by Jeff Fowler, there’s a little blue hedgehog who can run incredibly fast, Jim Carrey plays the evil Dr. Even now, and despite the generally positive ratings, the film holds little interest. I was similarly uninterested when a furore about the design of the little spiky speedmeister hit the internet in May 2019, causing a major delay in the film’s release due to the need for new special effects. As such, when it was announced that there was going to be a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, I was indifferent. I never had a Sega, I never had a Nintendo, I never even had a Game Boy, so all those classic cultural touchstones – Super Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong and so on – completely passed me by. Today, the only games I have are various iterations of FIFA Soccer, but I haven’t played them in years. I then skipped the entire console era and went straight to a Dell PC in 1995. When my friends graduated on to Commodore 64s and Sinclair ZX Spectrums, I stayed inside watching movies. I had an Atari 800 back in the early 80s and I played precisely three games on it: Orc Attack, Zaxxon, and Paperboy, all of which came on a series of cartridges. I was one of those weird kids who, growing up, didn’t really play computer games.
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