Sonic the Hedgehog 2 leans real hard on Knuckles mythos and Jim Carrey mania

polygon.com:

At one point in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Dr. Robotnik (the little blue alien’s maniacal-genius nemesis, played with relish by Jim Carrey), is running through a gauntlet of ancient booby traps protecting the movie’s big glowing McGuffin, the Master Emerald. The traps include a gigantic boulder, which rumbles and rolls behind Robotnik as he zips through a stone hallway. “I don’t want to die like this!” he cries out. “It’s derivative!”

If that’s truly Robotnik’s chief concern, Sonic 2 is rife with peril. In addition to this lampshaded Raiders of the Lost Ark knockoff, the movie steals ideas, moments, and occasionally direct lines of dialogue from The Incredibles, The Avengers, Talladega Nights, and Rush Hour, among others.

Maybe some of this is supposed to be homage, like the way Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) calls the movie Snow Dogs “the woooooorst” in the frequently GIF’d sing-song cadence of Schwartz’s Parks and Recreation character, Jean-Ralphio Sanderson. Either way, the frantic shameless grabbing at cultural knicknacks defines the experience of watching Sonic the Hedgehog 2. This sequel is technically more fun and more engaging than its predecessor — while placing its strongest emphasis on the more part. Robotnik’s concern about dying a derivative death makes sense — Carrey’s scenes are the only moments where the Sonic movies start to feel like they might formulate a distinctive comic voice.

Even he’s operating with a borrowed voice, though. Dr. Robotnik, also known as the Eggman, isn’t a pantheon-level Carrey creation (or re-creation, given that he, like Sonic and his alien pals, are drawn from the video game series). Robotnik isn’t as fiendishly amped-up as Carrey’s Riddler in 1995’s Batman Forever, or as elastic as