Christmas Battle: “Sonic 3” vs. “Mufasa”

A brief account of the two biggest releases of the Christmas season and their theater run so far.

The Christmas season is a time of the year that film studios eagerly wait for. They always save some of their most promising productions for us to enjoy with our families in such a lovely time.

These past few years have not been as impressive as they used to be. In December 2023, we had Wonka, but we also had Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. December 2024, for its part, brought two films that were directed to the same target demographic: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Mufasa: The Lion King. Let’s talk about them.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

I’ve never been a Sonic fan, but the good comments the third installment has gathered pushed me to give it a chance. I’m a bit disappointed.

To offer a more informed opinion, I took the time to watch both Sonic and Sonic 2. I found the first one surprisingly fun. The opening with baby Sonic escaping from his universe is adorable, and I loved that the story focuses on the importance of families and finding people you can trust. It’s also a pretty short film. The second one, on the other hand, is a lot more like the third. There’s a lot of action on screen, but in both cases I got bored.

If I had to compare Sonic 3 to anything, I would say it is the family-friendly version of Deadpool & Wolverine: it’s not a film, as much as it is content. For the most part, the story is filled with silly humor—that even for a kids movie is strange—and some “meta jokes,” delivered mostly by Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey is kind of charming in the role. He looks like he is having a lot of fun playing Robotnik.

The human characters are just there; with every passing movie, they have less and less to do. Again, the focus on family values is appreciated, even though this comes out clumsily, as the dialogues are not great, but the message is delivered in a way that is accessible to the audience.

The animated characters are adorable and look flawless. Every movie they introduce someone new, which is a great way to gather interest. One of the post-credit scenes reveals that Amy Rose is next in line, and we will see her in the fourth installment.

Is it a favorite of mine? No. Maybe if you grew up playing the video games, you will find more details and Easter eggs to be interested in. But it’s not really my cup of tea. Now, is it better than Mufasa? By a long shot. The story of Shadow and Maria alone is more interesting than the entire Mufasa film any day. 

Box Office Numbers

When it comes to financial results, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 continues to be the most successful of the franchise in both box office results and rentability. Sonic 3 was more expensive to make, and I don’t believe it will catch up with its predecessor’s box office results, as it is confirmed that the film will be on streaming services next week.

Mufasa: The Lion King

After postponing it for a month, I finally got myself to watch this thing. For some inexplicable reason, Disney won’t admit defeat with the live action. If we can even call this a live-action at all, because the entire movie is CGI.

I don’t even know what to say about it. It was boring, unnecessary, and soulless. A lot of people commented that the animals’ design has improved compared to 2019 The Lion King, but it still looks like an Animal Planet documentary to me. As it’s becoming usual with Disney movies, songs are as unremarkable as they can be, and the voice acting did not convince me.

Scar’s villain origin story is dumb. They made one of the most ruthless and manipulative villains in animation look like a joke.

The original animated The Lion King is a film I must have watched a million times as a kid. I also loved the sequel; I had the DVDs and all! Those characters were a big part of my childhood, and I can’t believe the level of indifference I had for this prequel. 

Box Office Numbers

The only other film we can compare Mufasa to is the live-action The Lion King, which was a big success back in 2019, making over $1.600.000.000 worldwide ($1.955.000.000 adjusted for inflation). I bet Disney was expecting a similar result with Mufasa, but it was not even close. With four weeks on the theaters, the prequel has not even reached $600.000.000.

Who is the Winner?

Sonic. Sonic is. But let’s go through all the facts.

The first thing to look at is the box office numbers. In that account, Mufasa is going ahead, with $544.427.338, against Sonic 3’s $387.122.300. These results I’m mentioning correspond to the worldwide box office, but you can see domestic and international numbers separately in the following chart. 

However, if we observe the production budget of each project, it’s clear that Sonic is winning in terms of rentability. With a budget of $122.000.000, it seems that these few weeks were enough to break even. Mufasa, on the other hand, has a budget of $200.000.000, and that without counting the cost of the marketing campaign, which was way bigger than Sonic’s. It’s never possible to tell just how rentable a project is, counting just on the public information, but it’s safe to say that Sonic was a better deal for Paramount than Mufasa was for Disney.

Even though both movies had a domestic release on December 20, that was not the case for international markets. For instance, Mufasa was released worldwide between the 18th and 20th of December 2024, while Sonic 3’s international release was after the 25th in most cases. In my country, the film did not hit theaters until January 2nd. Mufasa had at least five days to get ahead in most countries, and it also counted on more screens domestically, given some theaters’ contractual obligations with Disney, which prevented Sonic 3 from getting more screens after its excellent opening weekend.

In conclusion, family films are still struggling to be what they once were. It’s going to take a while. While Sonic is an improvement, it’s still not quite what I want. At least, unlike with Moana 2, Disney did not get away with it. They tried really hard, but reality hit them this time.