'Sonic The Hedgehog 2' Interviews | Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz
Sonic The Hedgehog 2" cast members Jim Carrey ( Dr. Ivo Robotnik), Ben Schwartz (Sonic), James Marsden (Tom), Colleen O'Shaughnessey (Tails), Tika Sumpter (Maddie), Natasha Rothwell (Rachel), Lee Majdoub. (Agent Stone) and director Jeff Fowler discuss the "Sonic The Hedgehog" film in this interview with CinemaBlend's Mike Reyes.
Transcript
00:00 It is bigger and better in every way.
00:02 And I'm in it!
00:03 [music]
00:10 Well, I think it's a lovely kind of reminder of innocence.
00:14 And, you know, there was something sweet about this movie.
00:17 The first time around, you know, there were people that looked at it and went like,
00:19 "I don't know. It's a kids' movie. Do you really want to do a kids' movie?"
00:22 And I went, "Well, yeah."
00:24 And, you know, because kids appreciate movies like nobody else.
00:28 But first of all, there was something sweet about it.
00:32 At the heart of it, you know, I play the contrast to this incredible innocence.
00:37 You know, I play the, you know, evil 3.0 quantum version of Robotnik in this.
00:44 And there's no limits to my powers.
00:48 I'm a demigod of evil.
00:50 And it's all in service of showing you, again, what matters,
00:56 which is that, you know, at some point of our lives,
00:59 we were these innocent, non-skeptical beings
01:03 that enjoyed everything that popped up in the zeitgeist, you know?
01:07 And it was innocent and beautiful.
01:10 And you didn't care, you know, what the bubble gum was going to do to you.
01:13 You just chewed it up and blew a bubble, man.
01:17 You know? You didn't look at the ingredients.
01:20 Yeah, it's like it's—I hope it's fun for the audience to see this sort of transition
01:24 that's going on from the first movie to the second film.
01:26 And the first movie was like Tom and Sonic were buddies.
01:29 And, you know, they kind of ate chili dogs together and hung out.
01:33 And now it's like, I think they're both feeling the word responsibility, right?
01:37 Like Tom's feeling a certain responsibility, and Maddie,
01:40 feeling for sort of guiding him through his life and raising a kid.
01:44 And they weren't ready for this, really.
01:46 And he's having to learn about responsibility.
01:49 And with his great powers come that responsibility.
01:52 So, but yeah, I mean, you know, it's like that parental thing of like,
01:57 you can't be their best friend, but you got to be, you know,
01:59 you got to teach them and guide them.
02:01 But you can still, you know, you can still have a good relationship,
02:06 I guess is what I was trying to say.
02:07 Great sentence, terrible landing.
02:09 Great point, terrible way to end it.
02:11 I didn't go to a screening of that film,
02:14 but the people that sent me videos of their theaters exploding was just overwhelming.
02:20 Who knew that that would, I had no idea that that would happen.
02:22 I knew people liked Tales.
02:23 I knew people loved Sonic, but that universally people were screaming in the theaters.
02:30 Who, I, it was amazing.
02:32 It was so freaking fun.
02:35 I don't know if you can say freaking, but yeah, I said it twice.
02:38 But it was that much fun, you know, like working with Natasha,
02:41 who's an incredible artist in general all around, and to collaborate with her,
02:47 and to just have fun, like that's the juicy part, right?
02:50 Like to leave it all on the table and do all the things that weren't in the script,
02:55 and it made it, and you're like, "Oh, that's cool."
02:58 That's the stuff we live for.
02:59 So for me, that was one of the most exciting parts.
03:03 When I do comedy scenes, I always like liken it to tennis.
03:07 And sometimes it's playing tennis with drapes,
03:10 and you hit the ball and it hits the drape and hits the floor,
03:12 and you got to chase it, and that's a hard joke to make fly.
03:15 But then sometimes you're across from Venus,
03:18 and you get to play, and it's just so much fun.
03:23 Character is so important, and that's just specific to all movies.
03:27 It's not something that's just video game adaptations.
03:31 Whether it's a comic book, a video game, you know, a short story,
03:34 no matter what the source material is, it's always going to come down to character.
03:37 It's always going to come down to the audience falling in love with those characters,
03:41 rooting for them, whatever journey they're going on.
03:43 So it's so important, and we work so hard,
03:46 especially bringing in new characters like Knuckles and Tails in this film,
03:49 that you really are rooting for them and you're invested in them.
03:54 The family too, just to speak to that.
03:55 Like, it got bigger, you know.
03:57 We have Knuckles, we have Tails joining.
04:01 I mean, the family is getting more interesting and more fun and dynamic,
04:06 and I think audiences are really going to enjoy it, and Shemar as well.
04:11 I think the job was more trying not to be too conscious of fabricating anything,
04:17 to try and one-up what we had in the first movie.
04:20 And I think what worked so well in the first movie that ends up working out even better in this one
04:26 is just keeping it authentic between Stone and Robotnik.
04:30 How do they engage with each other?
04:31 How does Stone engage with other people?
04:33 In this day and age, whatever reason we can have,
04:36 because everybody's in their own little rooms and their own little spaces,
04:39 and they got their video chairs and they got their whatever,
04:42 and they're kind of lost in their own little, you know, cliques that they create online or whatever.
04:48 And this is an actual thing that physically pulls families together
04:53 and allows them to sit together and enjoy something in common, you know, which makes me happy, you know.
05:00 And if I can give a little bit of that back to the world, that'd be great.
05:04 Was the Jean-Ralphio line improper? Was that in the script?
05:06 Okay, so what happened was, the reason that happened was we did this scene,
05:10 and so I'm reacting to what's on television, it's a movie,
05:13 and we're trying to find clearances for different films.
05:15 And I did a joke line for like three or four different movies,
05:18 and then in the end we couldn't get them, and it was one of the last things we recorded.
05:22 They're like, "Well, what if we didn't make fun of the movie itself, and what if you just did?"
05:27 And then Jeff and Toby said, "What if you did like Jean-Ralphio's, one of his quotes?"
05:31 And I did it, and I did it in the booth, and they filmed me doing it,
05:33 and they animated it like Sonic doing Jean-Ralphio,
05:36 which means Jean-Ralphio is canon in the Sonic universe?
05:41 Which means Sonic 3 could just be Sonic and Jean-Ralphio saving the world?
05:48 Which I think nobody is asking for.
05:51 But there was one other Jean-Ralphio reference in it,
05:53 there was a "Don't be suspicious" reference,
05:55 and we cut it because we decided that more than one Jean-Ralphio reference
05:58 is way too many Jean-Ralphio references.
06:00 No, never can have too many.
06:02 No.
06:03 Oh my gosh, well we got to do so much cool stuff with this film.
06:06 I mean, when you watch it, it's not going to look like the studio said no to anything,
06:10 which is why it's so great and such a big, fun movie
06:14 that I'm so excited for people to see in a theater on a big screen.
06:18 No, we really got to go big on this one,
06:20 and of course there's stuff that we saved,
06:25 not because it was too big, but just for the story, everything had to fit,
06:29 it had to be right for the story we're telling.
06:32 But there's 30 years of this character, of Sonic,
06:35 and there's so much great material, so yeah, it's exciting that there's so many characters,
06:40 so many storylines to kind of pull from as we continue to kind of craft our movie storyline.
06:45 There's more action, more adventure, and since I have an agent now, there are perks.
06:50 I have four words for you, contractual chili dog breaks.
06:55 Say what?
06:57 I put a little tremola on there, but I'm definitely in the wrong key.
07:03 You're unskilled.
07:06 Untrained.
07:09 Unworthy.
07:15 You forgot one.
07:17 Unstoppable.
07:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]