One of the standout moments of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 sees Jim Carrey as two Doctors Robotnik – Ivo and his grandfather Gerald – doing double duty and merrily dancing through a classic Hollywood theme: the laser security grid. This sequence was not only technically challenging to implement, Sonic3 Director Jeff Fowler tells Polygon that it was a scene suggested by Carrey himself – which certainly sounds like something Jim Carrey would do.
“In our early conversations, it was one of Jim’s requests,” Fowler recalls. “In the first one [Sonic the Hedgehog movie]There is a moment when Robotnik is in his lab and thinks he is alone. He makes music [“Where Evil Grows” by the Poppy Family] and he just starts dancing. He's having a little dance party and then someone interrupts him [his assistant] Stone. And so Jim wanted to dance again. Of course, we not only had to let him dance, but we had to go big and really go for it.”
“We immediately brought in these amazing choreographers and dance team,” Fowler said. “Of course Jim wanted to do everything he could, but there was no way he could do everything, especially because he was dancing with himself. So there always has to be another person who dances with him and who later becomes a replacement for his face.”
Fowler said it was a challenge to make the double Robotnik dance scene work, as dozens of lasers would reflect off their bodies clad in laser protective suits. “We learned very quickly that the more we threw in, the harder it became to understand their movement,” Fowler said. “So it was a lot of trial and error trying to figure out the right amount of laser to create these really fun silhouettes and geometric patterns through the way the lasers reflected off their bodies.”
