It’s been five years since a bunch of animated singing Emperor penguins stole our hearts. But tonight, Mumble and the gang return to the screen with HAPPY FEET TWO! With new characters and stunning 3D, it’s a sequel that stands very well on its own.
Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, MODERN FAMILY’s Sofia Vergara, and Alicia Moore (P!nk) are the newbies to join the penguin alumnae of actors like Elijah Wood and Robin Williams. Time around, Mumble’s son Erik (Ava Acres) has the opposite problem that his dad had: he’s afraid to dance! And yes, little Erik’s voice and animation will melt your heart.
The Mag got the chance to sit in on a roundtable with HAPPY FEET and HAPPY FEET 2 director George Miller! Here’s a recap of what he told us about making the film, working with the actors, and why you shouldn’t hold your breath for a HAPPY FEET THREE:
On making the HAPPY FEET 2 sequel…
GM: The first film took so long to make (4 years) that as we were coming into the last year we started to formulate a story because you live with these characters for so long. We even had ideas for scenes, like the elephant seals singing “Rawhide”, which came out of the first movie. As shots were being finished there’d be a big cheer and someone would push a button and “Rawhide” would come on. One time it came up against the scene of the elephant seals and I thought immediately “Ah, we’ve got to have that scene in the movie!” So those things accumulate and if they earn their place in the movie, they usually end up there. That’s never happened to me before. I’ve never been working on a film and already been thinking of the next one. I cannot think of any story to tell from this movie. A lot of people are suggesting doing a spinoff of the krill [voiced by Matt Damon and Brad Pitt]…
On Happy Feet 3?
GM: Not at this moment. I’ve got another [film] to do that I’ve been wanting to do for a decade and we can get that going now.
On doing it in 3D…
GM: I’ve always loved 3D. Now we’ve got really good 3D. We rendered three of the scenes in 3D on the first Happy Feet but didn’t have the time or the money to do it. And when I saw the scenes, I realized the whole landscape was sensational. And the characters were much more palpable. So I’m just absolutely thrilled to shoot in 3D. It’s the way I shoot anyway; I move the camera a lot in space with wide angle lenses and that’s perfect in 3D.
On the pressure of a sequel…
GM: I feel the pressure at large of getting a film out there and that it gets to be as creamy an experience as it possibly can; that it flows and somehow takes the audience on some wave of experience. That’s the pressure; just the pressure of trying to make it as well as you can. Once it’s done, you put it out there and there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is just wait and see what happens. That’s why I haven’t seen the film completed yet. I’ve seen the layers, but never altogether, I’ve not seen it in front of an audience. But I’m going to wait for about a week or two because I know I’ll want to change something. And you can’t do that!
On recording the actors’ voices together…
GM: Coming from live action, I’m very aware that acting is a contact sport. Really fine actors love nothing more than to work off each other. As Robin Williams described it, it’s a kind of jazz; you’re really riffing off each other. So you get much more rewarding material by having actors work off each other, providing they know the boundary conditions and they’re free to play with them… So we had all the actors together that were interacting in scenes. Even the casting of Will and Bill; we wanted two actors who knew each other who were friends. And it just happened that Matt [Damon] and Brad [Pitt] were available at the same time in the same city and for enough time to do it. And we just put them across the room with each other on mikes and it was much more alive; it’s kind of sad to see an actor with a piece of paper! And they love it much more.
The best improvised line that came out of the multi-miked actors…
GM: The one I most remember was when the little kid says “that’s not healthy”. And one of the sound recorders said to this little boy, “When we finish this take, we can have some ice cream”. And he said “that’s not healthy!” It was nothing to do with the story and we thought “that sounds great, we’ll put it in!” That’s the one I most remember. But Robin Williams…Hank Azaria, great improviser…Elijah Wood’s really good at improvising…it’s not so much the lines themselves, I can’t specifically remember, but it’s more the interplay between them. Stuff like when Lovelace walks out at the very end and he says “One nation Mumbo…”. I described the scene to Robin and he just says “Ready?” and just does it straight away. So that’s the stuff they give you; they’re fantastic people.
Thank you, George Miller! Don’t miss HAPPY FEET 2 as it opens tonight!
Photo’s courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures