Sonic 3’s incredible laser dance sequence was all Jim Carrey’s idea, of course

One of the standout moments of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 sees Jim Carrey pulling double duty as two Doctors Robotnik — Ivo and his grandfather Gerald — merrily dancing their way through a classic Hollywood trope: the laser security grid. That sequence was not only technically challenging to pull off, Sonic 3 director Jeff Fowler tells Polygon, it was a scene proposed by Carrey himself — which sure sounds like a thing Jim Carrey would do.

“In our early conversations, it was one of Jim’s requests,” Fowler recalls. “In the first [Sonic the Hedgehog movie], there’s a moment where Robotnik is in his lab, and thinks he’s by himself. He puts on some music [“Where Evil Grows” by the Poppy Family] and he just starts dancing. He has a little dance party, and then he gets interrupted by [his assistant] Stone. And so Jim wanted to dance again. Of course, we had to not just have him dance, we had to go big, and really go for it.”

Carrey even requested the song that was ultimately used in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, The Chemical Brothers’ “Galvanize.”

“We immediately brought in these amazing choreographers and this dance team,” Fowler said. “Of course, Jim wanted to do everything he could, but there was no way he could do everything, especially since he’s dancing with himself. So there’s always going to need to be another human in there dancing with him that would then become a face replacement down the line.”

Fowler said that making the double Robotnik dancing scene work was a challenge, based on the dozens of lasers bouncing off their laser-resistant-suited bodies. “We very quickly learned that the more we threw in there, the harder it became to understand their movement,” Fowler said. “So it was very much trial and error, just what’s the right amount of lasers to create these really fun silhouettes and geometric patterns with the way the lasers were reflecting off their bodies.”

Fowler called the short but memorable sequence — which, surprisingly, does not goof on the infamously leering laser-trap scene featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment — “a lot of work from a lot of people.”

“But it’s such a standout thing,” the director said. “I think we’ve all seen sequences with laser grids and lattices where people are having to navigate them. But the idea of just dancing right through it — it was so Jim Carrey, so perfect, and just really fun to execute.”