Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble

 Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble  is an 2011 American live-action CGI animated hybrid action film that is a sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog the Movie and is based off the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Being the fourth film in the Sega Cinematic Universe, the film is directed by Brad Bird and produced by Peter Liguori and Sonic co-creator Naoto Ohshima with a screeplay by Kevin Williamson. Taking place two years after the first film, Robotnik escapes from prison and creates Mecha Sonic Mark II and Metal Sonic to help dominate the world again while Sonic, Jeff, and the others try to stop them as they find out that there were eight Chaos Emeralds and seven of them can give you unlimited power, while Robotnik also plans to launch a space station, the Death Egg. The film stars Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington, Michael Cera, Robert Pattinson, Christina Ricci, Charlie Day, Tim Curry, and Mark Hamill.

In 2007, a unknown Fox employee leaked a contract for the first film online, with the contract stating that if the film was a box-office success, there would be sequels. That Fox employee was later fired, but when the first film grossed $644 million on a budget of $207 million, Sega and 20th Century Studios announced the development of a second movie. Production studios from there such as Marza Animation Planet and Blur Studio worked on the film for animation while 20th Century Studios' 20th Century Animation also did the animation. Walden Media also did executive producing. Mark Hamill was announced to be apart of the film in March 2009, and others such as Tom Kenny and Seth Green were announced.

Spike Lee did not return to work on other projects, and Bird took his place. Kyle Balda and Joel Coen served as co-directors for the film. Mark Hamill voiced Mecha Sonic in this film as Bird though Hamill's voice was "perfect" for Mecha Sonic. Production started in October 2008. The film was originally titled Sonic Rangers, but after nearly the whole project getting deleted, the film was scrapped and reworked into Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble, which its teaser poster was seen at E3 2009. Production restarted on July 8, 2009 with a release date for June 2011. Filming lasted from February to May 2010 and had its first teaser trailer released in November 2009.

Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble was released on June 23, 2011 for Sonic's 20th anniversary and received mixed reviews, compared to the first film, with critics praising the animation, acting, visual effects, and the return of Mecha Sonic since Sonic and Knuckles, but the screenplay, despite being an improvement, runtime, and mostly "bad" jokes and filler were criticized. Despite this, the film grossed $823 million on a budget of $211 million, making it the fourth highest grossing film of 2010. Although in recent years, Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble has received better critical reception, especially from fans of the franchise. A sequel titled, Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos was released in 2013.

Plot
On September 29, 2010 in an Albanian prison, Doctor Ivo Robotnik (Bruce Willis) is serving his life sentence in the prison. Then, he is freed by his robotic assistant, Egg Robo (Gary A. Hecker), who brings him back to his place, 30 miles away and 13 miles deep. The Death Egg is in progress. Meanwhile, Jeff Balkiry (Michael Cera) and his parents (Alec Baldwin and Jennifer Saunders) move to Queens Village where Jeff gets a job at I.S. 109. His grandpa Edward (Danny DeVito) joins them. In New York City, General Thomas Mackerel (Denzel Washington), Grant Svenson (Charlie Day), and Chloe Sanchez (Christina Ricci) are located in Area 55. New York City is being attacked by a giant robot and his tiny robotic sidekicks. Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Shadow attack the tiny robots while Sonic destroys the big one. It is revealed that Robotnik has escaped and is building the Death Egg. They head to Albania but are attacked by a giant badnik and later head back to Area 55. Robotnik has found out that before the sixth Chaos Emerald was destroyed, there were eight emeralds, with two of them being found and five of them being located at Area 55. Sonic and the others including General Mackerel find out that there were eight Chaos Emeralds on the island until one of them was destroyed, making it seven. Sanchez points out that the emeralds were filled with unlimited power, able to turn a normal being into a super god.

Robotnik sends out with Egg Robo to go to Point Nemo to revive Metal Sonic (Tim Curry). They are able to revive Metal and build a new robot. After several tries, they finish their robot Mecha Sonic Mk. II (Mark Hamill). Robotnik‘s plan is to lure Sonic into a trap by kidnapping Jeff, and they are able to track him down. Jeff's parents go out and after that, he and his grandfather are kidnapped by Egg Robo, Scratch, and Grounder (Phil Hayes and Garry Chalk). Sonic and the gang find out about this and set out to rescue them. Jeff and his grandpa are taken to a warehouse with Robotnik in it and they plan experiments on it and Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles free Jeff while Shadow and Amy free his grandpa. Sonic has a battle with Metal Sonic, Mecha Sonic, Egg Robo, Scratch and Grounder in the forest but is knocked unconscious by Mecha. Sonic is captured and worldwide locations are taken over by badniks. The only people remaining are Jeff, Edward, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Shadow left, so they plot a plan to free Sonic. Sonic is taken to Robotnik’s base and tortured there to reveal where the Chaos Emeralds are, but Sonic refuses to speak.

Jeff and the gang go to get help from the Chaotix consisting of Vector, Charmy, and Espio. They help them on their journey and give them hints on a walke talkie. Robotnik prepares to launch the Death Egg and before that gives an announcement where he announces the launch of the Death Egg and blows up Venus, showing how powerful he is. President of the United Federations, Broadie Allen plans to capture Robotnik and give him the death sentence.

Mackerel and Allen have a talk with each other and both share their plans to capture him. Jeff, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Shadow see this and know where to go. The Death Egg is launched into orbit with Robotnik’s Egg Fleet in the sky. Jeff and the gang end up in a ice area not in Albania where they are chased by Robotnik's badniks. They all infiltrate the Fleet while Shadow and Amy destroy the badniks. Amy is caught by an intelligent badnik and they all make a run for it. Jeff and his grandpa help the gang defeat badniks. Meanwhile in the Death Egg, Sonic is hung below in a cage dangling over a pit of lava with the Papa Chao, Angel Chao, normal Chao, Dark Chao, and several other Chaos. Sonic frees himself from the cage and destroys badniks all around the Death Egg and sneaks around, seeing Robotnik’s plans to send his badniks and Mecha Sonic to the underworld deep within the bottom of the ocean.

Robotnik sends Mecha Sonic Mk. II and Metal Sonic back down to Earth in order to get the other five Chaos Emeralds to make the Death Egg supercharged. They both track down the Chaos Emeralds and break into Area 55 to get it, succeeding and going to the Death Egg's core to power it up, making it supercharged. Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, Jeff, and his grandpa escape the Egg Fleet and manage to make it blow up, destroying all badniks on there. Tails' massive Tornado 2, which can also turn into a mech robot for Tails to shoot on. They all arrive to the Death Egg and start shooting at badniks, looking for Sonic. Jeff and his grandpa go to save Sonic, and they end up finding him within the Death Egg, managing to save him from near death. Sonic reunites with Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Shadow and Robotnik sends Metal Sonic to fight them all off.

Getting defeated by Tails' Tornado 2 mech, Metal Sonic and Sonic both fight each other while Robotnik assembles his Death Egg Robot to fight off Knuckles, Amy, and Shadow and the others. Mecha Sonic later grabs the emeralds from the Death Egg's core and uses it to become Mecha Overlord. Metal Sonic uses half of the emeralds to turn into Super Metal Sonic, a slightly powerful version of himself. Sonic is beaten up ruthlessly by Mecha Overlord and Super Metal Sonic but is able to get to the Chaos Emeralds before they could obliterate him, turning him into Super Sonic, like Sanchez had said earlier. Super Sonic defeats Mecha Overlord and Super Metal Sonic and is also able to defeat the Death Egg Robot, slashing off its arm. The Death Egg's core is destroyed and it starts to fall down back to Earth. Egg Robo, Scratch and Grounder head into an escape pod back down to Earth and Metal Sonic follows too, breaking one of the escape pods.

Turning back into normal, Sonic escapes with the others but finds out there is one escape pod left because Metal sabotaged it. Mecha Sonic, barley surviving Super Sonic's attack, tackles him to the ground, and the eacape pod with Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, Jeff, and his grandpa escape, leaving Sonic in the falling Death Egg. Sonic and Mecha Sonic have a final battle in the Death Egg even when it falls down to Earth and it lands in the ocean. They have a long battle as the Death Egg continues down the ocean, and is sucked in by a wormhole. Sonic kills Mecha Sonic and sets the Death Egg on a 60-second self destruction course. As The Death Egg enters the underworld, Sonic is able to use the broken escape pod to escape, and is hurdled back to space when the Death Egg is blown up.

Back on Earth, Jeff, Edward, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow and all of the Chao all worry about Sonic on a boat rode by an unknown person. Sonic's escape pod comes up near by and they investigate it to see him unconscious. Sonic soon wakes up and celebrate the destruction of the Death Egg. Jeff thanks Sonic for saving him and they all go back to shore. All seven Chaos Emeralds merge together and form into the Master Emerald, with Knuckles swears with his life to guard. In a post-credits scene, Broadie Allen and Mackerel give Noble Peace Prize awards to Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Shadow as well as Jeff too.

Cast

 * Bruce Willis as Doctor Ivo Robotnik, a mad scientist genius who revives Mecha Sonic Mk. II and Metal Sonic and launches his space station, the Death Egg.
 * Denzel Washington as General Thomas Mackerel, the military general of Area 51, now moved over to New York City, and called Area 55.
 * Michael Cera as Jeff Balkiry, a 19 year old boy who works at a middle school and is friends with Sonic and the others.
 * Danny DeVito as Edward Balkiry, Jeff's grandpa who owns a lab in his basement and makes money off his new inventions.
 * Bob Odenkirk as President Broadie Allen, the president of the United Federations, who resides in Central City.
 * Charlie Day as Grant Svenson, a computer tech at Area 55 who is married to Chloe Sanchez who also works with him.
 * Christina Ricci as Chloe Sanchez, Mackerel’s assistant at Area 55 and the wife of Svenson.
 * Jennifer Saunders as Hillary Balkiry, Jeff's mother.
 * Alec Baldwin as Arnold Balkiry, Jeff's father.
 * Mandy Patinkin as Principal Michael Danvers, the principal of I.S. 109, the school that Jeff works at.
 * Skyler Gisondo as Timothy Beckett, A 11 year old kid who is Jeff's former neighbor, until he moved.

Voices

 * Robert Pattinson as Sonic the Hedgehog, a blue anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who can run very fast.
 * Pattinson also voices Shadow the Hedgehog
 * Mark Hamill as Mecha Sonic Mark II, another robotic copy of Sonic, created after Robotnik was freed from prison.
 * Idris Elba as Knuckles the Echidna, a red echidna with boxing gloves who is the strongest of the group.
 * Emma Stone as Amy Rose, a pink hedgehog with her piko-piko hammer who has a crush on Sonic.
 * Anna Faris as Miles "Tails" Prower, a smart fox with two tails who invents gadgets and can fly. He creates a new biplane called the Tornado 2 which can also transform into a mech.
 * Faris also voices Charmy the Bee, a bee who is part of the Chaotix Detective Agency.
 * Tim Curry as Metal Sonic, the first robotic copy of Sonic, teaming up with Robotnik and Mecha Sonic.
 * Tom Kenny as Vector the Crocodile, the leader of the Chaotix Detective Agency and the most mature out of them all.
 * Seth Green as Espio the Chameleon, a chameleon who is also a member of the Chaotix Detective Agency.
 * Gary A. Hecker as Egg Robo, Robotnik's robotic henchman.
 * Phil Hayes and Garry Chalk as Scratch and Grounder, Robotnik’s two dimwitted badniks. Hayes and Chalk reprise their roles from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon.
 * The Chao are voiced by several celebrities and voice actors, including:
 * Dick Van Dyke as Papa Chao, the leader of the Chao clan.
 * Elsie Fisher as Angel Chao, the angellic and kind-hearted Chao.
 * Seth Rogen as Normal Chao, the regular and blue Chao.
 * Dan Castellaneta as Dark Chao, the evil, dangerous, and reckless Chao.
 * Ryō Hirashi as all the other normal Chaos. Hirashi, along with Hayes and Chalk, are the only people to reprise their roles in this film.
 * Frank Welker, Gary A. Hecker and Dee Bradley Baker as Robotnik's badniks.

Cameos

 * Silver Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 makes a cameo in a flashback Robotnik has.

Development
In April 2007, one year before Sonic the Hedgehog the Movie was released, a contract by Sega and 20th Century Studios was leaked by an anonymous Fox employee. The contract said that if the film was a box-office success, then it would be renewed for a sequel. After this, Sega denied any proof of the contract and the Fox employee was later fired. Although in early 2008, Fox president Peter Liguori said in an interview: "If the film is a success, we make a sequel, say $300 million, we make a sequel. But, if we gross $500 million or more, then boom. We're rich." A Sega spokesperson replied "We people at Sega and Fox are planning to make movies based off our games. So stay tuned."

When Sonic the Hedgehog the Movie was released on June 23, 2008 in time for Sonic's 17th birthday, it was both a critical and commercial success, grossing $644 million at the box-office against its budget of $207 million. In July of the same year, Sega announced development on a Super Monkey Ball film was announced and slated for release in 2010, with a Shenmue movie announced to be released the next year, as well as a Sonic the Hedgehog sequel in 2010, under the title of Sonic the Hedgehog II. James L. Brooks did not return for the film to write the script, being replaced by Kevin Williamson. Williamson created a much more friendlier version of the film unlike the first film, where it had a lot more swear words, removing most of the edginess.

Brad Bird came back on the film as director without Spike Lee, who was busy working on other projects. Co-directors of the film were announced, being Joel Coen of the Coen brothers who also co-directed the first film, and Kyle Balda, in his feature directorial debut. Bird, Williamson, as well as former Sega workers Yuji Naka and former Sega of America president Tom Kalinske came on board as executive producers. Sonic co-creator Naoto Ohshima and Liguori also had major involvement in the movie as producers.

Sonic Rangers
An early draft of the movie made by Williamson was titled Sonic Rangers, a much more different script then the final version of Triple Trouble. Williamson let go of many of the swear words from the first movie and most of the edginess, keeping most of the edgy. Sonic Rangers would have focused on Sonic, Jeff, and his friends stopping Robotnik after he plans to destroy Planet Earth with Metal Sonic and his badniks, and his plan to rule planet Mars. The Death Egg was still going to be in the film, but a character intended to be in the film was Terios the Hedgehog. Terios the Hedgehog was originally going to be in Sonic Adventure 2, but was scrapped in favor of Shadow. Terios came from Mars and planned to destroy Earth, and Williamson intended to have Robert De Niro voice Terios. Filming of Sonic Rangers commenced on December 7, 2008 and finished on April 1, 2009 in time for April Fools day and animation was being worked on soon after.

Sega and Fox and crew and cast members on the film would remind Sonic fans and press of the progress of the film, as well as pictures and even a ten second teaser trailer released, having fans get hyped. Sega announced the film for a release date of June 28, 2010, but was later delayed to July 3. Robert De Niro finished his voice lines and so did the cast of characters including Robert Pattinson. The person in charge of cinematography was John Schwartzman and editor of the movie was Michael Brahn, editing stuff such as explosions and explosions on Robotnik's badniks, including the motobugs, buzzbombers, and some new badniks from other games. Brahn spent two months editing Sonic Rangers and one month editing the Triple Trouble movie.

The draft was originally going to be used, but development issues rose. In 2009, Sonic Rangers was 79% completed, when the animation was nearly done and filming was finished, being made by Marza Animation Planet and Blur Studio. Work on the film was nearly done, but in June, the entire progress of the film was lost when an unknown worker on the film accidentally typed in a delete command code "/Brinf/rm -j -l" on a computer where the entire film and CGI animation, including the live-action settings and characters was on there, every single file. The film's co-director Kyle Balda noticed the files of the movie getting deleted and quickly shut down the file servers, but 97% of the work on the film had been deleted. They called backup department to add the backup to their computers, however the backups hadn't been working for a week before the incident. Tom Kalinske, the film's executive producer, described the incident as happening like this. The employee who typed in the delete code was never found out.

After that, news about Sonic Rangers ' deletion spread throughout the entire Sonic fandom. Fans became worried if the film would get cancelled and Sonic the Hedgehog the Movie would never get a sequel. A petition to get Sonic Rangers back on production was started by user Sonicjake_149 garnered worldwide attention and got 317,104 signatures. There was a meeting with Fox employees at Sega of America discussing the future of Sonic Rangers. They discussed whether they should delay it to 2011, finish the entire film nearly from scratch, or cancel the film altogether. At the board meeting, Kalinske and Bird thought of the first idea. They would delay the film to June 2011 for Sonic’s 20th anniversary and rework the film into a new title, scrapping everything. Sega and Fox executives approved of the idea. In that same week, they announced that because of the film's deletion and they would be reworking Sonic Rangers into the newly titled Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble, featuring three antagonists of Robotnik and Metal Sonic, and the new antagonist, Mecha Sonic Mark II from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic Rangers was "thrown into the garbage."

Right during the development of Sonic Rangers before it was deleted, Michael Cera and Christina Ricci revealed in an interview in 2012 that some people did not like working on the movie, because of how long the time set was. The original Sonic Rangers was supposed to be three hours and four minutes. Because of this, it led to unsafe working habits, such as some cast and crew members smoking and even a crew member getting fired for getting drunk on set. Bird and others had barley been able to sleep, including Kevin Williamson who had spent four weeks writing the script for the movie until, it was cancelled. Eventually, Robert De Niro left the project in mid 2009.

Story
"After Sonic Rangers died, Kevin [Willamson] was working on Scream 4, and because of this, he had two weeks to write this movie before he could start writing Scream 4 which is pretty hard to do as a screenwriter so I gotta give props to him. Kevin was done with 13% of the script when he left, so me and Ethan [Coen] finished it for him and we included elements from Sonic Rangers like the Death Egg, Super Sonic, Scratch and Grounder from that one Sonic Show, and some others."

- Brad Bird

The story of Sonic Rangers would have focused on Sonic and his friends teaming up to stop Robotnik and Terios from destroying the Earth and ruling Mars. Of course after the film was deleted by the unknown Fox employee, Williamson had to come up with a different story. Williamson had two weeks to write the entirety of Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble before going to write the first draft of Scream 4. However, Williamson was not able to finish the script in time, but Bird and co-director Ethan Coen finished the rest of the script for Williamson, doing uncredited rewrites. Coen and Williamson were credited as the only writers on the film, with Bird being credited for re-writer. During the writing process, Bird and Ethan watched the first film 10 times in a row to understand everything about it and include some elements from it.

They also called Spike Lee from last time, who did an uncredited scene rewrite, to help them do another rewrite as well. Lee originally declined, but came back to write four pages of the script and later left and was paid $250,000. Lee remained uncredited but in the 2021, 10th anniversary director's commentary, Bird and Coen confirmed this. Balda wrote in the opening scene of Egg Robo freeing Robotnik from prison. Originally, the scene opened with Robotnik already escaped and him and Egg Robo creating Mecha Sonic Mk. II and reviving Metal Sonic, but Balda called it stupid and scrapped it in favor of a much more action-orientated fast paced opening scene. There was a scene of the prison catching on fire, but it was later removed for unlnown reasons.

The Death Egg from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was obviously inspired by the Death Star from the Star Wars franchise, so they both paid homage by killing off the Death Egg in the same matter as the Death Star from the original Star Wars movie. Scratch and Grounder, two fan-favorites from the 1993 TV show Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog were bought back as comic relief characters, as well as giving the Egg Robo his design from Sonic and Knuckles. Bird and Coen included elements from many other Sonic games, more importantly the Chaos Emeralds. To fill in a plot hole of turning Sonic into Super Sonic, they filled it in by saying that there were eight Chaos Emeralds. Bird originally asked for James L. Brooks to write the screenplay with them, but Brooks declined. Williamson's script was officially completed in three weeks.

Animation and visual effects
Marza Animation Planet and 20th Century Animation also teamed up once again to create the CGI and visual effects for the characters, badniks, and other events in the movie. This time, the both of them were joined by Blur Studio, another animation company that is owned by Sega. When designing Sonic for the movie, animation directors Brent Forrest and Ito Akira both said they had the animators slightly change Sonic’s design by making his quills longer and have his body be one inch taller then he was last time, making his height from 3'3 to 3'4. Bird was in charge of watching the animation and layouts while also filming the live action shots, Coen was in charge of storyboards, and Balda was in charge of the deadlines for certain animated scenes. Blur Studio had the most involvement in the movie, with 20th Century Animation having the least involvement due to work on other movies they were working on.

The process of animation took four months to complete, much shorter then the time to complete the animation for the first film. This is mainly because of the fact that the film is 119 minutes long, 10+ minutes shorter then the first movie. Blur Studio, Marza Animation, and 20th Century Animation wanted to make the Chaotix very detailed when animating them. Charmy's fur is realistic but not too realistic, because Forrest and Akira did not want the characters to "end up looking ugly." Bird agreed with Akira and Forrest's decision because of the Alvin and the Chipmunks' movie reception, especially the second movie. The animators were all paid $1 million for their work on the movie. This was more allowed because of the slightly higher budget of the movie. After finding out that they had to animate the CGI and visual effects all over again after Sonic Rangers was cancelled, most animators were mad and quit after, requiring most of them to be replaced.

One aspect the animators found challenging was the Death Egg. The animators looked at previous instances of the Death Egg, especially from Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and they even got inspiration from the Death Egg II from Sonic the Fighters and the Space Colony ARK from Sonic Adventure 2. To make the Death Egg realistic as possible, instead of re-creating it as large as it was, they hired british sculptor Willard Wigan to create a five foot full-scale model of the Death Egg, which according to Wigan took three months to make. Many of the shots of the Death Egg were up close in Robotnik's lair in Albania and its take off into space above the earth but many scenes with the Death Egg were made with CGI, such as its explosion. The team took inspiration from the inside of the Death Egg from Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

As animation was almost done for the movie, it had to be delayed by one week in order to fix a bug in the animation with Knuckles' boxing gloves with his actual hands glitching out of the glove, but this was fixed in four days luckily and the production resumed on track. Animation lasted for four months and was finished in October 2010.

Inital reception
Upon release in October 2010, Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble received mixed reviews from critics and audiences. They praised its CGI animation, visual effects, acting, and improved writing, but criticized the runtime, filler, and some aspects of the writing. On the Wayback Machine, it is shown in 2015, the film had a 41% approval rating on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. Its critical consenus read "Triple Trouble is deeply inferior to the first movie in a lot of ways." On Metacritic the film still has a score of 43 out of 100, indicating "mixed or average reviews." CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a score of "B" on an A+ to F scale. Many people considered it inferior to the first film, and criticized the rushed pacing of the movie.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two and a half stars out of four and said in his review: "First one, very good. Second one? It's not bad, but it is not good either." Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times said "The story is very rushed and the jokes are bland and uninspired. Very step down in quality, despite the amazing CGI and visual effects." Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers gave the movie two stars out of five, criticizing it for the rushed plot and forced in-new characters such as Broadie Allen. A review from the Empire states that the film did not bring them any interest. However, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly praised the film for its stunning visuals, amazing music, great characters and CGI, and also praised the writing of Williamson.

Recent reception
In recent years, Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble has received more favorable reviews over time since its release. Fans of Sonic have considered it one of the greatest films of all time, some critics too. The reception with critics on the movie has also changed. Triple Trouble went from a 41% to a 58% on Rotten Tomatoes, with its consenus now reading: "Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble is a fairly decent film, which is a great follow-up to a great film for fans." Screen Rant has ranked the film #4 on its Top 10 Underrated Movies list.