Our favorite bad guys are back with a great balance of comedy and emotional depth in The Bad Guys 2.
In the new action-packed chapter from DreamWorks Animation’s acclaimed comedy smash, the crackerjack crew of animal outlaws, our now-reformed Bad Guys are trying (very, very hard) to be good, but instead find themselves hijacked into a high-stakes, globe-trotting heist, masterminded by a new team of criminals they never saw coming: The Bad Girls.
We talk space and second chances, perception and getting the whole gang back together again with director Pierre Perifel.
Interviewed for Family Entourage
Family Entourage: We so loved getting to see the Bad Guys sequel! My son was even pointing out direct references from the book, and of course he loved the space exploration, so it kind of made me think, how do you know where to bring those book pages to screen and where to expand on the storyline?
Pierre Perifel: Honestly, it’s gut feeling a lot of it is that, I mean, we wanted obviously to continue the story from the first one. Just take it from, we left it at the end of the first film. Just explore from there thematically and in terms of adventures. But honestly, it’s all about what do I want to see on screen? Wanted to see some really cool set pieces, some really cool action happening. And then from the books we were like, oh, this is such a good gag. I want to use this because I know my son loves it. I love it. It makes me laugh. Alright, let’s try and use this. And these characters are super fun. I love these animals. I want to just design them and I want to see them just, okay, let’s bring them in. And then all of a sudden you have a bunch of little elements that you’re like, how can we cobble them together? So it’s going to make a story that’s compelling and follow what we established on the first film. And then you start building a structure. But yeah, it is really just cherry picking the stuff that makes your heart sing a little bit. And then at the end of the day, it’s just like, honestly, just while you’re making it, if you’re not having fun making it, then do you think the audience is going to have fun? No. So that was the goal. Let’s us have fun as a team and then let’s the audience experience it.
FE: Well, I think you definitely achieved that because the bad guys does such a great job of blending comedy with emotional depth. And so let’s go there a little bit. I loved that it dealt with this idea of perception of others versus truth of self. Do I welcome or become whatever “they” think I should be or do I aspire to be who I want to be? So talk to me a little bit about that theme, it’s deep, but it’s so good.
PP: It is deep. It is, I think something that resonates with everyone really. It is baked a little bit in the DNA of the books and DNA of the first female as well, because it’s not a coincidence that we chose these characters and we decided to put them in the world of humans. They’re really like these pariah ostracized characters. We wrote stories about them. We’re afraid of them. Why? Because they look different. But it’s a wolf. I mean, a wolf is a nice animal and it’s just like, and a shock as well. We’re afraid of all these animals for what reason? Exactly. It could be dangerous, but honestly you can just cross the street and it’s 10 times more dangerous than swimming in the ocean. Anyway, I think that’s the point of it’s baked in the DNA. We just label these animals and then Mr. Wolfs in the first movie decides to break those labels and just become somebody else in the eyes of society and tries as hard as he can to rewrite his story.
And I think it’s so relatable as an audience who really want him to succeed because he’s a good guy deep down, he wants to be seen as who he really is and not who people think he is, but then he does it, pays his views, go to jail, thinks he’s going to be off the hook, and then he comes back out in society, which is a cool, so the idea of what is the life of an ex-con society? Very tricky. And now we are going into the nuance of how do you juggle this? People don’t change their mind from one day to the other. There’s lingering mistrust for them and they’re struggling to get accepted again, and they didn’t expect it to happen. And now it’s all about doubt and it’s all about, did I make the right choice? Because now what’s the point? I’m never going to change their mind. They’re never going to change who they think I am and is ready to give up, but hope is there. And then if you keep hoping that things are going to get better and just really push so that your action line up with who you really want to be, then you’re going to succeed.
FE: And then of course it all hinges on getting that initial voice cast back together, all of them that we love. And you were able to accomplish that. And I loved even understanding that they did some group recording sessions. Talk to me a little bit about what those rooms look like.
PP: You can only imagine what they look like with a cast like this. I mean, these people are amazing, first of all, in amazing talent, amazing artists, great actors, all of them, great comedians, but also really genuinely good people that love to be together, love to be recording together, just know each other also intimately outside of their jobs and even outside of the movie, they know each other and they love spending time together. And so what happened really was during the first movie, we did the movie during COVID, which opened a little bit of the tech where we could, we record have one artist in London, one in New York, one in la, and then recording them all together through Zoom session and be like, oh my God, this is super fluid. And they can interact and they can almost, they’re not in the same room, but at least they can bounce off of each other’s lines in a much more natural and fluid way. And we are like, this is so cool. Can we reiterate that and do that in person, or not in person actually necessarily, but in the second one and expand on it because it brings so much naturalism to the performances. And so we wanted to do that and we did it as much as we could. And they love it because they’re actors and they’re used to play with somebody else against them.
The Bad Guys 2 in theatres on August 1
