MANILA, Philippines - After a frenetic chase through the streets of Monte Carlo, the Zoosters and the rest of the gang narrowly escape DuBois. Their one goal is to find a place to hide quick, or Alex will become a wall ornament. With mere seconds to spare, they stumble upon a traveling circus train. Could there possibly be a better place to hide and move, undetected, through Europe?
Just as Alex is the de facto leader of the Zoosters, Vitaly, the tiger, is the top cat in the Circus Zaragosa. Unlike Alex, however, Vitaly is bitter, irritable and depressed, half the tiger he used to be after an accident during one of his breathtaking signature performances.
Bryan Cranston explains how he approached portraying the tiger that lost his roar: “Vitaly’s not a bad guy. In fact, he’s got a great heart. He’s just had a rough time of it lately. It was important for me to capture and convey both his aggression and his ‘humanity,’ if you will. Working with the three directors was great fun because even though we started with the script, they gave me the freedom to go off script, to throw out a couple of different versions of the scene — and they did that with all the actors. They made us feel that we could do no wrong.”
Also on board the train are two other circus stars, Stefano, an Italian sea lion and Gia, an exotic Italian jaguar. The kind-hearted Stefano wants to help the Zoosters right away.
Martin Short portrays the sea lion: “What I love about Stefano is that he’s a compassionate and lovely fellow, very Bernini -esque. He speaks with a passion. When you’re playing a character — let alone an animated one — with a wide range of emotions such as Stefano has, there’s a lot of improvising and for me, that’s always fun. I did work with a dialogue coach, though. I wanted to get the accent just right.”
Gia, a bit wary of the Zoosters at fi rst, is won over when Alex and the gang convince them that they, too, are “circus.”
Jessica Chastain brings Gia to life:“I liked playing Gia because she has a very big heart but at the same time she’s also fi ercely protective of her circus family.”
She adds, “Working in animation has been a completely new experience for me. There’s something so freeing about being in front of a microphone and thinking, ‘I’m playing an Italian jaguar.’ Where in my life would I ever transform enough to play an Italian jaguar?”
As the train pulls out of the station making its way to Rome, the Zoosters jump on board and learn that the circus is ultimately headed to New York — their dream come true! — provided the performers can impress an American promoter in London. But it doesn’t take long for Alex, Marty, Melman and Gloria to discover that… the Circus Zaragosa needs lots of help.
What do you do when the star of your show suddenly loses confidence in his abilities? You start losing yours. At least that’s what happened to the performers of Circus Zaragoza after Vitaly’s bravery took a backseat.
A disastrous performance in Rome convinces Alex that the circus troupe is need of an intervention — and reinvention — if they are to have any real chance of getting back home to New York.
And reinvent it they do. Though the fi lmmakers found enjoyment in creating scenarios that had the Zoosters interacting with the human world, director Eric Darnell says, “There’s plenty of humor in the idea of an all-animal circus, which is what Alex has in mind.”
Ben Stiller puts it this way: “The circus animals stopped taking risks.
Alex has this brainstorm that the way to reinvent the show — to differentiate it from all others — is to reignite the performers’ zeal, which they’ve lost. He tells them, ‘We don’t need humans because we’ve got passion,’ then he uses his imagination and experience to pull it off.”
The fi lmmakers pulled out all the stops when they created the movie’s new and improved “Good Circus” sequence — in which all the animals’ hard work blossoms in front of an appreciative London audience — showing off the fi lmmakers’ creativity and the power of 3D to spectacular effect. They weren’t bound by any conventions of what a circus should look like. In fact, they intentionally created the impossible.
Conrad Vernon recalls, “As research we went to see Cirque du Soleil’s Iris , which was amazing. We took pieces of our circus that we really like and asked ourselves, how do we update this? How do we do something circuses have never done, while using animation in a unique way? That was tough, because Cirque du Soleil can do so much.
You know, I saw a girl laying down on her chest, running around her own head — stuff that’s a cartoon, basically. We had to say, ‘Okay, we need to one-up them.’ That’s when we came up with the idea of being a little more abstract with everything, having cross dissolves and slow motion and fades and doing things that are literally impossible to do right in front of your eyes.”
Set to Katy Perry’s jubilant Fireworks, the conceptual scene showcases the circus animals and Zoosters in kaleidoscope fashion, spinning, leaping and fl ying through the air with joyful abandon.
Eric says, “The wonderful thing about the circus is you’re not grounded.
You’ve got a whole three-dimensional space to move in. In the computer, you don’t have to bring in a crane or a dolly or a helicopter. You can just move that camera wherever you need to in order to get the shot you need, so the circus became this wonderful canvas to create this eye-popping 3D. It fits in with that whole conceit.”
DreamWorks Animation SKG presents Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, a PDI/DreamWorks Production featuring the voices of Ben, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett- Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric The Entertainer, Andy Richter, Frances McDormand, Jessica, Bryan and Martin. The fi lm is co-directed by Tom McGrath. The movie is distributed by United International Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.