The Angry Birds Movie 2 is a 2019 animated comedy film based on Rovio Entertainment's Angry Birds video game series, produced by Columbia Pictures, Rovio Animation and Sony Pictures Animation, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. It is the sequel to The Angry Birds Movie (2016). The film was directed by Thurop Van Orman and co-directed by John Rice from a screenplay by Peter Ackerman, Eyal Podell and Jonathon E. Stewart.
The Angry Birds Movie 2 was released in the United States on August 14, 2019.
Plot[]
The birds and pigs are in constant war against each other after Piggy Island, which was destroyed in a prior battle with the birds, is rebuilt. Eventually, an ice ball from a nearby isle called Eagle Island hits the sea near Piggy Island, forcing pigs to have a truce with the birds. Zeta, the leader of the island, is fed up with her frozen surroundings and wants to occupy the two islands by shooting ice balls to force their inhabitants to evacuate.
Meanwhile, three hatchlings, one of whom is Terence and Matilda’s daughter named Zoe, plan to act in a play using the three eggs at a beach, but the eggs drift out to sea by accident. They set sail to retrieve them, but once they catch up to them, a whale blows them into a cloud. They manage to get them down after inflating Zoe into the air but then misplace them again.
Chuck and Bomb ask Red to join in a speed dating activity, where he meets Silver, Chuck's sister and an excellent engineering student, but she deems him incompatible. Red quits the meeting and finds Leonard, the king of Piggy Island, comes to his house to negotiate. Red reluctantly agrees to build an alliance with the pigs and they recruit Chuck, Bomb, Silver and Mighty Eagle. They hold a special meeting in Mighty Eagle’s cave. When Red shows a photo of Zeta, Mighty Eagle behaves abnormally. The meeting is disrupted when an ice ball hits Eagle Mountain and destroys it, but they escape just in time.
As the team travels to Eagle Island by submarine, Red assures the civilians they don’t need to evacuate. Once there, Mighty Eagle tells them that Zeta is his long lost fiancee that he somehow abandoned due to his cowardliness, retreating to Bird Island. Red insists on fighting and Silver decides to follow him. They intrude the base from the mouth of the weapon only to be captured by the guards. The other team members disguise themselves as a Trojan eagle, grab a key card in a washroom, and get into the base. The eagle guards are driven into a breakdance battle by the disguise's unusual movement, and the team find Red and Silver have been caught. They are forced to escape when their disguise rips apart, but the guards are too busy dancing to notice.
The three hatchlings finally find the eggs on a small island, held by a python. They somehow defeat her and plan to drift back to Bird Island, but they arrive at Piggy Island instead. They’re greeted by three piglets and the birds travel by hot air balloon with the pigs.
As Red and Silver are confined in ice, Zeta tells them her plan to turn Bird Island and Piggy Island into her own paradise by firing lava balls at them, Eventually Red gasps and takes a flashback remembering from earlier when the team were leaving for Eagle Island, regretted telling the islanders not needing to evacuate. After she leaves to start the countdown that is timed at 10 minutes, Red admits to Silver that he put himself before anyone else as he's afraid of not being liked if he's no longer a hero. Silver frees them both using her hair, reuniting with the team. Red gives up leadership to Silver, who establishes a plan to destroy the weapon.
Silver and Red put themselves in an ice ball and roll on a rail towards Zeta's super weapon, but the plan fails and it only puts a medium dent in the super weapon, and the whole team are surrounded by Zeta and her guards. At this time, Mighty Eagle arrives and apologize to Zeta, but she argues with him, revealing his real name as Ethan and that she raised a daughter he was unaware of named Debbie. While Zeta is distracted, Silver tells Chuck to tie up the weapon using a powerful rope she invented, which catches and decelerates the lava balls when Zeta fires them. As the rope breaks, the hatchlings and the piglets traveling above Eagle Island help grasp it. The lava balls slide back into the weapon, destroying the whole base. Everyone escapes, and Mighty Eagle protects Debbie from being crushed by a metal plate. Zeta shows gratitude to him and they finally hold a wedding ceremony on Bird Island, with Red as the chief witness. Everyone cheers Red for saving the islands, but he reveals Silver and the team deserves the real credit instead of him, unveiling a Mount Rushmore-style monument to them. To his surprise, Red finds he is beloved even more now because of his bravery and honesty. The birds have a huge party to celebrate while Red and Silver begin a romantic relationship, until Chuck arrives and interrupts the two.
In a mid-credit scene, the hatchlings put the eggs back home but three snakelets hatch. The injured mother python comes and exchanges the babies with them, only for the three new hatchlings to drift out to sea again, saying goodbye to their sister.
Cast[]
- Jason Sudeikis as Red
- Danny McBride as Bomb
- Josh Gad as Chuck
- Leslie Jones as Zeta
- Bill Hader as Leonard
- Rachel Bloom as Silver
- Awkwafina as Courtney
- Sterling K. Brown as Garry Pig
- Eugenio Derbez as Glenn
- Peter Dinklage as Mighty Eagle
- Tiffany Haddish as Debbie
- Beck Bennett as Hank / Brad
- Zach Woods as Carl Eagle
- Pete Davidson as Jerry Eagle
- Lil Rel Howery as Alex
- Dove Cameron as Ella
- Nicki Minaj as Pinky
- Brooklynn Prince as Zoe
- Genesis Tennon as ViVi (Vincent)
- JoJo Siwa as Jay / Kira
- Maya Rudolph as Matilda
- Anthony Padilla as Hal
- Colleen Ballinger as Roxanne
- David Dobrik as Axel
- Faith Urban as Beatrice / Sophie
- Sunday Urban as Lily / Isla
- Alma Varsano as Sam-Sam (Samantha)
- Gaten Matarazzo as Bubba
- Nolan North as Terence
- Tony Hale as Mime Bird
- Alex Hirsch as Steve Eagle
- Mason Ramsey as Oliver
- Thurop Van Orman as Duck / Seal
- Ally Garrett as Snake / Pig Mother
- John Cohen as Eagle Detector
- Sean Charmatz as Invisible Pig / Tester
- Kelly Prizeman as Bomb's Mom
- Josh Engel as Dude Bird
- Asher Bishop as Scott
- Hazel Van Orman as Hazel
- Leif Van Orman as Leif
- David C. Smith as Grumpy Dad
- John Rice as Quad Bird
- Nova Reed as Ally
- Kaci Simotas as Anders
- Eliza Cohen as Jenny
- Samantha Cohen as Bailey
- Isla Andrews as Eloise
- Grey Griffin as Snake Mother
Production[]
Development[]
A sequel to The Angry Birds Movie was announced in August 2016. It was directed by The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack creator Thurop Van Orman, co-directed by John Rice, and written by Peter Ackerman. John Cohen returned from The Angry Birds Movie to serve as producer, with animation again handled by Sony Pictures Imageworks. Imageworks' sister studio Sony Pictures Animation released the film under their banner, despite having dropped out of co-producing the project beforehand and had not co-produced the first film either.
In the summer of 2017, production designer Peter Oswald stated that the sequel would be more of an adventure movie that introduces new characters and locations into the world first established in The Angry Birds Movie. While he was not in a position to offer further details about the plot and characters, which remained unknown until the months before the film's release, he expressed hope that it would be a better film than the first installment.
In the days before the film was released, Josh Gad stated that a sequel to The Angry Birds Movie was being made out of a desire to outdo the first film and try out new ideas, one of them being the idea of Birds and Pigs forging an alliance to face a new enemy, which typically does not happen in most Angry Birds games. Gad then explained that the production team went forward with such premise not only because it seemed like an "ingenuous" idea, but also because they felt it would feel most appropriate in light of the increasingly polarized political climate at the time, as people who disagree on significant issues struggle to find common ground.
Casting[]
In April 2018, the majority of the voice cast was announced. Sudeikis, Gad, McBride, Rudolph, Hader, and Dinklage reprised their roles from the first film. Jones voiced a new female villain, revealed to be Zeta in the teaser trailer. In December 2018, Nicki Minaj joined the cast of the film. Upon its release, the teaser trailer briefly revealed that Hal, a green boomerang bird from the first film, would return in the sequel. Anthony Padilla would return to voice Hal. The following day, producer John Cohen announced in a tweet that Awkwafina will voice Courtney, the first named female pig in the Angry Birds franchise that briefly appeared in the teaser.
Animation[]
Unlike the previous film, the sequel was co-produced with Rovio Animation and Sony Pictures Animation. While it was possible to reuse assets from the first film instead of starting from scratch, significant work was needed to make them compatible with new technological systems that were adopted in the past few years. The animators faced great challenges attempting to create more realistic feather systems for the Birds' plumage, even with the help of Sony Pictures Imageworks' existing feather system that was first used in Stuart Little, especially when it came to designing the villain Zeta, the hardest character to animate in the film with over 1,000 controls, a very complex face structure and a tall, flexible torso. The team also faced a demanding task in designing visual effects for snow, ice, water and lava for the film and production was also affected by the unavailability of certain animators who were being used to complete Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse months prior, as well as the amount of time lost due to Sony moving the film's release date ahead by more than half a month.
Music[]
Heitor Pereira, who composed in the first film, returns to compose the score of The Angry Birds Movie 2. On July 25, 2019, American singer-songwriter Kesha released her song "Best Day" for the film as a single.
Trailers[]
When the film's first full trailer was released on March 27, 2019, more details about the sequel's characters and their voice roles were revealed. Among several new characters confirmed to appear in the movie was Silver, a bird first introduced in the Angry Birds 2 game. In June, People revealed the identity of the white bird living with Zeta in the teaser trailer as Debbie, voiced by Tiffany Haddish who was one of several voice actors not listed in the initial casting. Later that month, the film's final trailer revealed that Terrence, a large red bird from the first film, would appear without Sean Penn reprising his voice role.
Marketing and release[]
Sony released a teaser trailer and poster for the film on February 21, 2019. A month later, the film's first full trailer was released In late June, a final trailer was released.
The film was theatrically released in North America on August 14, 2019, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the debut of the original Angry Birds game. The film was originally scheduled to be released on September 20, 2019, but was moved two weeks from its original release date of to September 6, 2019, then to August 16, 2019 and then finally two days earlier to August 14, 2019.
The film's theatrical release was preceded by Hair Love, a Kickstarter campaign short created by Matthew A. Cherry and Bruce W. Smith.
Video game[]
A cooperative tie-in video game, The Angry Birds Movie 2 VR: Under Pressure, was released exclusively for the PlayStation 4's PlayStation VR system on August 6, 2019. The game takes place aboard an unidentified Piggy submarine that the main characters use to get to Eagle Island for the film's climatic confrontation.
Home media[]
The Angry Birds Movie 2 was released on digital and Movies Anywhere by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on October 29, 2019, with Blu-ray, Ultra HD Blu-ray, and DVD releases following on November 12. All releases included an animated short film entitled Live Stream. The Ultra HD Blu-ray version was the first release of its kind to be IMAX enhanced.
Reception[]
Box office[]
In the United States and Canada, The Angry Birds Movie 2 was projected to gross $16–18 million from 3,800 theaters over its first six days of release. It made $2.6 million on its first day, ranking fifth.
Critical response[]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 72% based on 109 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Like its non-aerodynamic title characters, The Angry Birds Movie 2 takes improbable yet delightfully entertaining flight, landing humorous hits along the way." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 60 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, the same score earned by its predecessor, as well as an average 4 out of 5 stars and 72% "definite recommend" from parents and kids under 12 on PostTrak.
Guy Lodge of Variety summarized his review with: "Perked up by some ingenious slapstick and Leslie Jones' inspired voice work, this gumball-bright sequel to 2016's game-based spinoff is another unexpected pleasure."
Trivia[]
- Sony Pictures Animation was not involved with the first film, making it the second film to not have its predecessor or successor being released under the studio's label after Peter Rabbit (2018).
- This is the second Sony Pictures Animation film to not feature humans; the first was Surf's Up (2007).
- This is the first Sony Pictures Animation film to be mixed at Skywalker Sound.
- This is the third Sony Pictures Animation film not to feature the Columbia Pictures logo at the beginning, despite the company distributing it, possibly due to only distributing the film and not involved in the production after The Star (2017) and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018) following Wish Dragon (2021).
- This is the last Sony Pictures Animation film to include the 1967 MPAA logo in the end credits.
- This film marks the first time since Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) that Sony Pictures Animation released only one film in a single year.
- This is Sony Pictures Animation's first film to be based on a video or mobile game.
- This would be the last Sony Pictures Animation film to have a theatrical release in the United States until Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), as the studio's following four films would be released direct-to-streaming worldwide due to the pandemic, excluding China.
- This is the first Sony Pictures Animation sequel film to have a previous main antagonist reformed; the next one would be Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022).
- This is the first Sony Pictures Animation film to feature recycled animation.
