On its 25th anniversary, Small Soldiers deserves to be revisited. Director Joe Dante’s dark satire dressed in family adventure clothing wasn’t the planned blockbuster upon first release, but it’s only gotten more relevant. Corporate conglomerates with their fingers in both toys and the military industrial complex might not actually exist yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Concerns about AI getting out of control were more fantastical in 1998, but now…? Hasbro just announced a relaunch of Furbys, faster, better, more capable of learning. You should be concerned.
Aside from that — it also got better with time. As Phil Hartman’s last film role, it serves as a reminder how he could get the perfect laugh out of random lines. With designs by Stan Winston, Small Soldiers serves as a bridge between stop-motion animation and the invasion of computer graphics. Once again, let me call out that the satire has only gotten more relevant. It might have seemed cynical at the time, but now? Please. It’s almost tame.
Almost.
Thankfully, video maven Matt Landsman never let Small Soldiers fade in his memory. The filmmaker hosted a celebratory event Saturday July 8 at Be Kind Video in Burbank, and Adam Rifkin, one of the film’s screenwriters, joined him. Wait — that’s cool, but not enough. Dante himself showed up for the Q & A beforehand, reminiscing about the making of the film and fielding a few questions from audience members.
Clearly Landsman was the right age in 1998 for the toys themselves — G.I. Joes on steroids versus (secretly pacifist) monsters. In his opening remarks he admitted a forbidden fruit factor, as his mother didn’t want him to see the movie. His father either overruled her or snuck around her, because he got to see it. And it became a seminal film for Landsman.
He drew a few good anecdotes from Rifkin and Dante. Originally, the script focused on a boy and a little green army man, but Toy Story got there first. Rifkin reimagined it as soldiers vs. aliens, creating the names and personalities. As happens a lot in development hell, he wasn’t the last to do rewrites. But his contributions are still clear, and he revealed that the Cracked magazine parody was based on his version.
Though structurally the final film bears some resemblance to Dante’s classic Gremlins, it has more of the bite of Gremlins 2: The New Batch. As Dante reminisced, that was part of the development struggle — to find the right tone. Was it an action comedy for teens? Was it a family film? And what do you do when your schedule has been engineered from the date of a toy line release? You compromise, and hope your vision comes through. Dante was sanguine about it. “All films involve compromise,” he said in answer to an audience question.
Clearly, though, working on Small Soldiers proved harder than previous efforts. Coming back to work for Steven Spielberg after so many years proved less personal. The head of Dreamworks had evolved from being the more available head of Amblin’. Dante also learned a new word in pre-production: “toyetic.” Hence the tone veering, as actual play value seemed to matter more than film quality. Despite the struggles, this film still has Dante’s fingerprints all over it.
That includes quirky, spot-on casting. In addition to Hartman, then up-and-coming comedians Denis Leary, Jay Mohr, and David Cross have key roles. The legendary Dick Miller has a substantial role, as he did in almost all of Dante’s productions. Like Phil Hartman, he was glue that held scenes together, and we need more character actors like him.
Of course, Small Soldiers also had historic casting as the toys themselves. Surviving members of The Dirty Dozen played the Commando Elite, under Tommy Lee Jones’ Chip Hazard. Dante shared that the character of Link Static was originally Trini López from the war film, but his voice just didn’t have what they needed. In the finished Small Soldiers, Bruce Dern plays the communication specialist. The monstrous Gorgonites are not so secretly Spinal Tap (Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer). Their dignified leader, however, is Frank Langella. Somehow the live-action actors manage to hold their own against so much powerhouse voice talent.
After the Q & A, the strength of Small Soldiers proved itself as the crowd settled down to actually watch the movie. Thanks to current distributor Paramount (it was originally a Universal Studios film), some picked up blu-ray copies. True to the mission of Be Kind Video, some even got VHS tapes. As cult films go, the cult is strong. It’s just time for Small Soldiers to leap up into simply classic territory.
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