Small Soldiers

Small Soldiers opens with a merger nobody should have approved. GloboTech Industries, a defense contractor, buys the Heartland Toy Company, and its CEO, Gil Mars (Denis Leary), tells two designers to make their toys "play back": Larry Benson's (Jay Mohr) Commando Elite soldiers and Irwin Wayfair's (David Cross) friendly Gorgonite monsters. Racing a deadline, Larry skips safety testing and builds them around GloboTech's X1000 microprocessor, which, it turns out, was designed to guide smart munitions and to learn over time. Teenager Alan Abernathy (Gregory Smith) unboxes a shipment at his family's toy store. Soon Major Chip Hazard and his commandos are at war with the Gorgonites, with Alan, and with the family next door, whose daughter Christy (Kirsten Dunst) owns a set of Gwendy fashion dolls that the commandos turn into troops.

The voice casting was an in-joke. Tommy Lee Jones voiced Chip Hazard. Except for Bruce Dern, the rest of the Commando Elite were voiced by actors from the 1967 war film The Dirty Dozen: Jim Brown, Ernest Borgnine, George Kennedy and Clint Walker. Except for Frank Langella as their leader, Archer, the Gorgonites were voiced by This Is Spinal Tap's Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Christina Ricci voiced the Gwendys. Stan Winston's shop supplied puppets, but Dante found CGI "much simpler and cheaper," and the finished film is, in his words, "one-third puppetry and the rest CGI." It was Phil Hartman's last on-screen role. He died two months before the American premiere, and the film is dedicated to him.

The movie never settled on its tone. "Originally I was told to make an edgy picture for teenagers, but when the sponsor tie-ins came in the new mandate was to soften it up as a kiddie movie," Dante said. "Too late, as it turned out." Kenner made the toy line, and Burger King made kids' meal toys, only to have the film come back rated PG-13 (Dante blamed a scene where the commandos drug the neighbors' drinks). The toys shipped with a disclaimer that the movie "may contain material that is inappropriate for younger children," and some restaurants let customers swap them for Mr. Potato Head toys. Small Soldiers opened July 10, 1998, in third place behind Lethal Weapon 4 and Armageddon, and it made $55.1 million in the U.S. and Canada on a $40 million budget. Roger Ebert warned that "for smaller children, this could be a terrifying experience."