Well that is ol Chip Hazard, voiced by Tommy Lee Jones in Joe Dante's epic cool new film that will be coming out this summer. I sure hope Dante nails this one, and gets the 'points' (them etheral things the people with power use to decide who is worthy of cool projects and budgets) to make any film he wants to. I love his work, but often times he gets screwed at the last minute, just as he is moving forward. Ain't no fair I tell ya. Oh well. Here's Aquile Velox's scoop...
Greetings, O Russet One. Call me Aquile Velox. I'll be very surprised if anyone can work out why.
I had the great fortune to be given a tour of Hasbro's Toy Fair showroom in New York City today. The building, which the company keeps set up for demonstrations year-round, is just across the street and a few buildings down from the Flatiron building (once upon a time the tallest edifice in the world!) with its new Godzilla "He's as tall as the Flatiron Building" poster.
At any rate, the point of this rambling is the fact that we were given a sneak peek at, among other things, the merchandise tie-ins for DreamWorks' "Small Soldiers." As has been reported here, the movie revolves around a war between two toy armies: a set of commando-like action figures and a group of bestial monsters. We were shown a two-minute series of behind-the-scenes clips inside a dark mini-theater set up to look vaguely like the burnished-steel demonstration room of a laboratory. On the right were some beautifully-detailed models of the protagonists and antagonists of the film. Surprisingly, all of the shots which we were shown featured animatronic toys, not CGI ones. Even when they were moving around rapidly, the characters were always robots rather than computer images. They're a lot bigger than the toy soldiers from Toy Story, standing about nine inches to a foot tall on average. The soldiers rather resemble the "Aliens" marines on growth hormone, from their helmets to their body armor and weaponry. Their leader goes by the moniker "Chip Hazard," if I recall correctly. The monstrous Gorgonites are each unique, ranging from grotesquely deformed mutants to a gigantic anthropomorphic Titanothere (look it up). Their leader is Archer, a befanged and rather leonine fellow who wouldn't have seemed out of place in a Thundercats episode. All are excellently detailed, with the toys resembling the movie characters down to every buckle and fang. For the most part, they're even the same height as their cinematic counterparts, which is a great bonus for action figure aficionados.
After the making-of bit, we were shown a teaser which will air in movie theaters at some point, I imagine within the next couple of months. It's phenomenal, and totally hilarious. You'll know why when you see it -- or, perhaps I should say, when you figure out that you're seeing it. Suffice to say that it starts out appearing to be something else, something quite familiar, before veering-off into the totally unexpected. Want another hint? Spielberg gets his own back for a recent comedic snub.
During the making-of sequence, a vital plot point was revealed which I won't spill here, although I'm sure the pre-release advertising will give it away regardless. Let's just say that the storyline isn't quite what it has appeared to be, and in a good, unexpected way.
Harry here. If you want to hear about the SMALL SOLDIERS trailer then read below. HOWEVER, I highly recommend against reading it. This is... quite simply... a great trailer, with a beautiful twist that you should not read. The only reason I put it up, is because I know some of you like to know this stuff. But if you don't want to know what your Christmas present is, if you don't question the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, if you like the mystery of the missing three books in THE TIME MACHINE... well then go away. I'm gonna count down from 10, after 1 the spoiler will commence. BEWARE...
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Here it is...
[-- the trailer starts as a shot-for-shot, word-for-word duplicate of the Godzilla trailer, but when 'zillie slams his (her?) foot down through the glass and smashes the T. rex skeleton, Chip and his team abruptly dash through the legs of the frantic crowd, yelling the usual hard-edged military jargon, jump up onto the podium and, swinging around the giant ankle, lash the foot down. Godzilla trips, the screen goes black, and some counter-slogan that I don't quite recall, similar to "Size doesn't matter" but quippier, appears. They actually re-filmed the entire sequence, although I thought I was watching the original right up the the point where it diverged. According to our Hasbro guides, Spielberg was there earlier today and expressed considerable fondness for the teaser.]
