small soldiers Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Believe it or not, I wasn't yet a full-blown movie geek in 1998. I didn't even start saving my ticket stubs until the summer of '99. In all fairness, I hadn't been quite old enough to go to the movies by myself yet -- not much younger than any of my colleagues in the summers they covered, but young enough to spare you the math.

Every third weekend, my younger brother and I spent with our father, and a reliable way to spend time together was often to go to the movies or rent something and stay home. So by only (probably) going to the movies every third weekend, I only saw maybe six movies theatrically over the course of those eighteen weeks. I'll bold those that I remember going to see as I go along, and then touch upon the rest of the releases in between.

(By the way: the weekends in the summer of 1998 happen to line up with those of this summer. Let's see just how far we've come...)

As if he didn't have too many comic book adaptations to write, Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand) has been named as the new screenwriter of Joel Silver's remake of The Dirty Dozen, which we unfortunately heard about early last year. Originally it was reported that the movie was being scripted by three high-profile writers, André Nemec, Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, but apparently their work isn't good enough and a rewrite is now necessary. Of course, one has to wonder why Silver needs to go through so many writers when there's already a perfectly good screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller. It isn't like too much needs to be updated; the movie is set in World War II. I'm not familiar with E.M. Nathanson's original novel, though, and I guess the first movie may have omitted some things that the new adaptation could include. Anyway, I guess it just isn't common practice to reuse an old script when remaking an old movie.

For those who haven't seen The Dirty Dozen, it's about a group of military criminals sent on a suicide mission to assassinate Nazi officers. It features an iconic ensemble of actors, most of whom were reunited to voice characters in Small Soldiers as a sort of homage. To the faithful, it will be very, very difficult to see a new version without Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Ernest Borgnine, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, George Kennedy and the rest. I don't know what the time frame is for the production of the remake, but we may get to see it as early as next year. And if Silver can get the project going soon, maybe it can even go head to head with Penn's buddy Bryan Singer's Hitler assassination movie, Valkyrie. They might even make a good double feature -- or you can rent the original Dirty Dozen and then go see Valkyrie and more possibly experience a great double feature.

At the end of an article announcing Master Mind, The Hollywood Reporter slipped in some news that screenwriters Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons are busy working on a sequel to Small Soldiers for DreamWorks. This is a bit of a surprise since the original film wasn't quite the 'big movie' the studio's had hoped it would be. There isn't much revealed with this news, but let us hope that Joe Dante is brought to direct. He showed us with Gremlins 2: The New Batch that he can make a sequel even better than the original by giving it just the right amount of self-parody and satire. He also seems like he could use the work.

As a huge fan of Dante's work, I think it is a tragedy how little movies he's been able to put out, especially recently. Still, I was a huge doubter of Small Soldiers, maybe because of how dumb it looked filtered through the Burger King ads, and didn't even finally see the movie until about two years ago. Of course, I loved it, and I regretted not seeing it in the theater. But now my low expectations extend to the sequel, because if Dante isn't allowed to do it, the result will probably be as dumb as I had thought the original was going to be. I am already a bit worried about the unproven screenwriting duo, though I have to remember that Gremlins 2 had a different writer than Gremlins and it worked out brilliantly.

Others that I'd want to return for the sequel are Jay Mohr and David Cross and all the actors who provided their voices for The Commando Elite (hurry, some of the Dirty Dozen guys are getting up there) and The Gorgonites. The rest of the cast, especially Kirsten Dunst, are not required. Dante is supposedly currently working on The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes, a film about his old boss, Roger Corman, and the making of the 1967 film The Trip. But since he isn't going to be involved with Gremlins 3 (such a shame, if it happens that way), he can follow up Kaleidoscope with Small Soldiers 2.