Small Soldiers
1998 film directed by Joe Dante
Small Soldiers is a 1998 American science fiction film directed by Joe Dante from a screenplay by Ted Elliott. It stars Kirsten Dunst and Gregory Smith, along with the voices of Frank Langella and Tommy Lee Jones. The film depicts two factions of action figures that gain sentience after being implanted with military microprocessors. One faction grows increasingly violent in its attempts to destroy the other, putting lives in danger.
Released on July 10, 1998, in the United States by DreamWorks Pictures, with Universal Pictures releasing in other territories, the film received mixed reviews from critics and was a moderate commercial success, grossing $87.5 million on a $40 million budget. Small Soldiers marks the last on-screen film role of Phil Hartman, who died two months before the film's American premiere, and is dedicated to his memory. Additionally, it marked the final film role of Clint Walker before his retirement.
Plot
Seeking to diversify, defense contractor GloboTech Industries acquires the Heartland Toy Company. GloboTech CEO Gil Mars tasks his new employees, toy designers Larry Benson and Irwin Wayfair, with upgrading their existing products – a range of soldiers called the "Commando Elite" and a range of friendly monsters called "Gorgonites" – into advanced robots capable of "playing back". Faced with a tight deadline, Larry forgoes safety testing and uses GloboTech's X1000 microprocessor as the basis for the toys' programming.
The public source identifies “Small Soldiers” as 1998 film directed by Joe Dante. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Small, Soldiers and film.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1332263. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Small Soldiers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.