The filmmakers (director Joe Dante, producer Steven Spielberg, and effects company Stan Winston) built fully functional, radio-controlled puppets for the main Commando Elite and Gorgonites. These animatronic puppets could walk, move their mouths, and gesture — allowing actors like Tommy Lee Jones (as Chip Hazard) and Frank Langella (as Archer) to record their dialogue live on set while puppeteers operated the creatures in real time. CGI was used only for complex action shots (flying, rapid combat) and the “moving toy box” sequences.
Small Soldiers arrived in the post- Toy Story CGI boom, but its hybrid approach — practical animatronics + CGI enhancements — gave the toys a tangible, heavy, mechanical weight that pure CGI couldn’t achieve in 1998. It’s often cited by VFX historians as a technical bridge between Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lord of the Rings (2001). small soldiers 1998