A 5-year-old boy came home one day with a whimsical idea: "Wouldn't it be cool if guinea pigs could have super intelligence and be special agents?" he asked his dad. That was four years ago, visual effects master Hoyt Yeatman said in a special Disney presentation on Wednesday. Yeatman pitched his son’s idea to producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and after rounding up a team of about 500 artists and various A-list actors, the boy’s notion became the upcoming guinea pig movie G-Force, soon to open July 24.
During the exclusive sneak peek at the character animation and 3-D technology used in G-Force, Yeatman deemed the film the first true hybrid of live action and animation. Most of us have seen films like Bedtime Stories, where bits and pieces are animated...and saw how awkward that was. (Remember Bugsy? That guinea pig with bulging eyeballs?) None of that in G-Force. All throughout, the CG rodents do their stuff in the midst of real-world settings. Might be hard to imagine, but the depth-of-field technology makes the CG-to-live-action scenes virtually seamless, so audiences can concentrate on the story rather than distracting visual effects.
The plot goes like this: Cute guinea pigs, complete with James Bond gadgetry, must save the world from an evil billionaire who plots to control the planet through household appliances that look a little Transformer-like, and even form an 85-foot-tall robotic monster. A few scenes we watched had stuff flying out at the audience—it was so effective you felt like you could reach out and grab stuff that pops from the screen. One particular scene had a CG snake lunge for attack at the aud, which will make a few jump. Not to worry, though—it's nowhere near Coraline scary.
Here's the rundown of cuddly rodents:
-Darwin (Sam Rockwell) is the leader of the G-Force crew.
-Penelope Cruz provides a sultry voice for Juarez, left. Don't miss the spoofy "Baywatch" shot where her character shakes off water from her fur in slow motion.
-Blaster (Tracy Morgan) brings in more laughs with his one-liners and "I'm chasing my butt" scenes.
-Nic Cage's character is an unsightly star-nosed mole named Speckles. (Was this supposed to be a cruel joke on Cage?) In one scene, he slurps up an earthworm while typing away from his mole hole command center. No cuteness factor there, but for the most part, the kid-friendly flick will be a hit with children.
