WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a recent Q&A session with movie fans at the pop culture convention Awesome Con, Hollywood actor Sean Astin, best known for his leading roles in “The Goonies,” “Rudy,” and “The Lord of the Rings” told the crowd about how he wished that in times of terrorism and school shootings, more movies like “Toy Soldiers” could be made.
Astin starred in the 1991 action film about terrorists taking over an influential boarding school and the students fighting to take back the school.
“You know that [‘Toy Soldiers’] was before terrorism was kind of ubiquitous, just a part of our every day lives,” said the lead actor of the film. “You wonder there has been school violence incidents — I think back when they first started happening — school shootings. I think back to ‘Toy Soldiers’ and this movie made about Colombian terrorists taking over our school. It was exciting, adventurous and stuff.”
Astin continued: “Someone said to me the other day ‘you couldn’t make “Toy Soldiers” today.’ And I thought ‘this is exactly when you should make it’ because we need to feel empowered again because we’re all so vulnerable it feels like.”
Watch the “Toy Soldiers” trailer:
Last week, Hollywood director Mel Brooks also blasted the present-day environment in the film business in a Yahoo! News interview about his classic film, “Blazing Saddles”:
“They can’t make that movie today because everybody’s so politically correct. You know, the NAACP would stop a great movie that would do such a great service to black people… You’ve got to really examine these things and see what’s right and what’s wrong. Politically correct is absolutely wrong. Because it inhibits the freedom of thought. I’m so lucky that they weren’t so strong then and that the people that let things happen on the screen weren’t so powerful then. I was very lucky.”