In Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Chip and Dale are living amongst cartoons and humans in modern-day Los Angeles, but their lives are quite different now. It has been decades since their successful television series was cancelled, and when a former castmate mysteriously disappears, Chip and Dale must repair their broken friendship and take on their Rescue Rangers detective personas once again to save their old friend's life...all while crossing paths with some unexpected familiar (animated) faces.
When we caught up with director Akiva Schaffer, we had a few burning questions for the filmmaker, but the decision to cast Seth Rogen as a bad CG Viking dwarf was near the top of our list. It's a role the actor knocks out of the park, and it's never not funny to hear his voice come out of a character's mouth who instantly brings back memories of that weird mid-2000s realistic, but not quite believable VFX.
"Seth has a very good sense of humour as you might guess. It was not actually very difficult to talk him into that," Schaffer tells us in the video below when we asked how he enlisted Rogen for this animated role. "He wasn’t very vain in terms of how his character needed to look. That was actually the one piece of casting that was in the script. You know, sometimes you’ll read a script and to give you a shorthand for the reader, it will say, ‘Imagine Aubrey Plaza’ or something like that. It almost never becomes the person in the script, but when I first read the script written by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, it was late 2018. The date on the script was 2016, so it had been in there forever."
"Just before we got greenlit, we had to make this two-minute proof of concept video to show off what the movie would be to prove it to ourselves and Disney. What would it look like to have all these different characters and styles in the real world interacting and touching? The scene we chose is that first scene with Seth Rogen with the Viking in the doorway," he continued. "[We] had to make that test, so I actually got Seth to come on and do that as a favour. I went to his office with a mic and recorded his lines. He did it script unseen, so when the movie came, I don’t know if he even read the whole thing [Laughs]. He did it as a pure favour to me! I hope likes it when he sees it."
If you've watched the trailer, you'll know this isn't Rogen's only role as he gets to tackle a couple of character's from his past as well. On paper, you might not think he's even close to being a good fit for a Viking dwarf, but it works insanely well in the movie, and the actor is a scene-stealer as a result.
The entire cast is on top form, though, and with John Mulaney and Andy Samberg playing the movie's leads (trust us, it works), you're in for a fun time when you check it out this coming Friday.
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers premieres on Disney+ on May 20.