The British classic has had a revamp and Jones plays one of the lead characters.
British actor Toby Jones has crafted a career that spans big franchises like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Captain America, plus serious arthouse hits and award-winning performances as Alfred Hitchcock (in 2012's The Girl) and Truman Capote (in 2007's Infamous). Now he's leading the charge in the film version of the iconic British TV sit-com Dad's Army, a World War II farce that ran on the BBC from 1968 to 1977.
In the movie he plays Mainwaring, the bumbling leader of a team of Home Guard soldiers on England's south coast in 1944. "When they approached me to do it I said, 'This is a crazy idea!'" Jones says. "But the writers said, 'Will you at least read the script?' When I did and saw what comic potential it had, I thought maybe there is something I could bring to this. I thought it balanced honouring the old characters by putting them in a new situation. And when I saw who else was cast in it, I thought that's exactly the right kind of way to go. It's not comics, it's actors."
For Jones and his costars, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon and Tom Courtenay, being true the original series was tricky, "because the characters have to exist in more worlds than they did on the TV show." So he set about trying to recapture Mainwaring's vocal "prissiness" while maintaining his dignity. "All Mainwaring's really got is his dignity," Jones says, "and that is constantly being taken away from him, every time he is humiliated. I wanted to give Mainwaring some contour and depth and I think you can do that much more in a full-length movie than you can in a half-hour comedy where it is enough to leave him with egg on his face. His platoon is like a dysfunctional family that he is trying to herd around the place."
For someone who doesn't have traditional Hollywood looks, Jones knows he's had a dream career. "When I went to the screening of Dads Army, I thought, 'Oh no, that face!'" he laughs. "In my own head, sitting behind that face as I'm talking now, I don't think I look like that!"
The dinosaurs are under threat in the sequel to 2015’s 'Jurassic World', which reunites Bryce...
Austrian auteur Michael Haneke isn't known for his light touch, but rather for hard-hitting, award-winning...
With a cast and crew packed with A-list talent, this film seems like it should...
Harry Hole is an experienced detective who comes across one of the strangest murder cases...
From the co-director of John Wick, this similarly styled action romp puts Charlize Theron front...
Lorraine Broughton is an experienced MI6 agent who, in 1989, is assigned on a mission...
Lee Weathers evaluates potential risks in businesses, businesses that blur the lines of what could...
Outside the Czech Republic, few people know about Operation Anthropoid, a spy mission in 1943...
Reinhard Heydrich was one of the fiercest anti-Semitic officers in the Nazi army. He authored...
Happily ever after wasn't always the way fairy tales turned out. Sometimes Princesses, Kings, Queens...
As Alice is once again taken into the magical and mysterious world that she's somehow...
The beloved 1970s British sit-com gets the big screen treatment, although there's been very little...
Suzanne Collins' saga comes to a suitably epic conclusion in a climactic series of battles...
Alice once again returns to Wonderland and meets a lot of familiar faces. This time...