Movies With Butter

With a career as legendary as Ed Harris's, it's a little surprising he hasn't leant his voice to an animated character before. He played Mission Control in Gravity and did the Call of Duty: Black Ops video game, but Planes: Fire & Rescue is his first animated character. In the sequel to Planes, Dusty becomes a firefighter and Harris plays the helicopter named Blade.

While talking planes aren't real, Harris said the dialogue Blade speaks is accurate to fire and rescue services. "It's very specific though in terms of the technical speak in the film," Harris said. "They really had really great advisors who said, ‘No, no, you wouldn't say that. You'd say this.' So I knew that the dialogue was appropriate. It was really just working with Bob [Gannaway], the director, trying to develop this character. It was fun."

Hearing the intense villain of The Rock and A History of Violence get excited about playing a helicopter was fun for us. "I didn't do a lot of research," Harris said. "It was trippy. I had to go in there three or four times because they kept changing the script a little bit. You keep working on it and every time you'd come in, the animation gets more and more refined. The last time I was there, they pretty much were finished with it and I was just doing a few little things. It looks really cool. It's a pretty good story. It's really fun. I had a good time doing it."

In success, there is sure to be a Blade action figure or toy for your kids to play with. Harris got to see one, but he wasn't sure if those are for sale. "The last time I was in there, they gave me a model helicopter of my character which was really cute."

Planes: Fire & Rescue opens July 18.

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