To call live-action remakes of classic animated films a mixed bag is a wild understatement, but successful ones usually see the filmmakers actually put some thought and attention into what they’re making and aren’t afraid to occasionally stray from the source material (see the recent Snow White or Beauty and the Beast as examples of not-great movie that at least tried something different).
Most recently, the Lilo & Stitch redo played favorably (and profitably) to huge audiences who grew up loving the animated movie and wanted mostly just that film again, but with actual human characters in the real world. This week, we get How To Train Your Dragon, based on one of the best animated franchises ever made, whose live-action adaptation (based on the book by Cressida Cowell) is probably the most one-for-one remake of any in this genre.
As much as the story rarely strays from the 2010 animated original, there is something more thrilling about seeing real people mingling with expertly crafted digital dragons, especially during the many flying sequences. I also happen to like the actors in this version, including the one carryover from the animated version, Gerard Butler as the Stoick, the father of the film’s protagonist, Hiccup (Mason Thames, The Black Phone), a resourceful Viking youth who decides to secretly befriend a Night Fury dragon named Toothless rather than kill it. Killing dragons is effectively the backbone of this particular pocket of Viking culture, so going against that practice threatens to make Hiccup even more of an outcast than he already is.
The writer-director of the three animated Dragon films, Dean DeBlois (who also wrote and directed the original Lilo & Stitch), returns for this version, and the guy clearly has a gift for telling stories about humans and seemingly dangerous non-human characters trying to find common ground and live together peacefully. Being the son of the man seen as one of the most anti-dragon members of their community, Hiccup’s inability to hate, let alone fight or kill, dragons is a point of shame for his father, who frequently leads hunting parties when the dragons attack their village looking for food among the livestock.
While his father and other are away from their home on the isle of Berk seeking the dragon’s nest, Hiccup decides to engage in dragon-fighting classes, a necessary first step toward becoming a dragon hunter for the town’s youth. Others in the group of recruits include Nico Parker (Suncoast) as Astrid, the best fighter of them all, and Julian Dennison as Fishlegs, likely the worst. But when Hiccup stumbles upon Toothless, the Night Fury dragon that he accidentally took down in battle, he helps it to recover and makes friends with it, learning its ways and even how to ride it. Working so closely with dragons also makes Hiccup a better student in his classes, which essentially require him to take on different types of captured dragons in an arena—training in which he often excels, much to the shock of his fellow recruits and instructor and local blacksmith Gobber (Nick Frost).
When his father returns unsuccessful in finding the nest, his heart soars discovering that not only is Hiccup taking these classes but he’s also thriving, and the two become closer than ever, despite Hiccup not telling his father about Toothless. Much of the back half of the film is simply a waiting game for Stoick to find out the secret and Hiccup to be publicly shamed for being a dragon ally—but will the prospect of working together with dragons be enough to pull some Vikings onto Hiccup’s side?
Well, if you’ve seen the animated film, you already know the answer, which is another one of the conundrums of these remakes: you already know how they end. In fact, you know pretty much every beat of every scene. But in the right hands (and I think it’s safe to say that DeBlois counts as “the right hands”), these type of remakes can be enjoyable, if not exactly dramatically successful. As much as box office really isn’t something I track or discuss, I am genuinely curious how this film plays with an audience who loved the original animated entry.
The new actors are terrific choices, but I was especially tickled to see Butler fully embracing the blowhard energy of Stoick and actually look like he’s having a good time making a movie, instead of pulling his usual miserable face. Gabriel Howell is also here as Snotlout, Hiccup’s primary rival in the dragon-fighting arena, with the great Peter Serafinowicz as his father Spitelout. And it’s all of these terrific performers that helps (somewhat) elevate the film as a whole. Making this How to Train Your Dragon so brazenly similar to its predecessor is, on many levels, unforgivable, but the filmmakers make a valiant effort to climb out of the whole they dug and give us something fairly entertaining.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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