Posted in: Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review, Universal | Tagged: how to train your dragon

How To Train Your Dragon Review: This Remake Soars Where Others Fall

How to Train Your Dragon will probably be the new case study for doing a live-action remake correctly.

How to Train Your Dragon does all of the right things that a live-action remake of a beloved classic should do, walking the line of adding more while remembering that these movies are beloved for a reason.

Director: Dean DeBlois
Summary: As an ancient threat endangers both Vikings and dragons alike on the isle of Berk, the friendship between Hiccup, an inventive Viking, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, becomes the key to both species forging a new future together.

How to Train Your Dragon Feels Sincere Compared To Other Remakes

When the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon was first announced, people were not exactly thrilled with the idea. It seemed like yet another cash grab in the era of cash grabs, but then Universal and Dreamworks started making decisions that seemed to indicate that this wasn't wholly a cash grab [at least, not entirely]. Those choices and the footage shown began to win people over until now, a week before the release, and it feels like people are more or less on board. In a year that has also included Lilo & Stitch and Snow White, both of which made major changes to their stories in a bid to update things, How to Train Your Dragon decided that it would expand on some aspects of the originals while essentially keeping the rest unchanged.

Director Dean DeBlois's involvement in this film really seemed like a good indication that it was being made for the right reasons. DeBlois directed all three of the original animated films, and with the amount of love and care he put into those films, it doesn't feel like he could be easily swayed to return for a soulless live-action remake. This appears to be an artist telling the story again with some new changes and in a completely different medium. DeBlois clearly wanted to tell this story in live-action, and the love that he has for How to Train Your Dragon is just as present here as it was back in 2010. In an era where live-action remakes don't feel justified, there is something about this one that doesn't feel insincere the way so many Disney remakes have felt in the last couple of years.

All of the things that made people fall in love with this franchise are present again, but the way DeBlois brings this world to life might be one of the most impressive feats of filmmaking this year. It takes a minute to wrap your head around the fact that dragons are flying around, but as soon as you settle in, you believe they are there. The animation for the dragons is out of this world, and it's so good that they look like they aren't out of this world; they look about as real as a dragon would look.

Much like Disney and Stitch, they kept the primary designs the same and then changed the details to make the dragons look like actual animals. It does mean these dragons will be a little scarier for the young viewers than the animated ones; the Nightmare really lives up to his name. It's all about Toothless, though, at least in this film, and they capture all of the little details in animation in this rendering as well. Everything from the way he shows love to the tiny hesitation right before he allows Hiccup to touch him, this is Toothless, through and through, beautifully brought to life by a team that looked at all of the details from the film and thought, "how can we apply this and make it look like it could exist in the real world?"

You wouldn't believe that dragons were real if the cast of How to Train Your Dragon wasn't doing a fantastic job selling it. There isn't a miscast person in the bunch, full stop, and we won't hear anything else about the incredible Nico Parker's hair color. While everyone in this film had the tough job of reacting to giant creatures that were not there, Mason Thames might have had the hardest job of all. When you're watching this movie, you forget that Thames isn't looking at Toothless the way we're seeing him. Unless you've had to act opposite something that isn't there, you don't know what the job is like, and every single time young actors manage to pull off what veterans twice their age miss the mark on, it is always commendable. It was a smart move on everyone's part to bring in Gerard Butler as Stoick, and he slips into this role in live-action like it's movie five, not the first one. The rest of the supporting cast are all fantastic, and the film's additions are all in service of the characters and their relationships. John Powell is back to do the score, and if that music gets to you in animation, it will probably get to you again because Powell is brilliant, and this music is brilliant.

Yet Another Remake In An Era Of Established IP

So, what does How to Train Your Dragon do wrong? Well, as much as we spoke about this film feeling a lot less like a soulless cash grab, there is always something to be said about remaking films instead of creating new ones. The movies aren't that old, so this isn't like Snow White, where there are generations of people between the animated film and the live-action remake. There is probably some random jar in your pantry that's just as old as one of the animated films. Universal is throwing everything at this film and has already greenlit a second one, so they think they have a winner and are leaning in. The second animated film is even better than the first, which sets the expectations for the second live-action film even higher. However, this still represents so much time and dedication spent on a story that was perfectly told the first time around. There is something to be said about good stories being the ones you can read, see, or hear repeatedly, which is what this is. However, in a year with so many films based on established IP and so few original stories, to see a remake of an animated movie based on a book series stings just a little.

How to Train Your Dragon will probably be the new case study for doing a live-action remake correctly. We can hope that other studios will see this success and maybe consider some of the decisions made here for their own projects. Everything great about the animated film is here in live-action, and if you loved one, you'll probably love the other. When the people involved in film projects, and even more so in live-action remakes, clearly have the right intentions and are going into it with the right mindset, the pieces come together pretty flawlessly. It seems like it should be obvious, but with animated to live-action, the change in medium helps justify going for a more shot-for-shot type of remake. If this was an animated remake of the original animated film going shot-for-shot, or a live-action remake of a live-action original going shot-for-shot, we probably wouldn't be sitting here talking about this film with so much praise behind it.  How to Train Your Dragon cracked the live-action remake code; they figured out how to walk that line, and we can hope more projects can stick that landing going forward.

How to Train Your Dragon

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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9/10

How to Train Your Dragon does all of the right things that a live-action remake of a beloved classic should do, walking the line of adding more while remembering that these movies are beloved for a reason.

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