Reviewed by William Bibbiani
Don’t be fooled by the title. The question is not How to Train Your Dragon; the question is “why.” Dean DeBlois, who co-directed the original animated classic in 2010, is back to bring his world into (mostly) live-action, and it’s nearly a beat-for-beat retread of the old material. This remake addresses a few minor complaints but leaves everything else intact. That it effectively tells the story once again is besides the point. The question is why anyone bothered.
Of course the obvious answer would be “money.” The first How to Train Your Dragon, based on Cressida Cowell’s 2003 novel, became a hit motion-picture trilogy, spawned three television series, and sold god-knows-how-much tie-in merchandise. (Presumably a lot.) But even if we allow that every major studio decision is rooted, at least to some extent, in the bottom line, we have to ask ourselves why this opportunity — or at least this corporate mandate — to revisit a beloved classic couldn’t have been an excuse to do something more distinct with the material.
The story once again follows Hiccup, now played by Mason Thames (The Black Phone). He dreams of impressing his stoic father, Stoick (Gerard Butler), by killing one of the many dragons that besiege the island village of Berk. Their island is home to many vikings, but they are a proper melting pot, comprised of various cultures from throughout the world. It’s a diverse group, and yet they all seem to have agreed to adopt the viking culture, or at least the viking dress code. (This appears to be an attempt to mitigate one of the snarkier criticisms of the 2010 film, in which most of the vikings were inexplicably Scottish.)
They’ve all come to Berk for one purpose: to kill dragons, which besiege the world, and live in the north, north, northern hemisphere. Stoick has fought these dragon hordes for decades, but his son is a gangly nerd who loves science, and he cannot follow in his father’s footsteps. When Hiccup manages to shoot a dragon out of the sky, he only wings it, so he traces its crash site to a remote lagoon on the other side of Berk. That’s where he meets and gradually tames Toothless, a “Night Fury” with a clipped tail, who cannot fly without Hiccup’s help.
While Stoick ventures into the horizon, searching for the infamous dragons’ lair, Hiccup studies Toothless and uses the knowledge he collects — like the fact dragons are allergic to dander and are disgusted by the smell of eels — to rise through the ranks of the other young dragon-hunting hopefuls, annoying the former head of the class, Astrid (Nico Parker, Suncoast), who will of course fall in love with him. Eventually he’ll have to stand up to his father and prove that dragons aren’t the evil demons they’re made out to be, overcoming all odds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Everything about the new How to Train Your Dragon works, just not as well as the old one. Some issues with the original are addressed; some aren’t. It’s still odd that nobody knows anything about dragons when they’ve captured a whole bunch of the creatures, which they use for training purposes. Surely somebody in all those years could have kept an eye out and learned a thing or two, but apparently Hiccup was the very first, and he didn’t even study the ones Berk already had in captivity. That’s always somewhat undermined the premise, but hey, even Citizen Kane (arguably) has a plot hole.
DeBlois’ primary creative ethos seems to be “if it wasn’t broke, I’m not going to fix it.” So we get a rehash of the famous shots, the popular moments, the iconic lines. Some pleasure has been taken in recreating the animated village with live-action sets, which manage to look expensive and naive at the same time. Berk appears less like a real village and more like an elaborate theme-park attraction, which is not entirely unappealing. But the modest aesthetic makes this How to Train Your Dragon a visual downgrade. It’s a little less vibrant, a little less colorful, a little less believable — a little “less” in general.
Still, I expect that audiences experiencing How to Train Your Dragon for the first time could fall under its spell. The story still, to use some technical film-critic parlance, “slaps.” The cast makes good on their roles, especially Butler, who always shines when he’s allowed to have a sense of humor. That humor is mostly humorous. The film’s action is relatively active. This new How to Train Your Dragon is like a microwaved White Castle hamburger: It addresses your craving, but it doesn’t satisfy like the real thing.
So we ask ourselves again… why? Why train your dragon all over again? That the remake isn’t as good as the original is a little disappointing, but that’s not the point. The point with a remake is to create something that justifies its own existence, so there is at least one reason to watch the rehash instead of the original. But as competent as the How to Train Your Dragon remake is, I cannot for the life of me think of a single reason why you shouldn’t watch the original instead. Kudos to everyone here for doing their jobs, and for doing them reasonably well, but the end result of all the effort is a film which, when people talk about How to Train Your Dragon, will eventually be referred to as “no, not that one.”
Director: Dean DeBlois
Screenwriter: Dean DeBlois, based on the novel by Cressida Cowell
Cast: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Henry Trevaldwyn, Peter Serafinowicz, Nick Frost, Gerard Butler
Producers: Marc Platt, Adam Siegel
Executive producers: David Cain, Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders, Doug Davison, Roy Lee, Michael Connolly
Cinematographer: Bill Pope
Production design: Dominic Watkins
Editing: Wyatt Smith
Music: John Powell
Sound design: Leff Lefferts, supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer; Brian Chumney, supervising sound editor; Randy Thom, supervising sound designer
Production companies: Universal Pictures, Dreamworks Animation
In English
125 minutes
