Canadian director Dean DeBlois brings animated How to Train Your Dragon to vibrant life
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When Dean DeBlois was told that DreamWorks was considering turning the beloved How to Train Your Dragon animated series into a live-action movie, he thought that his words might come back to haunt him.
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The Canadian filmmaker had previously told people that he was not a fan of live-action remakes. DeBlois thought he had closed the chapter on the Dragon franchise. He co-wrote and co-directed the 2010 animated original and its two sequels, turning the tale of a Viking teen named Hiccup who forms a bond with a young dragon named Toothless into a beloved and lucrative franchise. He received his fourth Oscar nomination for Best Animated Film in 2020 for the second sequel, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, and had moved on to imagining other worlds. But when the prospect of a live-action version came up, he suddenly felt very protective.
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Turning an animated favourite into a live-action film isn't new, and many have been box-office hits. But recent live-action remakes, including Tim Burton's Dumbo or Guy Ritchie's Aladdin, received mixed reviews despite being in the hands of A-list directors. The live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, released a few months ago, received some scathing reviews.
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'My first response was 'OK, I'm going to eat my words,' ' says DeBlois, who was born and raised in Aylmer, Que., before attending Toronto's Sheridan College's prestigious animation program in the late 1980s. 'I had been saying that I was not a fan of this trend, and here it was happening to my movie. I felt a very protective instinct, just knowing where the heart is and knowing the characters and the world so well. I said, 'I know I haven't made a live-action movie, but would you please consider me as the writer-director? I pledge and promise to bring forward the sense of wonder and emotion that comes from that original, so it doesn't end up as yet another soulless remake.'
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It's true DeBlois did not have a lot of live-action experience – although he did make the 2007 documentary Heima, about the band Sigur Ros – but it's hard to argue with his success in the world of animation. His directorial debut, alongside Chris Sanders, was 2002's Lilo & Stitch. It received an Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature, as did How to Train Your Dragon and its two sequels.
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The live-action version, which opens Friday, is not a scene-for-scene remake of the original, but it's closer to its source material than the 2010 original is to British author Cressida Cowell's series of children's books that it was loosely based on.
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When Sanders and DeBlois were asked to adapt Cowell's first book, Dreamworks had already made a few failed attempts to develop a film more faithful to the book. They were given a good deal of creative freedom in interpreting the story. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was CEO of DreamWorks at the time, gave the two filmmakers three mandates and a tight deadline of 15 months. Fifteen months may seem like a long time, but it probably seemed like a split-second when compared to the long gestation period given to most big-budget animated films.
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