Behind-the-scenes look at filming for How to Train Your Dragon in Northern Ireland ahead of release
Behind-the-scenes look at filming for How to Train Your Dragon in and around Northern Ireland ahead of its release HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON IN CINEMAS MONDAY JUNE 9
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Scottish Sun
16 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Gerard Butler ‘back on with ex' as they're spotted together on red carpet
Scots-born star seems to have patched things up with his former flame GER-IFFIC Gerard Butler 'back on with ex' as they're spotted together on red carpet Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) GERARD Butler has seemingly confirmed rumours he is back in the arms of his ex after she joined him on the red carpet. The Paisley-born actor, 55, and longtime flame Morgan Brown, 52, were joined at the hip at the premiere of his latest movie How To Drain Your Dragon in LA on Saturday. Sign up for the Entertainment newsletter Sign up 3 The actor, 55, and longtime flame Morgan Brown, 52, were joined at the hip at the premiere of his latest film How To Drain Your Dragon in LA on Saturday 3 Gerard Butler was joined by actor pal and fellow Scot Tony Curran and his wife Mai and their daughter at the How To Train Your Dragon premiere in LA 3 Tony Curran and Gerard Butler Gerard dressed in a smart blue suit while his girlfriend wore a figure-hugging, nude coloured dress. The Scot and the brunette real estate investor have been on and off for a few years after first being linked in 2014. However it seems that their red carpet love display is an indicator the pair are officially back on. The loved-up pair held hands and hugged while flexing their muscles for photographers in a comical nod to Butler's character in the movie, Viking leader, Stoick The Vast. After splitting with Morgan during the Covid pandemic, he said: "I went through a break-up during corona so I lost a loved one in a different way, and that's been very hard, much harder than I thought." It's the second time in recent weeks the pair have been pictured together after she was the actor's plus one at a 45th birthday bash for actor Oliver Trevena. Also on the red carpet was Gerard's actor pal and fellow Scot, Tony Curran who brought along his wife and daughter to the premiere. Tony, who has starred in Doctor Who, Thor, Underworld, amongst others, gushed about his 'brother' Gerard on his Instagram page where he shared pictures from the event, saying: " What a magical time, thank you for sharing such a special day brother!" Gerard splits his time between LA where he has a home and Scotland where he is often spotted when he is home visiting family. The One Show in last minute shake-up as Hollywood star pulls out of show due to sudden illness In February this year the superstar was seen cheering on a team of more than 300 cyclists raising funds for motor neurone disease (MND) research in memory of rugby legend Doddie Weir. The actor greeted the Doddie's Grand Tour team as they arrived at Glenalmond College in Perthshire. Butler chatted and signed autographs with tour leaders Rob Wainwright, Mark Beaumont, Gordon D'Arcy and the rest of the teams. More than 300 cyclists are journeying 800 miles across Ireland and Scotland to raise funds for the My Name'5 Doddie Foundation.
Times
a day ago
- Times
How to Train Your Dragon review — live action remake lacks creative fire
Thor almighty! It's happened! After decades of witnessing Disney raid its own back catalogue for soulless live-action reboots, rival studio Dreamworks has finally joined the self-cannibalising remake train. And boy has it proved, with this How to Train Your Dragon update, that it can be as bland as the best of them. Yes, we're in slavish shot-for-shot remake terrain, ie a live action copy of the original animated frames. This still makes no sense, neuters spontaneity and always proves the superiority of the animated version. It's the cinematic equivalent of those viral Instagram posts that feature classic paintings recreated with friends, kids and animals. Bravo, yes, it looks just like the original but…and? • Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews The story of the geeky Viking protagonist Hiccup (Mason Thames) and his gang of teenage warriors now occurs within this awkward straitjacket of shot-for-shot narrative conformity. Hiccup tames a lethal 'Night Fury' dragon called Toothless and must convince his fellow dragon-hating Vikings, especially his father and chieftain Stoick (Gerard Butler), that these creatures are allies and the real enemy is, in fact, a mega-beast called the Red Death. And yet everything that happens on screen, and in the film's remote Northern Ireland shooting locations, has a strangely lifeless quality, like everyone's simply clocking in on the day for there 'This is the bit where…' copycat scene. • Cressida Cowell on How to Train Your Dragon: I have my own theme park now The acting is uneven and symptomatic of a film with no driving vision. Thames's Hiccup is all cartoon reaction shots and wide bug-eyes. Butler, by contrast, goes full Coriolanus in his scenes and even roars through spit and tears at his son, 'They took your mother for god's sake!' The role of fighting femme Astrid has been given to Nico Parker (the perfect child-minder from Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy) but without, it seems, any performance notes other than, well, just stare straight ahead and seem slightly miffed. It's directed by Dean DeBlois, who co-directed the first one and has, inexplicably and fatally, excised the wickedly snarky personality of Toothless. He's a complicated and grumpy teen-ish dragon in the original but an empty special effect here. DeBlois, however, has kept the brash American accents of the Viking kids, even though their parents are mostly Scottish or Cockney (see Nick Frost as the geezer blacksmith Gobber). Because, clearly, that's important. It's loud and diverting and very young children are sure to be entertained. But it's also utterly dead, right down to its hollow, greedy, cash-grabbing cinemas from Jun 13PG, 125min • The island that breathed fire into Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon Make Wednesday your go-to cinema day. Each month Times+ members can bring a friend for free at Everyman on a Wednesday. The perfect cinema experience with plush sofas, a full bar and great food. Visit to find out @timesculture to read the latest reviews
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
How to Train Your Dragon, review: How to drain your patience, more like
Few directors in Hollywood must be having a weirder summer than Chris Sanders. Who he? This gifted animator spent the noughties crafting two now-beloved films, Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, which both artfully coaxed their parent studios, Disney and DreamWorks, far from their lucrative 1990s comfort zones. Anyway, this year, both of those studios have released live-action re-dos of said films, each of which is expected to do very nicely commercially and is about as adventurous as a boiled potato. How to Train Your Dragon is the technologically splashier of the two, but also by far the more mind-numbingly redundant. It's less a remake of the 2010 original than a restaging: essentially scene-for-scene, often word-for-word, sometimes shot-for-shot. It somehow elongates its predecessor's running time by 27 minutes without adding a single atom of noticeably fresh material. Perhaps all the dragons are just flying around a bit more slowly this time, or the vikings have to walk further between huts. Two of said vikings, played by Gerard Butler and Nick Frost, are trying admirably hard to make it work. Butler returns as the thrusting village chieftain Stoick the Vast, the character he voiced in the animations: impressively, he manages to come across even more cartoony in person than he did as a cartoon. Frost, meanwhile, replaces Craig Ferguson as Gobber the tender-hearted blacksmith, and one-man moral support team for Stoick's weedy but resourceful son Hiccup (Mason Thames), who realises that befriending the local dragon population might be smarter than waging war on them at every given moment. The two are sturdy comedic assets in a cast blighted elsewhere by a common animation-to-live-action malady: characters that were charming and quirky in the former medium are, when moved to the latter, just wildly annoying. Hiccup and his teenage peers are vintage examples, and irksome in a community-theatre-troupe sort of way: each has a single irritating personality trait which they express once per scene, irritatingly, in the broadest and hammiest way imaginable. Then again, so much of How to Train Your Dragon '25 feels trapped mid-transition. Director Dean DeBlois, who captained the original with Sanders and the two sequels solo, has opted for a mix-and-match visual approach that wavers between caricature and realism in any given frame.
