Does the world need a live-action How to Train Your Dragon? Hell yes

Sydney Morning Herald

20 hours ago

Dean DeBlois had devoted precisely zero brain space to thinking about how to translate How To Train Your Dragon into a live-action movie. In fact he has, he readily admits, 'a dislike for remakes in general because it always seems to put the animation medium in second place, and so it feels like a missed opportunity most of the time'.
But when he got a phone call from Universal to say the studio was kicking around the idea of doing just that to the CGI animated franchise whose three Oscar-nominated films he had written and directed, 'I immediately thought I want to throw my hat in the ring, because I feel so protective of these characters and the world and the story, and I wanted to make sure that the wonder and the heart of it all was intact'.
Rest assured, Berklings, it is. You might enter the cinema wondering why this extremely faithful remake even needs to exist, but you will leave glad that it does.
For Mason Thames, the 17-year-old actor who steps into the role of Hiccup, the would-be but never-actually-could-be Viking warrior who discovers he is something of a dragon whisperer, 'getting the chance to step into this is so unreal'.
Thames – whose breakout role was as the kid imprisoned by Ethan Hawke's suburban psychopath in The Black Phone (2021) – grew up watching the movies and the spin-off TV series. He even dressed up as Hiccup one Halloween. So landing the part of his childhood hero was much more than just a great career move.
'Getting cast and all that, I was super excited,' he says. 'And then the pressure hit once I got to set and I was in the costume, because this world and these characters mean so much to me, and to so many other people.
'Stepping into that role, it's a lot of responsibility but it's also such an honour. Not a day goes by where I don't thank Dean a million times for giving me the opportunity.'
Nico Parker, who plays the trainee warrior Astrid – at first disdainful of Hiccup because she sees him as a weakling, but ultimately his greatest ally – feels a similar connection to the material.
'For me and Mason, one of our first bonding points was that we're both die-hard How to Train Your Dragon fans,' says the 21-year-old daughter of Thandiwe Newton (whose own breakthrough role came in the Australian movie Flirting back in 1991, alongside a couple of unknowns called Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts). 'My entire childhood is in the How to Train Your Dragon universe, which is, I think, something very common for people of our age group.
'That means when you're making a movie like this, it's being made with an abundance of love and care for the original. And that feels super special.'
In plot terms, this Dragon sticks pretty closely to the original. Hiccup is the only son of Viking tribal chief Stoick (Gerard Butler, who also voiced the character in the original trilogy). An apprentice blacksmith, he is a perpetual disappointment to the old man, who thinks the only true Viking is a warrior, and the only good dragon is a dead one. Hiccup tries his best to make it on Dad's terms, and fails, but when he discovers he has a gift for calming dragons, and turning age-old foes into flyable friends, he proves there is another way.
Perhaps it's just the times we are living in, but in this telling of the tale I couldn't help but detect some complex and poignant themes: a more enlightened response to the environment, where we learn to live and work with it rather than simply exploit it; a compassionate response to the Other, even when we have been used to seeing it as our implacable enemy, to be destroyed at all costs; a rejection of outdated gender roles and anti-intellectualism.
Heady stuff for a kids' movie, perhaps, and not something DeBlois readily wants to cop to (and having seen how Disney's Snow White was torpedoed in part by debates around Gaza, it's not hard to see why he wouldn't want to go there).
'You know, it's not conscious, it's not on the surface, but I can see how it relates to the world that we live in now,' he says. 'The sense of defying traditional norms to sort of think for yourself … yes, I see that all, it seems as pertinent as ever, even though the messaging hasn't changed really since the first movie came out in 2010.'
For DeBlois, the heart of the story is deeply personal. It's all about the relationship between the father and the son.
'Personally, it's catharsis,' he says. 'I love the idea of a parent and a child being able to overcome their differences and expectations and to make amends, because I came from a challenging time with my father in my teen years, it got a little combative, and I felt like I was a disappointment.
'We had it out, but we never had the moment of amends, because he passed away when I was 19,' he continues. 'And so being able to live that scene out with Hiccup and Stoick, to hear his father articulate through tears that he's proud of him, is a bit of therapy for me. It goes beyond any sort of political allegory, it's more about how we evolve as human beings, and we come to appreciate the differences in one another and not see them as weaknesses that need to change.'
You'd have to imagine DeBlois' father would be pretty proud of his son now. He co-wrote and co-directed (with Chris Sanders) Lilo & Stitch, and the 2002 Disney animated movie has spawned sequels, TV series, computer games, soundtrack albums and, now, a live-action remake of its own (he was not involved in that). He's been nominated for three Oscars. And even before his latest film has opened in theatres, Universal has announced plans for a sequel, spurring hopes among the faithful that Cate Blanchett, who played Valka in the second animated Dragon, will return.
Though he hadn't anticipated jumping aboard the Dragon train again, DeBlois always hoped to make the transition to live-action filmmaking.
'It's a move I've been preparing for since the start of my animation career,' he says. 'I've religiously watched making-of documentaries on the bonus content of every DVD I purchased, and TV series like Project Greenlight, in preparation for the day that it might happen. It took a while – I've just turned 55 – and I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity, and also very aware that many animation directors who've moved into live action have done so without success. So I was determined not to be one of those.'
For my money, DeBlois judges perfectly the balance between remaining faithful to the source and bringing something new. And that is, primarily, a sense that these fantastical creatures – Toothless and all the rest – might actually have existed in the real world.
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The movie was shot on sound stages in Belfast (where dragons have become quite the thing, courtesy of Game of Thrones and its prequel series House of the Dragon), but the flying scenes were shot in the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Scotland. And for once, the cast didn't have to merely imagine their mighty foes-turned-friends while acting opposite a tennis ball on a stick (which is de rigueur in this kind of filmmaking).
'They had these foam heads, and a puppeteering team, and I got to spend a lot of time with my Toothless operator, Tom Walton, and kind of work out a chemistry between me and a fake dragon,' says Thames. 'They made it a lot easier than just working with absolutely nothing.'
Still, for all that the flying sequences look utterly convincing on film, shooting them demanded an enormous suspension of disbelief from the cast.
'While we were filming the stuff of us flying, I was like, 'Mason, I feel like an idiot right now',' says Parker. 'Everyone's drinking coffee, and it's us in Viking outfits on a mechanical bull. Like, you look really silly, but actually suck it up. It was worth it.'
Parker and Thames are on board for a sequel, of course, and beyond that, who knows. If audiences respond to the live-action remake as they did to the original, the sky is the limit, so to speak.
But it won't just be because of the effects, incredible as they are. It will be because the core story still resonates.
'I think the message of celebrating differences and embracing otherness and having empathy towards one another is really, really important,' says Parker. 'It's really special to see that the things that make you different or shy or anxious or awkward or whatever are actually the things you should be the most proud of.
'That's something really special to have as a movie of this scale and of this size, especially nowadays when the world is kind of in constant disarray. And to actually get to be the enforcers of that message in this movie is a real privilege.'