Adapting a beloved story from page to screen is never easy. And, as we’ve seen with Disney’s mixed results with their own attempts, remaking an adaptation is another difficult challenge. After all, there’s a lot that can go wrong when you start reimagining something that is beloved a few times over. But if you get it right, there’s magic there and 15 years after Universal and DreamWorks brought Cressida Cowell’s book to the animated screen, the live-action version of How to Train Your Dragon is here to show what that magic looks like, offering audiences a fine example of what a live-action remake can be by giving fans of the original everything they love while adding just a little bit more for those new to the world of Vikings and dragons.
Written and directed by Dean DeBlois — who co-directed the animated film with Chris Sanders back in 2010 — How to Train Your Dragon follows Hiccup (Mason Thames), a young member of the Viking village of Berk. Hiccup’s village is very much the front line in the battle with dragons, creatures that have been laying siege to Vikings around the world seemingly for generations. However, this is not merely a story about Vikings versus dragons. Hiccup is an outsider within his community, something of a goof and a misfit who often causes more issues than he solves, one who is particularly eager to prove himself by taking out the most elusive dragon type of them all: the terrifying Night Fury. This is of significant importance to Hiccup because his father, Stoick (Gerard Butler), is the village chief — and a legendary dragon slayer.
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If you’ve read the books or seen the animated film, you largely know the story from here. Hiccup’s attempt to take out a Night Fury ultimately leads him to the beast that he will name Toothless, with his experiences with Toothless teaching Hiccup both a great deal about himself and about dragons in general, leading to the slow revelation that perhaps the Vikings aren’t exactly in the right and there’s a better way of dealing with things. Complicating this is that Hiccup has been enrolled in essentially dragon slayer training as he tries to find his place in Viking society and in the eyes of his own father.
On the grand scale, this live-action How to Train Your Dragon doesn’t change anything. Indeed, this film is faithful, nearly shot-for-shot of the animated original. There are a few things that have been lightly modified — some dialogue is a little different and a couple of scenes have been tweaked just a bit to make the story a bit more cohesive. But beyond that, this is a film that seems to know what its audience is looking for and remains deeply faithful to it. It does, on the surface, make one question what the point of this entire exercise would be. After all, if the film is going to be so faithful to the original, wouldn’t that be formulaic? The answer is, somewhat surprisingly, no. What the live-action film has going for it is that the real-world elements — the water, the human expressions, the landscapes — all add a depth to the story that animation just doesn’t fully capture. When Hiccup and Toothless are learning to fly together, there is just something breathtaking about it in live action that has to be seen to be believed. There’s also something truly emotionally moving in getting to see the real human expressions in key performances. While Butler returns as Stoick, he manages to bring something entirely different to his physical portrayal of the chief, offering a depth that I wouldn’t say the animated film lacks, but the live action simply offers.
This isn’t to say that the film is perfect. The first third of the film is a little awkward, as some of the silliness that is so charming in the animated film just doesn’t perfectly translate. Thames’s portrayal of Hiccup does quite a bit of heavy lifting here. There’s also something that feels a little lacking with Gabriel Howell’s Snotlout. Howell is by no means bad in the role, but the character, as well as his own fraught father-son relationship, just doesn’t quite lift. Neither of these things is enough to have much impact, however, and the result here is that How to Train Your Dragon is exactly what a live-action remake of an animated film should be. It honors the original and enhances it by seeking not to change it. Instead, you come away with a fantastical story that feels just that much more real — and maybe, just maybe, believing in dragons once again.
Rating: 4 out of 5
How to Train Your Dragon lands in theaters on June 13th.
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