About halfway through “How to Train Your Dragon,” Hiccup, the unlikely hero hiding under a mop of teenage hair, hops onto the back of his newfound dragon friend, Toothless, and cautiously goes for their first ride. Soon, they’re soaring; they’re bumped around and perilously tumbling; they’re finding each other midair; and finally they’re shooting off at light speed, twisting impossibly through the craggy rock formations sprouting over the sea.
It’s a moment of pure exhilaration, the first instance when you nod and momentarily understand the point of this remake — a live-action mirror of a big sequence from the 2010 animated film that adds visceral weight and big-screen grandeur to the original. By the film’s end, it’s one of the few scenes that genuinely justifies the entire conceit of this reimagining from Dean DeBlois, the franchise’s returning director.
To be sure, this new iteration is entertaining, bears a sense of heart and brings a tight script of fantasy and friendship to life. It is, in short, all of the original, only too much so: Most of the good of this “Dragon” come directly from its source material, as DeBlois has almost religiously mimed his original creation without much daring or new dimension beyond mechanically translating it to an IMAX screen. For the faithful to a strong franchise, that is perhaps the best way to do it.
This remake of the 2010 film comes just six years after the third and final installment of the animated trilogy, barely a blink of an eye when it comes to developing the nostalgia kick that tends to fuel live-action retreads. And yet, the movie is bringing to life a franchise that, far more than most animated films, has the pure DNA of a real-deal blockbuster: an immersive fantasy epic full of dragon fights and warmongering Vikings.
Like its original, the new film begins by introducing us, mid-battle, to Berk, a remote island village that is in a perpetual war with dragons. When Hiccup (Mason Thames), the feckless son of the village chief, Stoic (Gerard Butler, reprising his role in the animated films), wounds a Night Fury, the deadliest of dragons, he develops a bond with the creature. He names him Toothless and comes to find him, and all dragons, to be more skittish dog than aggressive predator, a realization Hiccup struggles to translate to his people as their war turns ever more deadly.
DeBlois changes little to the story and recreates many of the shots from the predecessor, a testament to the scope and narrative sturdiness of the original. The focus here is in adding a kind of tangibility and heft to the beasts and the battles. And some of that is there, in spurts. But even in these moments the film runs into a built-in issue with a remake of such recent material: If the idea is to give the fantasy a newly tactile and awe-inspiring life, it’s hard to meaningfully do so to a vision that, animated less than a generation ago, already felt very much alive. DeBlois’s original creation was a visual wonder, and watching this new one 15 years later, the jump between one already very contemporary format to another doesn’t feel all that impactful or, in that sense, warranted.
The live-action cinematography does lend a sense of scope that can be impressive, but also uneven: This world appears bathed in artificial light, and when we see Hiccup and his friends in close-up astride their dragons, we’re suddenly glaringly aware of the green-screen hidden beneath everything.
But there is a newfound sense of danger and realism that enhances the core friendship between Hiccup and Toothless. The dragon here is still cute, but he and his skirmishes are heavier and louder. The stakes, then, feel higher, though Thames, who is well-cast as the uncertain teen hero, can nevertheless try too hard at times to tell you that.
Butler is the most welcome holdover from the original. His physical presence fits the role as much as his voice did, and he seems to be relishing the opportunity to put on a Viking helmet and return to a world that is now a bigger playground. Why wouldn’t he? Berk is suddenly made manifest and dragons are real. But it’s hard not to shake the impression that the excitement is mostly fueled by the memory of something smaller, but better.
How to Train Your Dragon
Rated PG. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters.
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