In 2020, Dean DeBlois publicly blasted live-action remakes of animated films as “lazy” studio endeavors.
The director who, along with Chris Sanders, had made the 2002 Disney animated “Lilo & Stitch” and the 2010 DreamWorks Animation release “How to Train Your Dragon,” said that he viewed such remakes as “a missed opportunity to put something original into the world.”
Then, two years later, DeBlois received a call from the Universal Pictures president, Peter Cramer, asking if he’d be interested in directing a live-action version of “How to Train Your Dragon.”
“At the expense of seeming like a hypocrite, I thought, well, I’m either going to sit here and pout and watch somebody else do it,” DeBlois said in a video interview with The Times, “or I could jump in and shoulder the blame or help to change the narrative.”
Now, as the live-action “Dragon” arrives in theaters on Friday, DeBlois is enthusiastically attached to the type of movie he formerly criticized.
A lot could have gone wrong: DeBlois had never made a live-action feature before Universal put him in charge of the $150 million remake, and the genre as a whole is facing increased skepticism from audiences and studios alike. (Disney reportedly put its “Tangled” remake on hold indefinitely in the wake of underwhelming box office for “Snow White” this spring.)
Yet, so pleased were the Universal executives after seeing a cut of the new “Dragon,” Cramer said, that they rushed to greenlight a live-action adaptation of “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” to be directed and written by DeBlois and released in theaters in 2027.
“Dean’s execution of it, for us, was A-plus, and that’s really the thing that gives us the confidence to keep going,” Cramer said.
“How to Train Your Dragon” — a retelling of the story of Hiccup, a pacifist Viking teenager who forms a bond with a once-feared dragon named Toothless on the Isle of Berk — represents the studio’s first foray into live-action adaptations of animated films. Executives chose this property over, say, “Shrek” or “Despicable Me” because of “the human and creature drama at the center of it,” Cramer said.
Surprisingly, the original “Dragon” was only the fifth most popular animated film of 2010, trailing “Toy Story 3,” “Shrek Forever After,” “Tangled” and “Despicable Me.” But in the years since, the “Dragon” franchise, including two sequels (which DeBlois directed), has found a large and devoted following. The animated trilogy drew a combined $1.65 billion at the global box office, and there have been three television spinoff series. At Epic Universe, Universal’s newly opened Orlando, Fla., theme park, there is an entire Isle of Berk land with rides, a live stage show, dragon meet-and-greets and Viking-ish food.
“Our company obviously believes in this franchise across all different extensions,” Cramer said, noting that he and other executives “certainly have high hopes” for the live-action film’s box office performance.
Here’s how the new movie took flight.
Widening the audience
When DeBlois worked on the animated “How to Train Your Dragon,” he recalled Jeffrey Katzenberg, the DreamWorks Animation chief at the time, frequently reminding him, “Don’t forget the 5-year-olds” in the audience.
That wasn’t the case this time around. Universal, whose parent company acquired DreamWorks Animation in 2016, was adamant that the new film cater not only to young viewers but also to adults who had grown up with the original and those who’d never even heard of it before.
“They were saying, ‘Embrace the fact that this is an all-audience movie. We want teenagers. We want people in their 20s,’” DeBlois said. “We were encouraged to think bigger.”
So, while still aiming for a PG rating, the crew built large-scale practical sets at Titanic Studios in Belfast, including a 360-degree Viking training arena, to shoot immersive action sequences. The composer John Powell returned to make his sweeping score even more epic. And for those aerial shots and roller-coaster-esque flying sequences, the filmmakers took a helicopter over Iceland, the Isle of Skye and the Faroe Islands to capture expansive footage, including of the craggly islet Tindholmur, which served as the basis for their fictional Berk.
Assembling the Vikings
To embody the endearingly awkward Hiccup (originally voiced by Jay Baruchel), the filmmakers cast Mason Thames, a Texas native who had starred in the Universal horror film “The Black Phone.” For Astrid, an ambitious Viking lass and Hiccup’s love interest, they selected the British actress Nico Parker, who first broke out in Disney’s live-action “Dumbo” remake.
Both 17-year-old Thames and 20-year-old Parker grew up passionate fans of the animated “Dragon” trilogy. Thames once dressed as Hiccup for Halloween, and Parker, who is the daughter of the actress Thandiwe Newton and the director Ol Parker, recalled going to see the original in theaters with her family four times.
When the cast was announced, however, some fans expressed outrage that Astrid would no longer be blonde and blue-eyed, as she’d been portrayed in the animated films (though she was voiced by America Ferrera).
“It’s one thing if people just love the animated movies, and their version of a perfect live-action is a play-by-play with people that look exactly the same,” Parker said. “But when it comes from a place of real hate toward any kind of inclusivity, it’s not an opinion that keeps me up at night.”
In a rare move, Universal brought back Gerard Butler, who originally voiced Hiccup’s dad, Stoick the Vast, to reprise his role as the imposing chief of Berk.
Butler’s work on the original had involved simply saying his lines in a recording booth. This time, he spent hours each day getting a chest-length, bushy beard applied before suiting up in 3D-printed armor with ancillary weapons.
“It was incredibly heavy,” the 55-year-old Scotsman said of the wardrobe. “The first time I put it on, I panicked that this whole movie was going to crash because Gerry Butler couldn’t handle the 90-pound costume.”
Unleashing the dragons
Before Thames arrived on set in Belfast, he fretted that “it was just going to be a bunch of blue screens and a tennis ball as Toothless,” he said. Instead, the actors often performed opposite giant foam dragon heads and operational puppet bodies.
Then, to help digitally transform the dragons into believably menacing beasts, DeBlois turned to the animation supervisor Glen McIntosh, an expert in paleontology who had animated dinosaurs in the “Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic World” franchises.
“Dean wanted the dragons to have the feeling that they were evolved animals, not creatures of fantasy,” McIntosh said. “So, even though they are creatures of fantasy, they had to look like they weren’t just cobbled together.”
Each dragon breed is, therefore, grounded in specific real-life animal traits. A Deadly Nadder like Stormfly, for instance, is influenced by the winged arms of a bat, the head of a parrot and the legs and talons of a golden eagle.
And then there’s Toothless. Unlike the fearsome menagerie that surrounds him, Toothless (a Night Fury with traits of a black panther and a salamander) needed to retain an extra layer of cuteness and relatability, while still looking as if he belonged in the same world as the others.
The animators spent two and a half years updating their hero creature. Toothless’s more cartoonish expressions, like raised eyebrows, were swapped out for head tilts or tail swishes that mimic those of a curious dog or cat. As they added intricacies like textured scales, McIntosh said, their guiding mandate was always, “Is this something you would still want to pet?”
But not every move toward realism worked.
“We recognize that Toothless’s eyes are way too big. Like, there’s no animal on Earth, including the blue whale, that has eyes that big,” DeBlois said. But when they tried to shrink them to a more realistic proportion, he said, “we lost the character. We’d be looking at these images and be like, ‘Oh, he’s kind of repulsive.’”
Looking ahead
DeBlois had considered opening the film with a new flashback from Stoick’s point of view, but, ultimately, the final cut faithfully follows its animated predecessor, including three shot-for-shot scenes.
Still, there are some subtle surprises, as when Astrid voices her desire to be chief of Berk one day, something that was never expressed in the animated version. It’s a line that leaves open the possibility of future plot deviations. “There’s an opportunity going forward to maybe color outside of the lines a little bit more,” DeBlois said.
Last month, the director was still drafting the “Dragon” sequel script, and he said there had not been any discussions about a third live-action film. Cramer also could not “definitively answer” if Universal would complete the trilogy.
“We do have ambitions and hopes,” the studio head said. “But, you know, one movie at a time.”
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