Whether it be Connery or Cumberbatch everyone at some point has wanted their own pet dragon. With the adaption of the novels to a major DreamWorks animation franchise How To Train Your Dragon gave us another version of dragons that switched fighting knights and hobbits with what if cats were the size of horses and had wings. Now with the series getting a live action adaption in cinemas this week is it what we hope for or another live action brick in the wall?
For those not familiar the How to Train Your Dragon franchise is based on a book series by an English author that spanned 12 books from 2003 to 2015 before becoming one of Dreamwork Animations most successful film franchises to the point of recently having it’s own theme park ‘land’. While the books stretch this out and tell it a little differently here is a recap for anyone new.
Somewhere not well known but where Vikings would live is the village of Berk. A small island that has a small pest problem that just so happens to be a large pet problem with it not being rats eating the wheat, but dragons who fly off with their live stock.
While most of the village are rough Vikings who would have their arm or leg chewed off by a dragon and keep fighting our hero is the son of the chief named Hiccup, who by most accounts is considered the worst Viking in Berk. This all changes one day when during a raid Hiccup manages to down a Dragon by himself and instead of off’ing it like most of his Viking neighbours, befriends it. And that, is how it started with a trilogy of big screen animated films with a success to rival event a Austin Powers sounding Ogre.
Honestly, the original films are still really good and hold up. While there are more than one Netflix spin off series that fills the gaps between films, if you haven’t seen the original or sequels that is still a good time to be had but if you haven’t then you might want to wait until after you see the newest live action instalment.
The new film which is the first DreamWorks related live action adaption but coming after a string of Disney live action ones is.. honestly substantially different. Where as the Disney approach to live action has been one of subtraction to make a concept work in live action which has resulted in more often than not changes to the plot/story/characters/set pieces, the DreamWorks live action approach is additive. This means instead of taking away things to make the source material work in live action they add resulting in the most faithful jump from animation to live action we have seen. Period.
The original film clocks in at around 90 minutes which is fairly standard for an animated film but the live action is more around the 2 hour mark because of it. The difference while subtle is consistent throughout with scenes or dialogue being added to the original animated source material to flush out characters or exposition that you could get away with glazing over in animation. From a casual one or two lines on top of a word to word exact scene, to a new scene explaining that Berk is a village made up of many clans who journeyed to fight dragons (explaining the much more diverse and less blonde hair/blue eye cast).
While animated films do have certain luxuries when it comes to the amount of things that they can show on screen or scenery just perfect for the needs of the film, the live action goes pretty hard more than a few times in reproducing shots from the animated almost perfect to an uncanny level. Basically if you were hoping for just the animated movie but in live action with next to no changes, this is very much it.
This of course also means if you are very familiar with the animated films then you know exactly what is going to happen for the most part with there being very few surprises but that also means for those who loved the original they just get to enjoy it, and for those who are new to the series get to enjoy almost everything that was great about the original for the first time. The only complaint we can possibly see someone having is that it being a direct adaption that they know what is going to happen, but that is kinda the point.
So, should you go see it? If you are a How to Train Your Dragon diehard then yes absolutely you should. While rewatching the original does add a little bit of an extra layer of appreciating the exact level of detail they went to reproducing a number of scenes, going in cold with a loose recollection is probably the right play here. Our favourite winged void kitty Toothless is reproduced as faithfully as we could possibly want and honestly we can only hope other live action adaptions from other studios in future *cough Atlantis *cough* Treasure Planet *cough* take this same route.
How to Train Your Dragon is in cinemas across Australia from today
