The first teaser for DreamWorks’ live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon—based on the books by Cressida Cowell—was absolutely shameless, leaning entirely on the scene in which hapless Viking Hiccup (played here by Mason Thames) first meets the perfect, catlike, wonderful dragon Toothless. I don’t know how anyone watches that scene without tearing up. Maybe if you hate black cats? Maybe if you never saw the 2010 animated film, which like this one was about a boy who meets a dragon and winds up changing his entire dragon-hunting culture?
The full trailer goes back to that well, but adds in more backstory, all of which will look astonishingly familiar to fans of the previous film. Calling a movie full of CGI dragons “live-action” is a bit of a stretch, but DreamWorks is clearly following the Disney formula here (if it works for CGI lion cubs, right?). Two things can be true: I got all teary watching Hiccup and Toothless meet again, and I watched the rest of this trailer wondering what, exactly, this movie can offer that did not already exist in the previous version.
Writer-director Dean DeBlois clearly believes there’s enough to bring him back to the series; he also co-directed the 2010 film (with Chris Sanders) and its two sequels.
At a press event quoted by The Hollywood Reporter, DeBlois said:
“With the rushed production schedule and the limited resources that we had on that first movie for DreamWorks, there were things that we skipped past that we could have maybe done a little more justice to — some of the characters, some of the depth of relationships and the immersive action,” he said. “It’s a reimagining that holds quite faithful to the story and yet finds moments where we could enrich character relationships, give a bit of depth, give a little bit of mythology that might have been lacking in that original.”
He went on to say that the new film elaborates on the character of Astrid, played here by Nico Parker, who “was a little underserved” in the animated film. In this version, DeBlois said, “she is a descendant of one of those prized dragon-fighting warriors that were collected by Vikings in different places. She hopes to be chief of this tribe one day. She’s got great ambition, and what’s nice about it is that it creates a conflict between she and Hiccup.”
“Nice” is a weird word there; do we need more conflict in a film about two species trying to kill each other? But good for Astrid.
How to Train Your Dragon also stars Gerard Butler (returning to his role from the animated film), Nick Frost, and Julian Dennison. It flies into theaters June 13th.
