{"id":172903,"date":"2025-06-10T12:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T12:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/172903\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T12:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T12:14:10","slug":"how-to-train-your-dragon-review-we-need-more-originality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/172903\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Train Your Dragon Review \u2014 ‘We need more originality’"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the island of Berk, dragon-slaying is a way of life, although not for hopeless young Hiccup (Mason Thames). Until he shoots down a rare Night Fury…<\/p>\n

2010\u2019s animated How To Train Your Dragon<\/a> boasts a fun, sparky script and an unimprovable story about a lonely, damaged boy bonding with a lonely, injured dragon. This remake has, therefore, largely decided not to improve it, playing out a near-identical script with live human actors and calling it a day. It\u2019s the Gus Van Sant\u2019s Psycho<\/a> of animation remakes. It is frequently soaring and gorgeous, but can\u2019t take full credit for its beautiful moments because we\u2019ve quite literally seen it before.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

How to judge a remix, an echo? Maybe returning director Dean DeBlois, returning composer John Powell and returning star Gerard Butler have fixed some tiny details that always bugged them or added something in that they missed first time, but it\u2019s not always evident what. This adds some tiny wrinkles \u2014 a little more backstory for Nico Parker\u2019s star dragon-slayer-in-training Astrid; the idea that the people of Berk are an international dragon task force merely led by the Vikings (though in that case why are the leads, aside from Parker, also so pale?) \u2014 but none fundamentally change much of what happens.<\/p>\n

\n

Where this is different, it doesn\u2019t necessarily feel better.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That said, the individual elements are fine. Mason Thames makes a good Hiccup, the hapless Viking who can\u2019t kill an injured dragon and so befriends it, and learns from it, instead. Toothless the dragon remains, thankfully, irresistible, and his bond with Hiccup will make you cry. Butler, who voiced Stoick before, is full of heart as the dad who can\u2019t express his feelings. And Nico Parker is an excellent Astrid, given more to do than ever.<\/p>\n

Where this is different, it doesn\u2019t necessarily feel better. The actors generally do great work for humans but don\u2019t truly outplay the wildly expressive characters of the original. Cinematographer Bill Pope brings the island to glorious life (though why is it the same cartoonish shape?), but he\u2019s up against the memory of Roger Deakins using all the possibilities of a CG world.<\/p>\n

Not to harp on, but remakes used to try to add to or alter something in the original: the gender swap of His Girl Friday<\/a>; the \u201980s Miami excess of Scarface<\/a>; even the more restrained flourishes of Kenneth Branagh\u2019s Cinderella<\/a> compared to the Disney original. This one just tries to do the same thing again, and while it does it well \u2014 while it can\u2019t help but do it well, given how much everyone involved in this obviously loves the original \u2014 that\u2019s all it does. Given the animated film so heavily adapted the Cressida Cowell books on which it was based, you\u2019d think the makers of this new version could have played a little looser with the source and really let themselves fly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clearly made with real love and care, but shows far too much deference to its progenitor. Even in a remake, we need more originality and less playing the hits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the island of Berk, dragon-slaying is a way of life, although not for hopeless young Hiccup (Mason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-172903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114659017722957041","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}