Fifteen years doesn’t seem very long to wait before doing a nearly scene-for-scene remake of an animated blockbuster. In the case of DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon,” that’s the same age as Hiccup Haddock, the callow boy Viking who deliberately defied his belligerent tribe’s long-running war on dragonkind by befriending one of the flying fire-breathers. It’s also just enough time for those who belonged to the tween-age target market for the 2010 original to be feeling nostalgic.
That’s a gamble the studio must be feeling fairly confident about as it launches “How to Train Your Dragon” three weeks after Disney struck it rich with “Lilo & Stitch” (the “live-action” update of a 2002 cartoon co-created by the same duo that directed the first “Dragon,” Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois).
Rather than turn the responsibility of reinventing “Dragon” over to a different director, DreamWorks agreed to let DeBlois shepherd this remarkably faithful update, which remains largely animated (despite its scruffy human cast), especially in the back half, when dragons play such an important role.
The script feels almost identical in both versions, the way it might if the same play were being performed decades apart by an entirely different company. Fortunately, “How to Train Your Dragon” had — and therefore still has — a rock-solid screenplay, loosely adapted from the novel by Cressida Cowell.
Superficially, it’s inspired by films like “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “Born Free,” in which humans form an illicit relationship with creatures whom others consider dangerous or might try to harm. But the core of the film has always been the father-son dynamic, as Hiccup’s dad, Stoick, tries to mold his heir in his image (a perfectly cast Gerard Butler, in this case), while the tradition-bending boy frets about whether he can be accepted on his own terms.
Ergo, DeBlois’ job is to decide just how closely he wants to match what came before, and then to leverage the much-advanced state of visual effects to make “Dragon” look and feel as photorealistic as possible. Come to find, the emotional authenticity matters even more, since actors can’t telegraph what their characters are feeling quite so broadly as CG Vikings do. Which brings us to DeBlois’ most important choice: whom to cast as Hiccup? The director chose teen star Mason Thames, who doesn’t look much like a gawky misfit, though his body language speaks volumes (essentially, what Jay Baruchel’s warbly voice once did).
Appearance-wise, Thames has the puppy-dog appeal of a young John Krasinski, with strong features and serious heartthrob potential. It’s hard to imagine dream girl — and ultra-competitive dragon wrangler — Astrid (Nico Parker) preferring Hiccup’s goofy classmates, led by Snotlout (Gabriel Howell), whose own daddy issues far exceed Hiccup’s. On the Island of Berk, the grown-ups are huge, grimy and covered in hair, while Hiccup is all peach fuzz, flicking his mop in a Justin Bieber-style swoop. Most of the adults are missing limbs, which they lost doing battle with the seven classes of dragons that routinely raid their village.
No one has seen the seventh kind, the fearsome Night Fury, until Hiccup manages to knock one out of the sky with a homemade bola contraption. As the child of chief Stoick, who swears vengeance on the monsters that took his wife’s life, Hiccup is something of a disappointment. Whereas his father is macho and courageous, Hiccup comes across scrawny and sensitive. He can’t bring himself to kill the Night Fury when he finds it, preferring to bond with the beast instead.
That scene, in which Hiccup cautiously approaches the wounded dragon, offering fish as a sort of peace offering, is the make-or-break moment for the film — the virtually wordless sequence in which a wary friendship is forged. Here, DeBlois faces the added challenge of convincing audiences that a flesh-and-blood boy and a putatively deadly, computer-generated animal can truly coexist, not just as allies, but as plausible screen partners.
Witnessing their interaction feels like falling in love all over again, as DeBlois relies once again on a near-mystic mix of nuanced character animation and encouragement from John Powell’s score (which conveys the dragon’s share of their cross-species affinity) to suggest that these pixels are every bit as alive as the human actor reaching out to touch them. Technically, picking the right Hiccup wasn’t nearly as risky as slightly altering the look of Toothless (as the kid dubs him), but it had to be done for us to believe that Vikings could fear such a majestic creature.
Compared with the other dragons in the original, which character designer Nico Marlet imagined with comically lopsided proportions — bulgy eyes, oversize heads, ungainly fangs — Toothless was an elegant mix of feline and canine traits, mapped onto a sleek black reptilian body. DeBlois dials the cuteness quotient back somewhat while giving this massive animal a genuine presence. Toothless holds his own alongside Hiccup, even as the actor appears in what look more like sets than bona fide locations.
“Dragon” becomes more convincing as it goes along, likely because the bulk of the movie is being handled virtually, once Hiccup and Toothless have learned to fly in tandem, and Stoick forces Hiccup’s new companion to lead them to the dragons’ nest. The human cast do an uncanny job of mimicking their cartoon counterparts, especially Nick Frost as dragon training master Gobber and Bronwyn James and Harry Trevaldwyn as twins Ruffnut and Tuffnut, the three of whom manage to milk fresh laughs from 15-year-old jokes. The swaggering Astrid was always the film’s most self-reliant character, and in Parker’s hands, the romance between her and Hiccup takes on Clark Kent-Lois Lane vibes, especially when the two hit the skies.
The original “How to Train Your Dragon” was never a one-off, blooming into a full trilogy over time. With this do-over, DeBlois has the chance to reinforce the foundation, which should make the sequels stronger. It’s hard to improve on the first movie, though the last act looks positively iconic in this new incarnation, unlocking the expressionistic power of “Heavy Metal” toons and Boris Vallejo paintings.
At first, DeBlois’ involvement felt like a way of protecting “Dragon” from some other director coming along and destroying it. But by the end, his vision serves to bring the whole fantastical story one step closer to reality.
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