Get the latest gossip
Finally, a Live-Action Remake That Doesn’t Feel Pointless
The new version of How to Train Your Dragon sticks closely to the original. But human actors and real locations give it real weight and spectacle.
Still, that beloved hit, directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, who had previously made Disney’s Lilo & Stitch(a profitable but soulless remake of which, oddly enough, is also in theaters) managed a nice mix of zip and heart, giving its characters enough physical and emotional heft that their fantastical perils felt palpable. Our young hero, Hiccup (Mason Thames), is maybe not quite as scrawny as he was as a cartoon, but he’s still just slight and hesitant enough, a far cry from the heroic dragon slayer that his chieftain father, Stoick the Vast (played by Gerard Butler, who also voiced the character in the animated films), wants him to be. The first How to Train Your Dragon felt at times like it wanted to be more than animation: It hit theaters just a few months after James Cameron’s epochal blockbuster Avatar, and it tapped into a similar yearning to disappear into a universe where one could tame and ride fearsome, colorful mythical beasts.
Or read this on VULTURE