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Saw the trailer for the live-action How To Train Your Dragon…

…thanks, Dreamworks! I fucking hate it!

Okay, but real talk:

How To Train Your Dragon is a franchise near and dear to my heart. It was the very first fandom that I went full in on as far as engagement goes: saving fan art, reading fanfics, getting into fandom fights, interacting with fandom hierarchy (and hating the users who carried themselves like leaders of the fandom), rooting for the movies to win awards, keeping my eye out for every new piece of content, watching each season release of Race To The Edge like my life depended on it, etc. Whenever anything HYTYD-related was coming up, I was on it like a hawk!

I fell out of the fandom some time around the release of the third movie; I think I had started college then and got swamped with real life stuff, so much so that I stopped using Tumblr almost entirely. In addition, a lot of my favorite users left the fandom and/or stopped using Tumblr, so there wasn’t the same sense of community and interest as before.

I haven’t touched HTTYD material since, but it’s still dear to my heart. So when I heard that there was a live action remake coming…

…I was annoyed as shit.

I absolutely DETEST the current Hollywood trend of live action remakes. I hate the implication that all IPs must tend towards live action, that an animated IP can’t be seen as whole and complete on its own and must ‘graduate’ to live action in order to be fully respected, that live action is somehow superior to animation, and most importantly, that studio execs feel the need to make these remakes so grim and serious and Game of Thrones-like. I hate the remakes when Disney does them, I hate the remakes when Paramount does them, and I hate that Dreamworks is now hopping in on the trend.

The trailer/live action medium makes Berk and the Vikings look incredibly dull, grey, and boring. There’s no color, no vividness, no energy, no charm, no pizzazz, nada. Everything looks like it’s had the life sucked out of it. I know I can’t judge acting from a mere trailer, but it already looks mid as hell. I’m black myself, so I don’t get too up in arms about race swaps, but I’m also a huge stickler for detail, and I like it when the characters match up 1 to 1. I personally don’t consider race swaps to be a fulfilling form of representation, so remakes where a white character gets swapped out for a girl of color don’t do anything for me.

And Toothless’s animation…oh my goodness. If they were just going to replicate his appearance from the animation, then why the fuck did they even bother? Like what even is the point?

I’m sorry that I sound hateful, but wow, I hate this! They should’ve just made a new series! Maybe a prequel with the gang’s parents, or featured another tribe in the world of Berk, or done an AU—anything but more live action schlop!

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I think part of what's making the conversations around the casting choices in the live action HTTYD so annoying to me is that for me, it has nothing to do with any of the supposedly controversial casting and more to do with the fact the movie seems to be cherry-picking what it wants to carry directly from animation to live action.

We have to wait to see more but as of right now, it looks like a near shot-for-shot remake. I know the director, Dean Deblois, said it wouldn't be but he was also on record of saying he would never make a live action remake and called them lazy several years ago but here we are so forgive me if I don't completely take his word on that. They did their damnedest to make poor Gerard Butler look as much like animated Stoick as humanly possible even if it means it looks like he just walked out of a Spirit Halloween store. Hiccup looks pretty much identical to his animated counterpart including that late 2000s haircut. It appears that they tried their best to replicate set pieces and props from the animated film. They obviously didn't mess with Toothless's design in very obvious ways because he's so iconic that god knows that would've caused absolute chaos...etc.

But then you have characters who don't look a thing like their animated counterparts - not just regarding race but smaller details like hair color or their costumes - in a movie that already looks to be a direct remake of the animated film where other aspects of said animated film are being perfectly replicated (or at least they tried very hard to replicate them).

If they had decided to do something completely different with this live action adaptation and change up every character in some way, this would be a completely different conversation and frankly, none of it would matter but because they seem to be cherry-picking what is and is not a direct remake/replication from the animated film, suddenly the conversation needs to exist because if they're being so particular about Stoick and Hiccup and hell, even Tuffnut looks like a pretty accurate replication then you can't help but ask... well, then why isn't Fishlegs blonde? Why isn't Astrid blonde? Why is Snotlout dressed in bright fucking orange? Why didn't they cast actual identical twins?

They're picking and choosing and it's adding fuel to a fire that was completely avoidable if they'd just picked one side or the other. They could've gone the historical route, they could've said to hell with it and made it all completely different, or they could've made it exactly the same... instead, they've created this confusing mosh pit that frankly shouldn't even exist that is unfortunately going to spark this so-called nitpicking whether people like it or not because you cannot argue that hair color or costumes don't matter when so much of the rest of the film already looks identical to the animation.

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HTTYD live action... Well.

There was really no need for that. I don't like that live-action trend anyway.

I'm very scared that this new film will cast a shadow over the masterpiece that is the animated franchise.

And Astrid. Don't get me wrong, the actress is beautiful and probably very talented, but I just can't recognize Astrid. She feels like a total new character to me. Especially when the other characters are identical to the animation??

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tomark 101: created by me & @touchd0wn-boy [slides here]

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>:)

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guys it wasn’t ai he’s actually this hot

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never show me that man in a plain white tshirt or else

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BLINK-182 "ONE MORE TIME" Austin City Limits Music Festival | October 4, 2024

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BLINK-182 Austin City Limits Music Festival | October 4, 2024

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BLINK-182 Austin City Limits Music Festival | October 4, 2024

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Tbh

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2024 NL Wild Card Series: Braves vs. Padres ↳ Petco Park sings All The Small Things

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Perhaps It's Just A Dream (01-03)

(First frame blurred to keep it sfw. You'll get the story without it.)

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….which could mean nothing

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….which could mean nothing

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mark hoppus and tom delonge are gay lovers