#see does httyd need a live action? no but i'm still excited

[httyd-art-requests]

So the teaser for the live action How To Train Your Dragon film has dropped. Have you seen it? Any thoughts on it?

I just saw it, and BOY do I have some thoughts about it lmao

Live action remakes already annoy me for several reasons, and as much as I want to be excited for "new" HTTYD media, it really misses the mark for me

The movie doesn't look original to me. It's so obviously a remake of something else that it loses any personality it could otherwise have. If the original HTTYD movie had been a live action movie from the start, it would have looked nothing like this, because the creators would have tried to create something that stood out from other movies. This one just feels like a checklist being completed in front of me: "right so we'll have this scene, and then we'll have this scene, and the dragon does this, and the boy does this, and then this is the part the fans like so we're going to recreate it 1:1", but no real understanding of what made the original as beloved as it is.

This trailer just looks soulless to me, but I'm holding out hope that the other trailers will show us more and hopefully prove me wrong

Toothless's design is... fine I guess? They made his hind legs digitegrade for some reason, which just looks very jarring to me. Idk why they felt the need to change it, it's one of the details that made his design feel unique to me. Like dragons' legs are almost always depicted as dinosaur-like and digitegrade, and HTTYD having dragons that have plantigrade legs feels really cool. The wings are comically oversized and he lost a lot of his personality based on the scene recreations shown in the trailer (like the silly People Sit he does in the original, now he just sits like a dog lmao) but it really, really could have been worse.

I slowed it down to catch some of the other dragon species' designs and eeeeeehhhh... They're recognizable, I'll say that. They also lost a lot of the personality that the original models had, they look a lot more uniform in their proportions. I really don't see why making them look "realistic" has to mean that they look more boring, when we have so many animals irl that look fake and made up because of how absurd they look. They could have had more fun with it is what I'm saying

Casting Gerard Butler as Stoick feels like the only actually good decision, his voice as Stoick just can't be recreated. Hiccup's actor is... also fine I guess, no strong feelings whatsoever.

The thing that bothers me the most is the lighting. The original HTTYD movie paid special attention to making the lighting look as realistic and believable as possible. It's atmospheric and helps you get sucked into the world while you watch. "Subdued" is probably a good word to describe it. It very intentionally doesn't go overboard. The lighting in the trailer looks fake as hell. They could be using real actual lighting conditions on set and I still wouldn't believe it's real.

Overall, I have mixed feelings despite all the negative things I just listed. I'm sharing in the excitement of all the people who want to watch it, but I'm still disappointed that it, like, exists at all. No matter what this movie ends up looking like, I'm always going to prefer the original animated movies. I'm open to being proved wrong though, I really hope this movie is going to be better than anything we're imagining rn

[scrunkle-squish1]

can't believe we're getting them as live action hiccstrid. we are in such good hands

[schattenschreiberin]

Eragon and How to train your dragon

The Eragon-Movie has issues. And I'm afraid the Live-Action version of How to train a dragon will have them as well....

How to train your dragon will be remade, like so many others. I don't know why. I don't see a purpose in making a live action movie of a property that has multiple movies, series and comic books already.

... Which is exactly what worries me.

Let's go back to the year 2006, to the release of a movie that hasn't aged well, since it was a disappointment from the very start.

I will say that I hold the first Eragon book very dear to my heart because it's the book that inspired me to write my own book. So when this movie was announced I was excited.

Expecting a movie adaption like Harry Potter.

Obviously that is not what fans got.

What we got was a movie littered with inaccuracies, illogical changes, bad casting or at the very least bad costumes and make up and a dragon that looks like she has feathered wings.

How did it all go so wrong?

And why was this movie not as good as Httyd, which also made massive changes to the story and looks of the characters?

Well... Eragon tried to be Eragon. While Dreamworks didn't try to be a faithful adaption of Cressida Cowells' work. You can be mad at Dreamworks for that but they still made a good movie with likeable characters and a mostly original story.

Eragon... I don't know what they tried to do. They tried to start a franchise as well, which makes a lot of the changes even more illogical.

The movie "followed" the story the book told. But that book has (at least in german) 725 pages of more or less important plot. While the first Harry Potter book has only 334 pages of more or less important plot.

You can only squeeze a certain amount of plot into 1 hour and 43 minutes of movie. You either have to make two movies, like Harry Potter made eight movies for seven books, or you have to leave out plot. Maybe one-note characters. Maybe make a montage about a few days of travel. Things that are not important to the overall plot of the books.

The movie failed at this.

It added unnecessary parts, killed characters that were very important in the second book and just erased entire towns from the journey. Visits that were important to the story the books tell.

And all of that ignores the fact that they made a character, who's clearly described having black hair, a redhead. To me that shows a giant lack of care to not even make your actors look like the characters they're supposed to portray.

Which leads me to my worry about Httyd.

I am not saying that any of those people are bad actors. I'm just saying "Why didn't you cast an actress that looks like Astrid?"

You're not going off of a book without pictures. You have a very clear character model. And I'm pretty sure there are plenty of actresses who match Astrid more than Nico does. You're casting people to play vikings. They're not like elves. You know where vikings come from and I don't think someone told you to cast only actors from a certain country.

I know that they can make Nico look like Astrid. The same can be said about the Eragon movie.

I guess I'm worried that they'll follow down the path many others go. Like movies recruiting YouTubers to voice characters just because they're popular and their name on the poster will help sell the movie. Or casting in the name of inclusion, like Disney.

We only know two actors so far... And I hope it'll either stay at this level or get better.

I don't need another Arya in a live-action dragon movie.