Tag: How To Train Your Dragon

2025 In Film: Day Four (Could Be Better)

On By troubledproductionsIn Uncategorized, Year round upLeave a comment

All Happy Families
Ups: Cosy
Interesting points to make.
Downs: Really loses focus at the end.
Kind of reminds me of Arrested Development, and when you make that comparison, you can’t win.
Best Performer: Becky Ann Baker
Best Moment: When his brother tries to explain what actually happened and why he was accused of sexual misconduct.
Worst Moment: A moment which isn’t there; the bit before the end. It definitely feels like something is missing there.
Opening: Tolstoy quote. Letting you know this film is either going to be really smart, or really pretentious.
Closing: He kisses the girl, his mum goes for a drive, his dad is wistful, as is his brother. The audience is left with a sense of missing something
Original review here

Avatar: Fire And Ash
Ups: Looks beautiful.
Some good action sequences.
Fleshes out the world a bit more
Downs: Very similar to the second one.
Isn’t a marked improvement.
Far too long.
F*cking Spider. Why do they like him so much?
Best Performer: Oona Chaplin
Best Moment: The attack on the human base.
Worst Moment: The drugged sequence. I can see why it’s there, and it is good, but it’s kind of goofy.
Opening: The family decide it’s not safe for Spider to stay with them. Makes sense, but it really skips past why anybody suddenly gives a shit about him considering he saved the villain in the last movie.
Closing: Spider is welcomed into the Na’vi. So he’s gonna play a bigger part in the sequel.
Best Line: I am the fire! By my hand, my people grow strong! We do not bend down and die just because Eywa turns her back on us! We turn our back on Eywa! A weak mother, her weak children. We do not suck on the breast of weakness.
Original review here

How To Train Your Dragon
Ups: Looks magnificent.
The dragons look terrifying.
Good performances.
Downs: Utterly pointless.
Some of the side characters aren’t given enough to do.
Best Performer: Gerard Butler
Best Moment: First flight. Just as good as it was in the animated version.
Worst Moment: When he shoots down the night dragon.
Opening: Narration, pretty much exactly how the original opened.
Closing: Hiccup loses his leg, which was careless.
Best Line: You just gestured to all of me.
Original review here

Love Hurts
Ups: Some fun fights.
Ke Huy Quan
Funny
Downs: Missing “that” scene. The one that takes it from good to great.
One of the romance subplots feels a little forced.
We never really get the sense that he was dangerous in his past life.
Best Performer: Ke Huy Quan
Best Moment: Jeff’s death is funny and inappropriate.
Worst Moment:
Opening: Introduction to Marvin. His character would not work if it was played by anyone other than Ke Huy Quan. The opening is a good indication of that, he’s so pure.
Closing: Marvin admits he loves Rose. Obviously.
Original review here

Presence
Ups: Tense.
Good message
A believable look at a family suffering.
Downs: Dull. So dull.
Mismarketed
Best Performer: Lucy Liu
Best Moment: The bedroom destruction
Worst Moment: The ending.
Opening: POV shot of someone looking around a house in the dark. Kind of feels like you’re playing a video game.
Closing: We find out that the ghost is actually the son, travelling back in time. We find this out because for some reason, after fulfilling his duties, he stuck around for a few days.
Best Line: Have you ever noticed how your advice always corresponds exactly with us not having to do anything, at all?
Original review here

Snow White
Ups: Looks fantastic.
Downs: The Dwarves (sorry, “magical beings”) are kind of annoying.
Gal Gadot.
The songs aren’t great.
We don’t get a good enough sense of how disastrous the land is under the Queens leadership.
Best Performer: Rachel Zegler
Best Moment: When Snow White approaches the castle with her followers. Incredibly Les Mis.
Worst Moment: The evil queen destroys the mirror, thereby destroying herself. She’s not smart.
Opening: Some cute animals open a book, then narration
Closing: Snow White inspires an overthrow of the Queen, who then magically dies in a kind of body-horror way.
Best Line: “The name’s Jonathan, Princess. Not Jonathan Princess, just Jonathan. Princess”
Original review here

The Second Act
Ups: Creative. There truly is nothing else like this.
Ambitious.
Some great dialogue.
Downs: REALLY loses momentum in the final third.
The very notion of its metaness will put a lot of people off.
Best Performer: Léa Seydoux
Best Moment: The opening conversation, lets you know what you’re in for. Should have been the opening instead of the restaurant set up.
Worst Moment: The gunshot. The moment itself isn’t bad, but it was the moments just after this that the film tried to be a bit too clever and ended up getting lost.
Opening: A gentleman tidies up the building.
Closing: Miles and miles of tracking equipment.
Best Line: “You can’t say that, we’re being filmed”
Original review here

Warfare
Ups: Tense.
Realistic.
Downs: Doesn’t really have a narrative.
Annoyingly unpolitical.
No way for the casual audience to buy in.
Best Performer: Will Poulter
Best Moment: The vehicle explosion.
Worst Moment: Most of the opening third.
Opening: The army dudes watch a music video then break into a family’s house and hold them hostage so they can use the building. Sorry, “commandeer a building for tactical use”. Done just to establish the time period. If it started with them in the house, it wouldn’t affect the story at all.
Closing: They leave. The insurgents make their way out of hiding. We’re then shown photos of the actual people involved, nice, but weirdly it shows some of them with their faces blurred out. So…….why show the photos at all?
Best Line: “I’m fucked up”. Nice to see male characters admit that.
Original review here

Wolf Man
Ups: Violent
Some decent transformation sequences.
Characters have depth.
Interesting look at generational trauma.
Actual emotion.
Downs: The reason for the transformation feels off.
Looks goofy at times.
Predictable.
Best Performer:  Julia Garner
Best Moment: The switch from reality to his perspective, incredible.
Worst Moment: Blake realising his father is the Wolf Man, mainly because it’s obvious.
Opening: Young Blake goes hunting with his dad. Shows why he is like he is.
Closing: He’s in pain and gets shot. Best way it could have ended, had actual emotion.
Best Line: Sometimes when you’re a daddy, you’re so scared of your kids getting scars that you become the thing that scars them
Original review here

How To Train Your Dragon (2025) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Synopsis: Watch the original. It’s that.

This is a difficult review to write. Not for the usual reasons, but because I’m going to find it difficult not to repeat what I said in the Lilo and Stitch review. Much like that, I am not a massive fan of the original, but I recognise it’s good. I remember more of it than I do Lilo and Stitch, though. Although I don’t remember enough of How To Train Your Dragon (HTTYD, pronounced Hit-tuh-tie-da) to recognise any differences between the two adaptations.

I remember enough to recognise the similarities, though, and there are a lot of them. There are a lot of shots which are pretty much the same as they were in the original. I get that you don’t want to mess with iconic moments, but this “just do everything exactly the same” means that the new HTTYD never feels like its own movie. It seems like it exists just for people who are fans of the original, letting them see what their favourite moments are like in live action.

So, how does it look? Honestly, it’s a mixed bag. The dragons themselves look much better. With one (chubby) exception, all the dragons look scary and like the kind of creatures you’d run away from fast. You understand why they inspire such hatred and fear, why the islanders feel they need to kill them on sight. Until it happens, there’s no indication that these things can be reasoned with, let alone tamed. Brings me to one narrative issue: everyone gets trained to ride dragons WAY too fast. They go from “wait, you can ride dragons?” to “swooping in and saving the day” without even a montage.

My other issue? It’s too dark. Not in terms of tone, I mean visuals. The night scenes for this do for your eyes what Tenet did for your ears: render them something you can’t depend on for your enjoyment of the movie. It feels like you’re watching it wearing sunglasses for some of it. The daytime scenes are fine, they look magnificent.

The performances? Mason Thomas could easily lead this franchise if they wanted to redo the sequels as live-action. Although he does remind me way too much of Matthew Baynton at times. Nico Parker is great, too, but her character is let down by some indecisive writing. Gerard Butler is the only returning performer, which makes sense, as he already resembles a Viking.

In summary, HTTYD is good, VERY good at times. But it’s also pointless. Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Psycho was heavily derided for being pointless and just a shot-for-shot remake. HTTYD is the same. It’s made just to show they can, rather than any artistic need. I do love how they kept the director, although it is concerning that in the 15-year gap between the two versions, he seems to have added nothing to his repertoire in terms of shot construction and visual storytelling.

The final battle is f*cking badass though.

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Hot damn this film looked good. There’s one moment where the characters are on a beach, making indentations in the sand, and you can almost FEEL the sand, it’s that beautifully animated. That doesn’t quite make up for the script though. It has its moments, but it feels incredibly generic. Unless this is the first film you’ve ever seen you will know exactly what’s going to happen before it does. This is not helped by the villain; who is incredibly unremarkable to the point where he’s forgettable. This is probably also due to how much of the time he spends off-screen, and when he’s not on-screen the shadow of him doesn’t really hang over the film. The main focus of the film isn’t the villain, it’s the female version of Toothless. It seems like the villain is just a method to get to THAT story, rather than the other way around. And the Toothless/Light Fury romance isn’t quite sweet enough to wash away the cynical feeling that it was geared towards toy sales (and yes, I know it was probably in the books first, but meh).

So all of that builds up to what is undoubtedly the weakest movie in the trilogy. The first one was REALLY good, the second one was also very good, and a worthy continuation of the series. This one? It just doesn’t have that inexplicable magic that the first two had. There’s something missing and that stops it being great, and means it’s just good. The ending is pretty great though. I hope it’s the ending anyway. I’d be incredibly disappointed if there’s a sequel to this as the ending to this provides perfect closure to the series as a whole. Maybe that’s my problem with it, it doesn’t seem like a series, just a sequence of films. There’s a few moments of connectivity between the films but they don’t really feel like they’re related. A lot of the characters are exactly the same as they have been throughout. If there was a sequel to this and someone watched that one, but missed out this one, there’s nothing they’d be surprised by. There’s no “wow, that character really changed in that movie I missed”.

I did like this movie, more than this review makes it seem. But put it this way; I don’t have the first one on DVD, and I do occasionally feel like my DVD collection is missing it. My collection will definitely not miss this. Also, the main characters looks way too much like Jake Gyllenhaal at the end.

dragon-3

Also, I can’t help this but whenever I hear the title to this series I sing it to the tune of Paint Your Wagon