The dragons from How To Train Your Dragon are back on the big screen, but fifteen years later in a live-action instead of an animated film. This proved to be a major challenge. No expense was spared, with puppeteers and a completely rebuilt island.
The preliminary work alone cost director Dean DeBois a year and 50 million dollars (almost 44 million euros). Then the actual filming had to begin. The director, who was also responsible for the animated series, investigated how he could rebuild the island of Berk and how he could bring the dragons to life in a film with real people.
At the beginning of 2024, the cast and crew traveled to the forests and cliffs of Northern Ireland. Filming lasted until May of that year. The village on the island was rebuilt in Belfast.
How To Train Your Dragon is a live-action remake of the animated film from 2010, which in turn was based on the books by Cressida Cowell. The film revolves around teenager Hiccup, who is not much like his father.
His father is the boss of the island, which is regularly attacked by dragons. Where his father prefers to kill as many dragons as possible, Hiccup cannot bring himself to kill one. Hiccup wants humans and dragons to be able to coexist. When he injures a rare dragon, he builds a bond with the creature. He calls it Toothless and tries to train it so he can fly on it.
Gerard Butler returns to live-action film after animation
Actor Gerard Butler lent his voice to the character Stoick, Hiccup’s father, in 2010 and 2014. For the live-action version, he returns as the rugged Viking. “Suddenly, I was crawling into his skin all day,” Butler tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I didn’t get that chance last time because I was just voicing it while I was in my pajamas.”
Real animals were the inspiration
DeBois tells NBC that real animals were the inspiration for the different types of dragons. “Whether it was a crocodile, a tropical bird, a walrus, or a black panther, as in the case of Toothless.” The skeleton and muscle structure of these animals were studied so that they could serve as examples when creating the animated dragons. “We also want people to be able to see their pet in him,” he says about Toothless’s endearing appearance.
Animation studio Framestore was hired to create the dragons. The company is responsible for animations in, among others, the Paddington and Harry Potter film series. The studio ensured that the dragons in the final film fly lifelike among the human actors. But those actors naturally also needed something to act with on the set.
Behind-the-scenes footage shows how seventeen-year-old Mason Thames acts with a ball on a stick during the filming of a scene in which he touches Toothless for the first time and gives him a pat on the head. Fortunately, the cast usually had more to work with. DeBois and his team built a kind of rodeo dragons on which the actors could sit to record the flying scenes.
Digital sculptures were also created for the actors to focus on while acting. For the many interaction scenes between Hiccup and Toothless, several versions of the dragon’s head were made. No fewer than five puppeteers controlled him: one of them did the head, one the body, and three of them the long tail of the beast. Thames: “For most scenes, I played with a styrofoam head, the mouth of which could also be opened. That made it a lot easier.”
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This is what it was like behind the scenes of How To Train Your Dragon
The many live-action remakes that Disney has unleashed on the cinema audience in recent years have not always been well received. For example, the new version of Snow White was torn apart by many reviewers earlier this year.
Lilo & Stitch fared somewhat better last month with a score of 72 percent on the site Rotten Tomatoes, which weighs the average of reviews. Dreamworks is doing much better now with 82 percent for How To Train Your Dragon.
A live-action sequel is therefore inevitable. In 2027, the second film in the animated series will also be brought to the big screen again in this way.