Clearly, Hollywood ran through their backlog of movies to be remade, and this is where we're up to now.
How To Train Your Dragon: "Live action movie coming June 13th"
- Thread starter Guardian Prime
- Start date
It is such a strange experience to have the message board complaining that this movie is a lazy shot for shot remake and have Facebook having a fit that they made Astrid black. So anyway...they've changed some shots.
It just isn't historically accurate for dragon-riding Vikings with Scottish accents to be black.
It just isn't historically accurate for dragon-riding Vikings with Scottish accents to be black.
Well.. the horned helmets isn't accurate either. 
And Ironically.. a black viking isn't that unlikely. From what I've seen, when raiders took "viking wives" the kids would still be treated as part of the group, they wern't outcast or anything.
And Ironically.. a black viking isn't that unlikely. From what I've seen, when raiders took "viking wives" the kids would still be treated as part of the group, they wern't outcast or anything.
Is this implying that parents don't still plunk their kids down in front of movies they saw as kids? If not, good lord there's more wrong with the world than I realized.
That's what weirds me out about all these remakes. The original movies are still out there. You can buy the Blu-Ray off the interwebs, or find a used copy at any thrift store, or even watch it for free if you're already subscribed to one of the streaming services it's on or live within driving distance of any library. Shot-for-shot remakes might have made sense in the days before VCRs, when the only way to see an older movie was hoping it got a rerelease or aired on TV, but we haven't been living in that world since before I was born.
What incentive is there for anyone, ever, to go see this jive?
When you think about it, remakes have been a thing since the dawn of movies. Not to jump genres, but Bela Lugosi's Dracula wasn't the first, and I'm sure nobody at Hammer Studios said "cor, blimey, the Yanks already did Dracula and Frankenstein, better film somethin' else"
But, usually, there was some attempt to tell the story differently than the previous version. Even today, one could argue that a film like Godzilla: Minus One is just a remake of the 1954 original. Which it is, but beyond some broad strokes, the story is very different.
In my opinion, most of the animated film remakes I've seen up to now don't really try to tell the story any differently, they just add different window dressing. Maybe this film will be different, but if it's not, it kind of makes me wonder why they don't do what Disney used to do with these films; namely, remaster the original animated film and put it back into theaters for a limited run.
But, usually, there was some attempt to tell the story differently than the previous version. Even today, one could argue that a film like Godzilla: Minus One is just a remake of the 1954 original. Which it is, but beyond some broad strokes, the story is very different.
In my opinion, most of the animated film remakes I've seen up to now don't really try to tell the story any differently, they just add different window dressing. Maybe this film will be different, but if it's not, it kind of makes me wonder why they don't do what Disney used to do with these films; namely, remaster the original animated film and put it back into theaters for a limited run.
My only guess is diminishing returns on the old movies, while the idea is that if a new movie makes back its budget and then some, that's a bigger profit.
Which, of course, is a risk, and I'm not sure how well it's been paying off for those who try.
Frankly, I'm just surprised Shrek didn't get the treatment before this.
Yeah, I love to remind people who are opposed to remakes on principle—especially remakes of video games from the '90s or 2000s—that the version of The Wizard of Oz they've actually seen was the FOURTH film adaptation. (I actually have a collector's edition DVD that includes the other three as bonus features). Thing is, though—and the reason it comes up specifically in discussions of old video games—that's excusable because film still was a young and rapidly evolving medium back then, and remakes made sense just to keep up with that pace. If they didn't remake The Wizard of Oz, for example, we'd never have gotten a version that's even in color.
But we've had the technology to make How to Train Your Dragon in live action since before the original came out. They didn't make it a cartoon as some kind of compromise.
I've no issue with remakes, I don't have issue with Disney's live action remakes like some do, usually the films they're remaking are least from the 80's or 90's. Even if I'm not interested in all of them, they tend to feel like they're mostly trying new things with them. Not all of them, but its been long enough that I can see people wanting to try something new, even if that new is simply "lets see how realistic we can make it". But HTTYD isn't that old, and they aren't really doing much different. They're not even, imo, going for "more realism" since Toothless still looks exactly like he does in the original, with a fairly cartoony cute design. And what we've seen so far, on top of that, is shot-for-shot the original movie. Most Disney remakes at least try to balance "here's whats new" and "here's what familar" in their trailers, and almost never are they shot-for-shot.
Everything about this right now, feels holy unessciary, WAY more so then any Disnet Remake.
Everything about this right now, feels holy unessciary, WAY more so then any Disnet Remake.
I can see an argument for live action remakes of 2D. I'm not for it, but there is an argument for it. It's a huge change. A change that may take away a lot of what worked in the first place, but a change.
This is going from 100% CGI to just mostly CGI.
This is going from 100% CGI to just mostly CGI.
The reason to "why" must be that shiny new Theme Park Universal is opening next May that predominantly has a HTTYD dedicated land and surely they want some kind of synergy going with that so it wont be a park opening to a franchise that has been dormant for 6 years (time of opening)
Guess that makes enough sense for me...
Does sort of beg the question of why not do some sort of special re-release, though. Have to be cheaper, yeah?
I don't think that is causal. I think they are both because of another reason. It's a big bankable success. Now. Not 20 years ago.