So... The live action HTTYD?
I finally watched it after however long it's been out and I genuinely cannot understand how this movie had so much positive attention.
I hate being negative about media but the original movie is one of, if not my absolute, favourite films of all time and this one just felt like it falls so incredibly short of it.
I saw so many people saying that the only changes that were made were good and that it actually is a pretty decent adaptation of such a beloved original.
Captain Pineapple's unprofessional film reviews whilst trying to fill 2 hours of my time that I don't want to do anything more productive with:
So I think my biggest issue when it came to this film is just that stuff just doesn't feel right, doesn't hit the same.
Animation amplifies everything, it's all got purpose. The thing is as a remake of the original, it feels like everyone is trying to match that same energy which just makes it feel… off? The only one who really feels like they aren't trying to exaggerate their performance is Stoick who is ironically the only one that was part of the original I'm pretty sure.
Hiccup feels like it he's 50/50 between being the original and being himself. The bits where he's himself are nice, the bits that try to mimic it I don't.
Gobber just feels mean for some reason? Like sure he says some harsh stuff in the first but his voice and general mannerisms make him fun. He's foolish and sometimes doesn't think before he speaks, but he is smart. This one is just mean and it doesn't really make you feel sympathetic to Hiccup, it just makes everyone else look bad.
Seriously, Gobber! Why did you have to insult Fishlegs like that!?!?!
As for the few things I do like, I think they do a little better showing Hiccups creativity at the start with a bit more emphasis on the fact he built the bolas launcher thing. I also like the funny bit with Snotlouts dad telling him to not talk to him in public.
And minor thing, they call it dragon training here which I am 95% sure they don't in the first and it really does not make sense.
I think this version also just moves really quickly through some vital scenes. When Hiccup finds Toothless in the woods, the original shows him having to build himself up to killing him. He starts breathing heavily, having to tell himself exactly what he's got to do and why he has to do it. It exposes all his ideals in that moment, his need for validation perfectly put into words and simultaneously exposing that killing the dragon isn't actually what he's always wanted, it's just the need for some actual care from his family.
Whereas in this one, it kinda feels like they just went through it in 10 seconds, cut half the lines and it comes of as "Alright I'm gonna kill you… ah nevermind". There isn't a pressure build, there isn't Hixxup having to hype himself up and convince himself that this is what he's been building his whole life to, and through that his eventual decision to not kill Toothless doesn't feel like a breaking point in his ideology where it all finally snapped and he realised he couldn't. It just feels like instead he didn't.
And ahhhhhh there's so many minor things that I think just don't work as well. They don't necessarily make it bad by themselves but I think it overall just leads to a worse general.
The fact Gothi is using an abacus when watching the dragon lessons. It makes it more like a yes or no, win or lose thing when in the original you can tell it's not about scores or anything of the sort. There's more feeling in it. A sense of "this person is a great warrior" which then for Hiccup is "this person has something about them that words can't describe" over a "this person is better because numbers prove it" which the Live Action does by having such scoring.
Also Astrid is just a pro at everything which isn't right in my opinion. Yes she's good in the original but she still makes mistakes and she has clear flaws that she shares with Hiccup. She needs validation, but unlike Hiccup, she has to kill the dragon for that.
In this version she's doing backflips and insane tricks and whilst she still had that flaw of needing validation, it's not made nearly as clear above or below the surface. And like everyone else, she's just even more mean and it doesn't make her likeable.
Alright and even more scene analysis. Test Flight is in my personal opinion, one of the best scenes in cinema history. But the bit where Hiccup comes loose from Toothless and they both start falling towards the island just has so much less fear embedded into it.
In the original, there's a dark and low tone that sets over as they start falling, the dramatic music builds as you slowly see the land coming closer and closer, the mountains entering from the bottom of the frame showing they're almost dead and then right at the last second they get back together and can pull up to safety, still carrying that same speed over the landscape though making it feel like they're barely escaping.
In this, again, it handles it so much worse. The strange ethereal music closer to the final scene in the battle with the red death which I feel is only dragging away from that moment still yet to come. They don't place them any distance really. It's just flailing shots of the sky with no setting into the fact that they are getting closer and closer to the ground.
Then they reattach and rather than just barely screaming over the trees, they do a few cool swoops through some arches immediately which only then makes it feel less significant when they do so 5 seconds later over the ocean, the main bit of the Test Flight scene that everyone loves.
Am I being too analytical with this film? Probably! But I love filmmaking and seeing how everything comes together and this just feels like at every possible mark they make it marginally worse and worse over and over. I can't see this ever being a film that people fall in love with so much.
There's so much more I could write about this as this doesn't even cover the first half of the film, and there's more complaints I even skipped over. I just... Don't think this is good.
