How to Train your Dragon

 Recently, Noshi and me popped down behind the television to watch the life action remake of How to Train Your Dragon.

 

Which seems to be the latest in the whole craze and "need" of Hollywood somehow to remake everything, god forbid they need to create something original these days...

 

The village of Berk has been plagued by the attacks of dragons for ages, and the chief Stoick's son, Hiccup, has been trying to create mechanical devices to capture them.  He actually manages to capture a rare breed, a Night Fury, but is unable to kill it, instead befriending the beast.

 

As Stoick goes on a quest to eliminate the dragon's nest, Hiccup is put in a dragon slayer class with other local teenagers.  He returns to the dragon, which he called Toothless, and who is unable to fly as Hiccup's device sliced of a part of his tailfin.  He builds him a prosthetic one, and learns to fly the beast.  This also makes him understand dragon's better, allowing him to excel in class, yet it makes his crush Astrid suspicious of him.

 

Stoick's fleet, damaged in their search, return to Berk.  For the final exam, Hiccup must kill a dragon but flees, only to be discovered by Astrid.  He publically tries to prove in his exam that the dragon's are harmless and feed the Red Death, a huge beast in the nest, to avoid being eaten by it themselves.  Toothless is imprisoned by Stoick however, to guide them to the exact location of the nest, as Astrid and the others try to tame the captured dragons in the village.

 

The Red Death is awakaned, but overpowers the vikings.  Just as all is lost, the dragon riders arrive, and Toothless is freed from a drowning death by Stoick to join the fight with Hiccup.  They overcome the big beast, letting it explode, but in the process Hiccup loses a foot.  With the threat neutralized, the villages move on to live in peace together with the dragons...

 

So this was actually a great remake and the effects where well done, definintly one of the better life action adaptions to have appeared on screen in the past years.  Good fun, and grump remains as cute in this film as he was in the animated one for sure!