How to Train your Dragon: Monsters VS Vikings?

Posted on 24/03/2010 in Homepage 3, Specials

Unexpectedly, the Vikings became trendy lately; in fact, in the past they were main characters in few and forgotten movies such as The Vikings by Richard Fleischer, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent by Roger Corman or the unsuccessful Erik the Viking by the former Mony Python’s Terry Jones. We’d like to mention also the comic strip Hagar the Horrible (1973) by Richard Browne and the anime Vicky the Viking (1974) by Studio Zuiyo. But in the last two years the Vikings appeared in the ambitious b-movie Outlander by Howard McCain, ruined by the crisis of Weinstein Company, and in the critically acclaimed Valhalla Rising by cult Danish director Nicholas Winding-Refn.

Now, it’s How to Train your Dragon’s time. After the Premiere of the first 56 minutes at Future Film Festival 2010, the movie will be in the Italian theaters from March 26th, both in stereoscopic 3D and 2D versions.

Hiccup, a young Viking, is blamed by his people because he is too smart and different, and not so interested in the secular art of hunting dragons. One day, during a chase, the boy become friend with a dragon, breaking the biggest taboo for his tribe. The friendship between the boy and the creature will change the ancient and obsolete attitudes of the Viking people.

The movie is directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, already directors and screenwriters of Lilo & Stitch (2002) and its spin-off series with the same title (2004). The movie is adapted from the novel How to Train your Dragon, the most famous children’s book by Cressida Cowell. The movie is produced and animated by Dreamworks Animation (Shrek, Madagascar, Kung-Fu Panda).

Accordingly to the words by Dean DeBlois, the script of the movie was written several times “becoming from time to time less similar to the original book - DeBlois says - too thin and intimate for Dreamworks Kolossal’s requirements. The dragon became much bigger and spectacular, and the general shape of the story became epic”.

DeBlois is also enthusiastic about the stereoscopic 3D , which “allowed me –he says – to create very awesome fights and action scenes, especially flight scenes, the most important ones for the success of the movie”.

However, the director refuses to use the 3D as a special effect like “Theme Park style”, because he doesn’t like the objects that “hit” the audience from the screen, like in the b-movies of the Fifties. DeBlois also prefers an audience which empathizes with the movie and the characters, not a trivial shocked one. DeBlois also said the approach created by James Cameron for Avatar is the right one, because the immersive 3D creates a complex world and helps the audience to get into the movie in a very empathic way, as never before in the Cinema history.

Incredibly, How to Train your Dragon has been realized only in two years, because the quick growth of technologies is changing deeply the ways of thinking and realizing an animated movie. DeBlois says: “The project started in 2008 and in one year we wrote and re-wrote the script and we completed storyboards, direction, animations. Another year was spent in post-production, editing and all the final arrangements.”

One of the biggest problems was how to to create the shape of the various dragons of the movie, giving them an original and different character design. The challenge was to avoid the stereotypes of the looks of the dragons previously seen in movies like The Sleeping Beauty, Dragonslayer, Pete’s Dragon or Dragonheart. Simon Otto, Head of the Character Animation department, explains: “Our aim was to create monsters with credible shapes and movements, but also funny and surprising. So we decided to test mixing up together the shapes of different animals, as a bulldog with a crocodile, or a parrot with a oyster and a Tyrannosaurus Rex (!!!). This choice forced the character designers to study all the details of the looks and the movements of a lot of animals. The use of stereoscopic 3D forced also the designers to a stronger study, because the movements of the characters through the space were more complex than in a 2D movie.”

To promote How to Train your Dragon, Dreamworks realised a series of short films, as the one you can at the end of this article, featuring some of the creatures from the movie, or funny animated webisodes about Viking legends you can see in the interesting tumblr dedicated to the movie here.

As usual, the main characters are dubbed by popular stars, as Gerald Butler (300, Gamer), America Ferrera (Ugly Betty) and Judd Apatow’s favourite nerd Jonah Hill (Superbad).

Together with the launch of the movie in theaters, the official videogame will be available. The game, consistent with the visual style chosen by Dreamworks, contains fight sequences among dragons, flight simulations and platform sections, as you can see here.