It’s worth the effort to see How to Train Your Dragon in 3D (or, if you’re lucky like me, IMAX 3D). If you’re any kind of an animation fan, you’ll enjoy it — it’s a step up for directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders (cool interview for the completists among us), whose last picture was Lilo and Stitch (which I adored). I think Dragon has a stronger story line than UP (which was, in my eyes, just okay), and better character development than Avatar (not that difficult, admittedly). The flight scenes are beautiful, the fight scenes are properly hectic, and the hero(es) suffer genuine consequences for the choices they make. (There’s at least one Bambi’s-mom-level cute-character-in-peril scene that might be too scary for really young children, but things work out okay in the end.)
__
__
Even the Rotten Tomato reviewers liked Dragon…
__
Reader Interactions
29Comments
Comments are closed.
Comrade Kevin
At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I really don’t like the computer-animated movies. I really prefer the old Warner Brothers or Disney style hand-done cartoons.
Comrade Kevin
Really.
Rebecca
I like hand-done cartoons best too, Comrade, but computer animated doesn’t have to mean crap.
Comrade Kevin
You are correct about that. Maybe I should say I prefer the hand-done “Style”.
stuckinred
I like to see things in real black and white!
Mike Kay
Call me ole fashioned, but it’s stick figures for me.
stuckinred
MR Bill, “Ohhh Noooooo”!
The Tim Channel
Looks good to me. FWIW, I’m old enough to have a fondness for the hand drawn cellular Disney classics and their ilk, yet marginally young enough to appreciate the best of the new genre of computer animated cartoons.
Enjoy.
R-Jud
@Comrade Kevin:
I hear you. We’re stockpiling recordings of the old stuff to make sure the Bean is aware of gems like this. I don’t want it all to be Shrek 47 or whatever.
Xenos
In the spirit of the Open Thread, some very interesting developments in the HCR field. Facing large proposed premium increases, the Insurance Commissioner for Massachusetts has rejected most of the increases outright.
This will likely head to Superior Court, where the insurance companies will face some really tough evidentiary rules if they want to get the Commissioner reversed. If they lose there, their next recourse is likely to be Margaret Marshall’s Supreme Judicial Court… I don’t much like their chances there.
So in the next few weeks we may see if the insurance companies want to do business if their profits are at risk. If they go Galt on the Commonwealth we may see a single payer solution being necessary… a case where Obamacare has strengthened the bargaining position of state health regulators, and we may get a functional single payer system in through the back door.
Mike Kay
@Xenos How can you praise Obama when you know he’s just like bush and HCR was a corporate giveaway to Joe Lieberman and Hitler.
Comrade Javamanphil
The javafascist family and I saw it last week and were properly impressed. Not sure the 3D brought too much to the party, however.
Nicole
I myself am suspicious of this whole “moving picture” fad. I’m waiting to see if it catches on.
asiangrrlMN
Yes, but is there simulated lesbian sex and horse bits in it? ‘Coz if there’s not, I’m not watching.
Xenos
Mike-
If Deval Patrick brings the insurance companies to heel, makes them cut executive salaries, and ‘bends the cost curve’ with a nice, smart snap, or tells the companies to sod off and establishes a public option single payer system… you know what that means?
It means I have to take back all the sneering I have done over the last year about ’11 dimensional chess’. I will have to be a true Obot and give up any pretension of being leftier than thou.
Mike Kay
@asiangrrlMN What, no ball-gag and restraints? Prud.
asiangrrlMN
Mike Kay, don’t forget the nipple clamps and the whipped cream!
Sirkowski
There’s a boob helmet.
Bad Horse's Filly
Well I see this thread digressed in the middle of the night. Personally, I’m glad to hear Anne Laurie liked the movie, as I am going to see it tomorrow and it will be my first 3-D experience in this new era. Huzzah!
Royston Vasey
Now that looks cool!
Or should I say “Not to sound old fashioned, but I prefermy pictures stationary and on the cave wall”
Joel
Aside from the montage about the main character getting old, Up wasn’t much of a movie.
Lurker
@Comrade Kevin
Kevin, did you get a chance to see Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo or Disney’s The Princess and the Frog last year? They’re both beautifully drawn, hand-animated feature films.
If you have not seen 2009’s Coraline yet, please consider watching that one, too. It’s hand-crafted stop-motion animation, not hand-drawn or computer animation.
:-)
Lurker
For what it’s worth, computer animation can be rendered to look like hand-drawn cel animation. The Giant and vehicles for Warner Bros’ Iron Giant was created within a computer but shaded to look hand-drawn. That way, they could blend in with the hand-drawn characters.
The director of Akira recently worked on an entire direct-to-video series with computer animation shaded to look like traditional cel animation. It was heavily sponsored by Nissin. Here’s some clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18jal44OXw&hd=1
Dr. Psycho
This being an open thread with a strong theme re animation, seems like a good time to unpack my animation query:
If cel animation and stop-motion animation and claymation and computer-generated animation are all, in fact, animation, then what about marionettes and hand puppets? They are a way of using technology to create the simulation of life, so I think they should be counted as “animation”. What say y’all?
allium
@18: Two boob helmets. By Frey’s twig and berries, did ye nae pay attention?
Grover Gardner
My 7-year-old daughter and I had a wonderful evening last night watching this is 3-D. For a long time I preferred the old hand-drawn animation over the cold, lifeless feeling of computer animation, but the strides they have made in terms of “humanizing” this technique simply amaze me. The whole movie is beautiful, but I agree with Annie Laurie that the flight scenes had me catching my breath and feeling very moved. (I admired Avatar for exploring, more explicitly, this deep-seated desire for liberation from our terrestrial bodies.) During the “sad bits” I noticed my daughter wiping away tears from under her bulky 3-D specs–the first time I have ever seen her cry at a movie–and I leaned down to ask if she was too sad. Without looking away from the movie for a moment, she raised her hand and gently shoved my face back toward the screen, as if to say, “Daaaa-aaad, gimme space! It’s only a movie! Let me enjoy it!” Needless to say, I found this very grown-up and satisfying.
I am 54 and my daughter is only seven, so there’s not a whole lot that we “connect” on at a deeper level, even though we reads books and watch movies together quite a lot. But last night for a couple of hours we were the same age, laughing and crying at the same moments. I sensed the same thing from the families around us. It’s a real “family” film in that respect and I think it’s a remarkable achievement and one that I wasn’t expecting.
Lurker
@Dr Psycho
Anthony Hopkins, Frank Oz (Muppeteer) and Eric Goldberg (character animator for the Genie in Aladdin) are all great actors, and their mediums do overlap. However, I think each artist still uses a different medium.
Animators create their work frame-by-frame. Muppeteers and actors both work in realtime.
I’d put the Muppeteers in the same category as the Stan Winston and Gerry Anderson puppeteers.
Motion capture and rotoscoping are trickier to categorize. With those techniques, a puppeteer’s performance is translated onto a CG or hand-drawn character. Animators can manipulate the results, but the base of the performance was not created frame-by-frame. The mocapped characters in Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol have various levels of animator touch-up. They have a different “feel” from the hand-keyed-only characters in Bolt, Up and Monsters vs. Aliens.
craigie
I liked it a lot, but I found the 3D took away from the film, rather than adding to it. It was just an annoying distraction.
Lurker
I finally got a chance to see How To Train Your Dragon last night. It was fantastic. I look forwards to seeing it again.
:-)