astridhoff03

[astridhoff03]

LA Hiccstrid made me feel nothing.

Am I the only one who couldn’t feel anything for the live-action Hiccstrid? I think the main reason is that Astrid just doesn’t feel like Astrid anymore. Even though all the scenes were recreated shot-for-shot, they reduced her to a stereotype, what they thought Astrid was: a mean, cold-face, bully girl.

They even gave Snotlout more depth and humanity than Astrid, which says a lot... 

Her development sounds more interesting in the live-action art book than in the actual film. Instead of just telling us she “I came from nothing,” why didn’t they show it? A flashback of her surviving on her own as a child while Hiccup was protected just for being the chief’s son. It’s just a random idea, but something like that would help us understand why she is the way she is. Show, don’t tell.

Also, what exactly was the “privilege” Hiccup supposedly had that Astrid didn’t? He was treated like shit by everyone. And if it was because he got into the training, wasn’t every teenager in Berk forced to learn how to fight dragons anyway?

And the whole “I want to be a chief” subplot didn’t add interest, it just confused me. Since when can anyone become chief? I thought it was passed down to the chief’s child.

I don’t know, man. In the original, even if Astrid’s motivation wasn’t fully explicit, you could feel it. I genuinely empathized with her. You saw her frustration, like everything she had worked for was being handed to someone who didn’t even want it. 

Not to mention, she and Hiccup had so much to offer each other. He was the kindness she needed, and she was the confidence he lacked.

But in the live-action version… It just felt like one of those generic blockbuster, where the good perfect guy ends up with the pretty girl just because.

[astridhoff03]

K-Pop demon Hunters was incredible!

I never was into K-Pop but my god did they score with this soundtrack. The song texts are so incredibly beautiful but also very catchy, my favorites are how its done, golden and what it sounds like. In my opinion the most beautiful of them is the final song what it sounds like, the lyrics is just incredibly beautiful and combined with the climax and Characters finding each other again, it has this special emotional weight to it but also this beauty. Which is incredible how they used the emotion of music in this scene, the last animated movie I remember doing this, was httyd.

I never thought I would get so hooked by a story about K-pop stars who fight hot looking demons. The first time this sounds very generic and like nothing special but they cooked with this. The animation and fight scenes are beautiful to look at. And the characters are very well flashed out. I like they all have their bargen to carry with Mira being a problem child when she was younger, Zoey being lonely when she was younger because the majority thought she was a weirdo and finally Rumi who has the biggest weight on her shoulders with being half demon since birth and always had the feeling her adoptive mother doesn’t love her because she is different and dangerous for the mission of the hunters protecting the souls of the people. Last but but least we have Jinu, which helped the antagonist but also had a very tragic backstory with letting his family behind to live in a palace since then he heard the voices in his head and the demon promised him to erase his memory. I like the hinted romance between him and Rumi and that he was in the third act willing to sacrifice himself for Rumi and her friends. The message of the movie is basically accepting who you truly are and embrace that. But also that the past doesn’t define who are, it just matters what you decide who you want to be right now. Are very beautiful message brought to life in a very unique way. This movie is most see and one of the rare diamonds we get between all those remakes. So I say let it explode on Netflix cause it’s incredible and deserves every praise it gets.

I also I will add a three little honorable mentions with the girls agent Bobby, which was the funniest character in this whole movie and I love how much he cares about his girls and is a big fan himself. Then we have the big weird message cat and the six eyed demon bird with the hat, which were such cute sidekicks.

[astridhoff03]

That fact that we are also getting more remakes of DreamWorks just baffles me to end plus this is making a lot of money right now. Now Sony is the only animation company that didn’t do that now gladly.

Also this remake doesn’t earn anything. Not the praise it gets or it’s existence.

Not trying to ruin it for anyone and frankly I hope you enjoy the movie, but I DON’T like that the live action how to train your dragon is being deemed a “good” remake only based on the fact that it is a 1:1, shot-per-shot remake of the original movie with even the same camera movements and almost the same lines and Disney should “learn from it” because apparently “that’s how you do a remake” (as if the lion king didn’t do pretty much the same thing and that’s the problem in the first place)

[astridhoff03]

That shit is so overhyped and it does the bare minimum. And actually I don’t think it’s one of the best remakes ever when it cuts a fucking important scene, that is relevant for the story. I still don’t know why this cash grab gets defended when its existence is irrelevant, because it’s not necessary in the first place. This movie is beat for beat the original but worse.

Hearing the httyd live action having more recognition, making more money and having better scores than the original is honestly breaking my entire heart and ppl defend this shit I am livid fr 💀😭

[astridhoff03]

K-Pop Demon Hunters

I‘m so here for this. It looks amazing, has an incredible soundtrack and beautiful character designs.

[astridhoff03]

May the reign of Chaos continue!

[astridhoff03]

The loss of Originality because of Remakes and the state of animation

I won’t stop talking about the not usability of remakes, their gain for easy money and the fucking manipulative nostalgia trap, not until every cinema were remakes are shown are empty. Because my god this needs to stop now that also DreamWorks joins disney and other studios in this lazy trend. As @ryupioupiou mentioned to me, the animation industry is in crisis as they said on the Annecy film festival. They play it safe and pretend nothing is on stake, but how long can they keep their Fassade up? I can’t stand the fact that the studios are pushing the agenda and the belief that animated movies are just for kids forward with these remakes no one needs. Honestly the studios, DreamWorks sadly now included, should be ashamed of themselves at disrespecting the art of animation and all the many hard working animators behind it by calling them just simple kids movies before butchering them into ugly live action remakes. And the recent remake of httyd just pulled the last straw for me, not only because it’s my favorite trilogy and franchise, but also of how revolutionary it was for the animation industry and then they make this ugly ass remake out of it just for moneys sake. This is not for what httyd, the lion king, kung fu panda, spider verse and so on stand for. They stand for that animation is for everyone and that our picture of seeing animated movies just for kids has not aged well. It’s outdated. We can stop this view if we don’t let ourselves capture by the studios nostalgia traps and actually supporting original work and art. You know the feeling when you first saw httyd, this cant be recreated with a copy and paste of the same movie but in remake style, this feeling can truly be reinforced if you watch an original piece of art that is called animation. Wild Robot gave me this feeling for example.

(I‘m sorry Mason and Nico, I‘m sure you are great actors and can do better under better direction but I have to this for animations sake).

[astridhoff03]

Toothless design in the remake

Actually Toothless wasn’t redesigned in the remake, they just used his animated model and made a realistic skin texture on him. According to Dean DeBlois he doesn’t want to loose the character in the process of redesign but he ironically did.

[astridhoff03]

The Budget

Apperantly the remake was cheaper than the animated one, which explains a lot actually but also the budget being this cheap means sometimes the actors were payed shit. So what the hell, universal. First Dean with him saying the movie is basically like a dazzling fan edit on YouTube and not rewatchable and then this. Well he’s right but still, not very nice towards the actors who did the best they could under his bad directing skills.

Also he teased the second remake will have key changes to it, but he also said the first remake wasn’t a shot for shot and look what we got. We have to wait and see, but I don’t believe him much since he basically lied and gaslighted the fans. I lost my respect for him since then.

[astridhoff03]

Actually the animation industry is in crisis now thanks to these remakes and they won’t get better if we let us manipulate from pointless remakes. I don’t care if the httyd remake was good, it was a cash grab and pointless and did the bare minimum, so why hype it up so much when it barely does anything. We should rather support Pixar’s upcoming Gatto, the K-Pop Demon hunter movie, Elio, Hoppers, the new land before time short film and so on.

Ive been seeing a lot of posts about how the "live action" httyd movie is actually really good because it's basically a one-for-one shot of the original minus some key scenes and "who cares if its a cash grab cuz I enjoyed it" and like. Correct me if im wrong but shouldn't we not support blatant cash grab remakes who prey on your feelings of nostalgia and make a lazy attempt to take your money? Didn't we condemn a lot of Disney remakes for being soulless rehashes of the original?

How to train your dragon is a beautiful movie and it deserves better than a pointless remake to take your money. You deserve better. Put yout dollar where your mouth is.

[astridhoff03]

Mason Thames

I just saw the first minutes of incoming another movie Mason Thames was in and I don’t know what went wrong in the httyd remake, but he’s pretty good there. He’s funny but also brings this teenage awkwardness to the screen which makes his performance even more enjoyable.

Wait I know what went wrong, Dean DeBlois directing, because he’s specialized on animated stuff not remakes. Still sad though that he basically wasted Masons Talent, but I‘m glad you can still see he tried his best in the whole movie and you can feel that he wants to be there and do his best.

Also watch and Support him and his girlfriends next project regretting you where they play a couple.

[astridhoff03]

The fact that both the Lilo and Stitch & the HTTYD ‘live actions’ made so much is deeply dissapointing

Like congrats, you’re helping them erase animation and spread the ‘live action’s better than animation’ propaganda. And for what? The same movie but worse?

Even beings who knew they wouldn’t like it went to the theatres and PAYED THE DAMN COMPANIES TO WATCH IT! WHY???

Please support actual animated movies that are NEW and ORIGINAL instead of this. The longer this goes on, the more it’s going to stunt the animated movie world’s ability to create original media

[astridhoff03]

How to train your dragon live action

The thing that is actually offensive is the blatant effort to manipulate us, the viewer, for our money and time—and the fact that it will succeed.

Is it a movie that we have never seen before? No, the animated version exists.

Does it expand on the world we love? No, looked basically shot for shot. And a show already exists.

Does it tell the story in a new artistic or technologically interesting way? No.

Is it a corporation preying on our nostalgic love for something that exists to make easy money? Yes.

Then there’s always the question:

Can’t you let people enjoy things?

“Let” is an interesting word. It implies that a criticism forces someone into a non-choice. No one is ever forcing a person from spending their money and/or time with a critique. But if a critique makes a person rethink how they see things or even consider other points of view, that’s really valuable. A person might even hear a criticism and still disagree after.

The reason my particular criticism exists is because it makes me sad to see fellow regular people signal to a corporation that, “yes I will allow you to manipulate me. Yes I don’t mind if the progress of our cultural creativity gets stunted.”

Because where we spend our money and time says that—and time is our most important and valuable asset. Corporations take our time in exchange for them to have money, and it is exactly why they create remakes. It is the easiest way to get money from us. So easy, they don’t even have to think of a new story. They just use the original property as a beat for beat plagiarized reference.

Many original works of art do not get funded because people are giving their money to see a retelling of the same story that exists. The money will be given to whoever will earn. Interesting to always hear “they’ve run out of ideas”, and then see the box office for these story husks soar past the original.

These types of movies belittle the past and future efforts of hard work and creativity.

That is why it is hard to see people enjoying something that has obvious disregard towards us. As a patron of the arts, I want our world to move forward; and the next generation to feel encouraged and inspired by creativity, art, hard work, and the humanities. I don’t want to be scammed of my money and time when that’s harder to earn for us than them.

This is not a critique on remakes that recreate, reiterate, and reimagine. There is an art in a retelling especially if it’s through a new medium or technology.

This is a critique on scalpers reselling for easy money. Things need to be worth our time and money for us to give it away, and I don’t think things like this should be worth it for you or me as working class people.

[astridhoff03]

What I actually liked about the remake

Not everything was bad for me about the remake and I think I bad mouthed it enough so far, so I want to address the things I actually liked.

Nico Parker as Astrid, even though they bitched up Astrid’s character I really liked her performance.

Then of course Gerard Butler, even though he was weak in some scenes, he was still incredible.

The thing with Snotlout and his dad even though it goes nowhere sadly.

The fact that Fishlegs was more of a friend towards Hiccup was really cute.

The sets very amazing.

The real life scenery was beautiful.

I also think the thing with the tribes from around the world was a good idea. I just wished they would do something with it.

The story was still good because it was basically the same.

[astridhoff03]

It already started because we get less and less original stuff.

I hate the fact that critics call a shot-for-shot reinvestment for a bunch of producers a "remake". Nothing in this movie is "remade" it is simply a hollow and less imaginative version of itself. And by making these live action renditions popular, audiences are killing the animation industry in real time.

[astridhoff03]

False alarm it was clickbait!

[astridhoff03]

Screw it they have the Hiccstrid energy!