Tag: Live Action

REVIEW: Live ‘Dragon’ finds mild success with animated playbook

After six years, the dragon Toothless returns to the big screen looking much like he did in the animated film from 2019. The world around him, though, is much different.

The latest “How to Train Your Dragon” film is a remake of the 2010 animated feature. Like its cartoon counterpart, the picture centers on the young, awkward Viking Hiccup (Mason Thames), who doesn’t have the same battle prowess of his father, Chief Stoick (Gerard Butler).

But he makes up for it with his inventiveness, which he uses to one day catch one of the dragons attacking his village. He can’t bring himself to slay the dragon when push comes to shove, though, and instead decides to learn about the creature and train it.

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REVIEW: ‘Cruella’ constricted by tonal imbalance

Hero. Antihero. Villain. Can a protagonist be all three? “Cruella” attempts to find out.

Emma Stone stars as Estella in this supposed prequel to the “101 Dalmatians” story. Estella, born with white and black hair, is a girl who was orphaned at a young age when her mother fell from a balcony during a party. Following the death, Estella finds her way to London and meets Jasper and Horace. The three become friends and pull schemes together to make money in order to survive.

Eventually, though, Estella gets her chance to leave her life of pick-pocketing and get her dream job as a fashion designer. Eventually, she gets to work for London’s top fashion individual, who simply goes by The Baroness (Emma Thompson). The more she works there, though, the more Estella finds reason to let out her true self, Cruella, and conquer the fashion world.

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Looking at Live Action: Ranking the Disney Remakes

The release of a new “Lion King” adaptation has marked about 10 years into Disney’s adventure in remaking many of its animated pictures into live action versions. OK, technically, the new “Lion King” is a fully animated picture, but it’s more or less a de facto live action movie.

With nearly a decade to look back on, plus some others from years past, here is my ranking of the Disney live action and/or life-like remakes of animated classics.

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