How do you make a subsequence to a movie as charming as How to prepare Your Draco ? In our exclusive interview , the director , manufacturer , and worker of How to Train Your Dragon 2 enjoin us about teen Hiccup , how he ’ll see a dark adaptation of himself in the sequel , and the importance of narrate the adult characters ’ report , too .
We baby-sit down with How to Train Your Dragon 2 theater director Dean DeBlois , producer Bonnie Arnold , and articulation player Jay Baruchel ( Hiccup ) and America Ferrera ( Astrid ) to discourse the change in Berk and the grander , more grownup tale we ’re seeing this time around .
When you were making the first movie , did you envision it as part of a trilogy ?
Dean DeBlois : Well , we were just trying to make the good pic we could make . I do n’t consider any of us had a tremendous plan in mind , but when we were talk to about come up with ideas for a second one , there were yarn in the first one that had n’t been completely explained — like what happened to Hiccup ’s female parent and was that Red Death the top of the range in terminal figure of dragon hierarchy , or is there another flying lizard beyond that ? There were sealed things that we could play with . So it very course opened up for us . My only auction pitch - back was that it be a trilogy rather of just a random next sequel so that it would really find like it was the second act of a larger three - act story .
Why was it important for you to have a human villain this time around ?
Dean DeBlois : Well , a big part of it was just that we kind of pulled back the curtain and point the dragons were not the rail creatures to be fear any more . They actually had a very likable plight of their own and they were misunderstood . So the musical theme of just proceed to discover new dragons who were , in fact , really vicious just felt incongruous with where we ’re headed and the lesson that Hiccup had to bring to the world . As is usually the character , it ’s humans that mess up up a good thing . And so the musical theme that they ’re living in peace and musical harmony on Berk just kind of sets them up for somebody to need to break all of that .
Bonnie Arnold : I think that the nice thing that Dean did in creating Drago as the opponent to Hiccup is that you ’re going to find out in the movie that something has bechance to Drago standardised to Hiccup . And Drago and Hiccup deal with it in two very , very different way in terms of their ability to deal with dragons and the effect they had on him as Kid .
I was wondering if Drago was imply to be the track not carry for Hiccup .
Dean DeBlois : Yeah , a little turn . We kind of looked at Hiccup and everything he represented and then grafted the inverse with Drago . They both meet a loss at the talons of firedrake , but Drago dealt with it in a very different fashion and everything that he does is emphatic , whereas Hiccup is about intellect and compassion . And the idea that Drago is using dragons — he ’s judge to vilify them so he can control the mint . So the idea of a peace - loving clan of flying dragon riders on the Isle of Berk could be his undoing . And he ’s very inexorable to get rid of them .
Jay , America , you ’ve been play Hiccup and Astrid on the boob tube series . Did that help you grow the older versions of your theatrical role ?
Jay Baruchel : vastly . I guess we ’ve kind of grow with them . There has n’t been a menses in the past seven year where we have n’t been make for these characters . And so when it comes time to … ”How do you make them fathom or conduct five days honest-to-god ? ” It ’s more just that we keep doing what we ’ve been doing . And the write up itself and the circumstances they ’re in make them old . And we get him [ motility to Dean ] drive us .
Your characters seem so comfortable together . There ’s a scene early in the film where your character are so sidekick - buddy and act off each other . Do you have a hand in developing those scene ?
Jay Baruchel : That was actually the one scene we get to read together . And I mean that was measured on his [ Dean ’s ] part . To have such an huge , crazy creation as he has in his school principal and his heart and to still find meter to let us be a collaborator and let us find our own way into each conniption is passably rare . Whether he ’s just humour us or not , he always encourage us to do our own matter .
Dean DeBlois : It ’s not humour at all . The affair is , I have all of the characters to tend to when I ’m writing the narration and so I can only ever give them a fairly generic veneer at best , so I swear upon our actor to take those character inside and really bring an authority to their articulation . So I ’m very , very corking to listen to their feedback . I love it when they can take the written Sir Frederick Handley Page and expand upon it and make it their own and change lines of dialogue — or , in the case of that specific conniption , mistreat on each other ’s duologue and let the aspect evolve and play out . Because it ’s the only spontaneity we have in animation . Everything is so drawn out at length and very meticulously planned .
Bonnie Arnold : And America and Jay , I would say , have chemistry . It ’s nice as a somebody who is sit outside the John Wilkes Booth recording , I can see , to be honest , I think they make each other better . I feel like you may see it on the screenland . you may see those scene on the screen , the unity we did in the first movie . We did a little bit less in the second movie ; sometimes agenda get in the way . But when they ’re working together , there ’s just a charm in there . I can see them sort of smiling at each other and it becomes what Hiccup and Astrid do in the film .
Dean DeBlois : Whereas all the solo clobber blow . [ Laughter all around . ]
Bonnie Arnold : But you use it , do n’t you ? For the next time around .
America Ferrera : Oh , utterly ! I call back back to when I did a couple of transcription as Astrid before I even met Jay , and I had no idea what this main character was doing on the other side of these prospect . And then when I met Jay and we get to do that one academic term where all the kids were together , it just bestow everything else to spirit , because you could take that into the other academic session and say , “ Oh , I can imagine what Jay is going to be doing with this conniption or on the other side . ” So it ’s immensely helpful to get to work with each other .
This is a picture show about growing up , but you also pay the grownup fictitious character a really grievous plot rail line . What made you settle to make time for the adult ’ story ?
Dean DeBlois : I ’m a hard worshipper in not secondly - reckon an interview , be they young or old . So I endeavor to make the movie I need to see and hopefully the people lick with us , all 400 of them , want to see . And part of that is telling the news report that resonate as an adult as much as it does as a kid . There are a few franchises that have done that in the past tense , Star Wars being one of them . The Empire Strikes Back was a big influence for me on this one , because it spoke to me as a ten - year - old and it still speaks to me now as a 44 - year - older . So I have a caboodle of affection for that type of moving-picture show and I wanted to check that that at any point , we were n’t excluding the kids , but we were speaking to the adults as well . I do n’t recall that liveliness should be relegated to the kids ’ table . I think that it ’s a beautiful medium that can tell amazing stories that travel the world .
America Ferrera : I had a ally watch it with her 11 - class - sometime daughter and she was checking in with her girl to ensure she was hunky-dory and nothing was too shivery . And then , at one point , the daughter turns to my friend and says , “ mammy , are you okay ? ” It was so emotional ! They were conduct maintenance of each other while watching dragons .
One of the really delightful thing about the continuation is seeing how much Berk has switch over the last few years . How did you go about create the new games and technologies for Berk ?
Dean DeBlois : Well , a lot of that do down to our production designer , Pierre - Oliver Vincent . He and I bat around ideas , ways in which Hiccup ’s ingenuity and advancing thinking would have transform the island in these five years . So all of the battlements , all of the onager and catapults have been replaced by utile things , considering that their population tripled in the metre since the first movie . So they ’ve baffle a rain reservoir that distribute body of water via aqueduct through the intact village in case fires do pop up . And they repurposed the caves beneath the island to become custom stables for all of the dragons . They ’ve got alimentation station . They even have a grooming post , which is a bed of coal that the dragons can rub around in with some grinding bars to exfoliate . And the best part is that Gobber ’s blacksmith stall from the first pic was boom into the flying lizard armoury , and this is where they build all of the saddles for the horseback riding in through the games . And they ’ve also mother fireproof riding gear , dragon dentistry , backstage slingback , or whatever it is the dragons ask . It ’s like the Harlem barbershop of Berk ; everybody hangs out there .
Your canvass is so much larger in this moving picture than it was in the last , and yet you ’ve maintained these terrific cartoony and storybook moments throughout . How do you poise the huge orbit with that storybook sensibility ?
Bonnie Arnold : I think some of it — I really have to give you credit , Dean — is the storytelling . Especially in animation , because you ’re attempt to reach a broad audience , you ca n’t say enough thing about a simple story well tell . But I cogitate in Dean ’s creative thinker and what he put out to the work party and to me was that he want it against this grand picture of this earth of where Hiccup would go . We started out by visiting some real locations in Norway and looked at the fjords and Dean just say , “ Big , big , grown . Scope , scope , scope . ” But then again , it ’s set against this modest , sexual story .
Dean DeBlois : I retrieve that the ambition was big in terms of scope , but we always had to remind ourselves that we are an exalt picture and therefore we can do thing that a lot of resilient - action film ca n’t do . So as much as it is , in some ways , a war film and a come - of - eld history , it also has a lot of whimsy in it . We ’re dispense with flying dragon and trying to make them seem as convincing and full of personality as we can so that you conceive that there was a fourth dimension when these creatures drift the Earth . So I think a fortune of that is just being mindful , being aware of how unspecific our consultation is and realize sure that we do n’t get too heavy or too action flick and forget about the youngsters in the interview as well . But also just wanting to normalize the ambition of scale leaf with the charm of animation and check that we play to both .
picture
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , scientific discipline , and finish news in your inbox day by day .
intelligence from the future , birth to your nowadays .
You May Also Like
