In the live-action version of “How to Train Your Dragon,” expressions can speak louder than words.
That’s the case in this early scene from the film, in which Hiccup (Mason Thames) has caught a Night Fury dragon and is conflicted about what to do. He comes from a line of Vikings who kill dragons as part of their warrior tribe, but when Hiccup gets close to the Night Fury, he connects with the dragon (whom he later nicknames Toothless) and can’t muster the will to kill the creature.
Narrating the scene, the director Dean DeBlois (who also directed the 2010 animated film), said, “This is one of the scenes that follows quite closely the animated movie. It’s a handful of scenes that I wanted to recreate almost shot for shot. But in this case we realized we didn’t need a lot of the dialogue that we gave Hiccup in the animated version. So much of it could be played on Mason Thames’s face.”
DeBlois said he spoke with his actor about the emotional way to play the scene.
“I remember on the day talking to Mason before we started rolling cameras, and I said, ‘Don’t forget, this is the moment you reference later in the movie when you looked into his eyes and you saw yourself.’ It seems like a moment of weakness but this is that strength in disguise that causes Hiccup to be a new thinker that can usher in an era of peace that nobody saw coming.”
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