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| This story has no people of color. That is a problem in 2023. My guess is that Astrid (the female lead) will once again be flipped so that a minority can be cast in that role. |
In the land of transitioning to live-action movies in beloved remakes of animated films, Disney seems to be king. But I just read on some of the blogs I follow that How To Train Your Dragon (a DreamWorks franchise) is now going to be remade as a live-action set of three movies (there were three total installments in the franchise), and it makes me think that the story will have a strong tonal shift. I was a huge fan of the How To Train Your Dragon movies which are only a little over a decade old I think. The last one (which came out a few years ago) landed completely flat with me, being mostly a story that seemed like a retread of prior stories. I learned only recently that the fault for this lies with Steven Spielberg. If you're interested in hearing about it, read on. Otherwise skip the next paragraph.
Here's how I understand the events that led to part three being so "meh." The original plan was for Drago (the villain from part two) to return and eventually be redeemed. Although I have no idea how that would play out, Spielberg apparently told them that they didn't have enough screen-time to do it justice. So, they ended up scrapping it. When I consider what could have been versus what I got, I feel like Drago could well have been the missing element that would have made that movie feel like less of a retread. And maybe, it would have been better to cut the Light Fury instead so that we didn't have that whole, "Let's breakup the couple" thing that happened between Hiccup and Toothless. But whatever...it is what it is. I only ever rewatch the first two and just skip part three whenever I see it is playing.
So, back to a live-action adaptation. I don't see how they are going to be able to film this without making some of the main characters radically different to fit within the mold of how Hollywood does things these days. Representation matters, and I get it. But Hiccup would be radically different if he was a black trans woman, and they needed to make that decision in order to maintain diversity. The animated show doesn't have any non-white characters, and that's just not going to fly anymore. They could flip Astrid (the female lead) and cast a black actress, but that seems like it is becoming a cliché. For example, the CW's Flash and Iris (black), or Spiderman's Tom Holland and Mary Jane (played by Zendaya who is black), or Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and Chani Kynes (Zendaya again). Those are just three examples. Don't get me wrong. Both of these examples work well. However, people may wonder "why is it always the female lead who gets flipped race-wise and why doesn't it happen to the guy?" It's a good question, and it's probably going to crop up when they start casting for How To Train Your Dragon the live action adaptation. Who knows? This kind of cliché could continue for years before activists demand that Hollywood change. But there already has got to be mounting pressure for studios to break the cycle of always making the woman lead a minority.
Anyway, I will more than likely be excited to watch these live action adaptations. I just wonder what's going to happen with the casting, because (as I see it) these shows are going to be problematic to adapt, because no one wants an all-white cast anymore. Lord of the Rings got away with it, but that wouldn't happen in 2023. If Peter Jackson was casting that show these days, half of his cast would need to be minorities and feature some non-binary or trans characters. Gandalf would probably be a black man. And that's just the truth of it. That wouldn't have bothered me, but it would be a tonal shift from the character I read about in the books and saw in so many art pieces done by John Howe and Alan Lee. If Hiccup ends up being played by a young minority, it's going to be a tonal shift, so same thing. And if they don't cast a minority, then the same problem crops up that has always been present: why does the hero of these fantasy stories always have to be white? I have no answers other than this: writers who make new characters for their fictional worlds need to make their stories more diverse to begin with. They need to start featuring people of color in main roles, so as to avoid adaptation issues when a beloved property becomes adapted for television or movies. If people had done this all along, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all, and I'd have no reason to write this blog post.
The real problem trying to cast blacks, Asians, Arabs, Latinx, etc is this is supposed to be Vikings. Thor got away with it by saying they're essentially aliens on another planet. But to do it in something like this, you'd have to have some kind of explanation for how someone from Africa or Arabia or the Far East ended up in a Viking village. It can be done like with "The 13th Warrior" (aka Eaters of the Dead) where the whole story was about an Arab poet who ends up fighting alongside Vikings. So instead of Hiccup being the son of the chief, maybe Hiccup could be an outsider who was adopted by the village or something.
ReplyDeletePeople would probably just say it's a kids movie and it doesn't matter that you have black, Asian, Arab, Latinx people in a place and time where those wouldn't exist. And those people would probably be right.
I still haven't seen the third movie. I loved the first two, so I can't remember why I didn't go out and see the third. Maybe eventually.
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