If Elliot turned out to be a six foot tall rabbit pretending to be a dragon (plot twist!), I'd love this movie forever.
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Looks like E.T meets Tarzan...and no, that is NOT a compliment. They totally missed what Pete's Dragon is about. It is not about Pete protecting Elliot, it is about Elliot trying to protect Pete and sometimes making his life worse in the process without meaning to.
Ah shit, this is going to be the Iron Giant part two, and im gonna sob like an infant.
Making Karl Urban the villain conflicts me, because I don't want to root against the dragon. I AM THE RAWR!
Huh. Movie so far has an 81 % on RT out of 16 reviews.
Seeing a lot of comparisons to E.T. style Spielberg.
A little better than I expected, but I guess after this summer, the critics are easy to impress...
So, the movie came out yesterday... did anyone see it?
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Nope, but it has gotten good critics overall. I just can't get over the design of the dragon. One critic observed that it feels like the dragon is an afterthought to the story.
Imagine 'Disney makes a movie about a young boy finding a loving family'. Now imagine the most generic version of that.
It's that plus a little bit of a dragon.
Ah. Well, the original was somewhat like that too.
edited 13th Aug '16 4:10:31 PM by KnownUnknown
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
It was a little bit more than that. It was also a commentary on the narrow-minded mentality of so called "respectable" people, a plea for tolerance and it mostly focussed on the friendship between Pete and Eliot.
Also Eliot was a wonderful character in his own right. One of my favourite scene of the movie is the one in which a drunken Lampie wants to show the dragon to Hoogie, so they go in Eliot's cave and Eliot overhears Lampie describing the "monster" Hoogie is about to see, which leads to Eliot being all afraid of said "monster". The whole thing is just hilarious!
It was also a commentary on the narrow-minded mentality of so called "respectable" people, a plea for tolerance and it mostly focussed on the friendship between Pete and Eliot.
Well, Disney just had a movie exactly like that. They called it Zootopia.
So I saw the new movie and I loved it. I also loved the original. In my mind, the two stories are compatible. There is no reason why the dragon in the latter movie couldn't be the dragon from the first movie just a century or so latter and with a new friend, who by pure coincidence also happens to be named Pete.
If you love dragons, watch the movie. If you enjoy feel good family shows, watch the movie. If you have small kids, take them to the movie. If you are an adult that enjoys kids movies, watch the movie. If you enjoy tried and true formula done well, watch the movie. If you enjoyed "How to Train Your Dragon" and "The Jungle Book" watch the movie.
Nice review, thanks. I might check this one out.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
@NDC - And it did it with far more finesse and subtlety (at least, in relative terms). As well as entertainment value.
edited 14th Aug '16 8:58:13 PM by dRoy
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Th movie was alright. The strongest parts were with Grace and Pete. Karl Urban was the weakest part of the movie imo. His whole plot felt really forced. There were some questionable parts though, like how Grace and her father just let Pete walk into the den of what could be for all they know a fucking bear! Sure, we know it's a friendly dragon, but they don't, so it comes off as dangerously irresponsible. I liked the part where Grace and Jack are riding Elliot tho
edited 16th Aug '16 3:56:46 PM by Xopher001
Are there songs? Or if not, are there musical nods to the old movie in the score?
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
There's one song, but only one. Something something Dragons flying toward the north star
Lost in Space
I saw this last night with my son. It's really good, as long as you can tolerate the utterly bland inoffensiveness that Disney has employed as a tactic to avoid any sort of controversy. (It makes a nice change from child slavery, torture, and cannibalism — the 1977 version was fucked up.) I cried buckets at the end, so it did something right. There's a palpable effort to avoid the usual Cliché Storm that is a family movie; I was particularly impressed that they managed to avert Adults Are Useless for the most part. The kids aren't the sole drivers of the plot or the only ones solving problems, and the adults manage to get things done that you would reasonably expect adults to do. The Aesops are present, as always, but delivered with a refreshingly light touch and a helping of Show, Don't Tell.
A few cliches manage to sneak in. Karl Urban's character is handed the Villain Ball by way of Ambition Is Evil, and the climax just cannot avoid playing the Disney Death trope painfully straight. That ending, though... *sniff*. I'm okay, there's just Something In My Eye.
In response to , the Award-Bait Song is "Something Wild" by Lindsey Stirling and Andrew Mc Mahon, which is relegated to the end credits because the film is not a musical, so there was no way to organically insert it. YouTube link to the music video. Diegetically, there's a child's song about dragons and the north star, which manages to be plot-relevant.
Edit: Disney apparently posted a different version of the music video on its own VEVO channel. linky
edited 17th Aug '16 11:05:26 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Karl Urban's character had a motivation, at least. I would've liked his character to be refined a little bit more—and for him to have actually been able to hold up the truck—but I felt the movie was significantly better for his presence. His "I thought that I could rely on family" line actually stung, and it made him a fairly relatable character
The movie felt really, really pro-religion, which was kind of annoying to watch. It seemed to mock all those who didn't believe in the dragon at first, and had a really heavy message of believing in something even if there's no evidence of it. The only other real critique I have of the movie is that a lot of the scenes in it seemed really forced, and there felt like there was a lot of time spent watching Pete sitting in the back of the car.
2.5/5 for me. It wasn't bad to watch, but it's not really worth a rewatch and the only real messages it has are "faith!" "lumbering is bad!" and "ambition is evil and will get you killed!"
Lost in Space
Er? The dragon is real. It's not a faith-based message if the thing you're supposed to believe in ends up being incontrovertibly true. Now, there is a message along the lines of, "You should have listened to the old man who swore up and down he saw a dragon," but it's not clear what value that lesson would have had up until the thing actually showed up. Certainly, everyone seems ready enough to accept it on sight, which is better than most characters in stories featuring the supernatural.
If anything, the main Aesop is: "Extraordinary creatures can't get along with humans, because they'll try to trap them and put them on display and won't respect their right to be free."
edited 29th Aug '16 6:46:34 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
It isn't "lumbering is bad." One of the heroes was a lumberjack. Another hero is a wood carver. It is "do your lumbering in a responsible, sustainable way that respects the limits that the US Forest Service places on you." Which is not just environmentally sound, but is economically sound.
No, it is "ambushing and attempting to trap large, fire breathing, harmless-until-you-push-them-too-far dragons is evil and will get you killed. Which may be a bit of a Fantastic Aesop, but so what?
edited 25th Aug '16 9:27:15 AM by Catbert
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
And one thing the movie implies is that part of the reason no one believed him was because he embellished the story over time and it wasn't consistent due to that.
I saw this with my mom today. We both enjoyed it, but it was surprisingly slow for a modern children's film. That isn't bad or anything, it just kind of stood out. But I do think that right now, Disney is at a 3 for 4 live action remake batting average. (I don't count the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland because it really isn't trying to be a remake of the original Disney movie.)
edited 29th Aug '16 6:32:49 PM by Zendervai
Not Three Laws compliant.
Lost in Space
Also worth noting is that if Gramps had been believed the first time, it's quite likely that the townsfolk would have hunted down the dragon and killed it or driven it off years before the events of the story, preventing it from happening. (Poor Pete, eaten by wolves!) Anthropic Principle applies.
edited 29th Aug '16 6:48:19 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Well, that's certainly different. Pete is officially the Mowgli of New England.
Though I could swear I've seen that plot before. Kid befriends supposedly dangerous monster. Fearmongering villager wants to kill it because he doesn't understand it. Etc.
Well, as long as it doesn't end like The Iron Giant.
edited 15th Jun '16 11:24:16 PM by KnownUnknown
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.