Largely dismissed as an artistic and commercial disappointment – despite landing a Best Song Oscar nod for Helen Reddy tearjerker “Candle On The Water” – 1977’s Pete’s Dragon might seem an odd choice to receive a CGI makeover.
Advertisement
Pete’s Dragon: The Lost Years may not tell as satisfying a story as the film of the Junior Novel, but it does offer an enjoyable trip back to the forest to learn about how Pete and Elliot helped make each other’s lives better. It’s been really cool. We’ve been filming all around NY – upstate, in the city and yeah, I’ve learned some sign language.
How do you find time for school amongst all that? Here’s where to buy the original Pete’s Dragon soundtrack: Thankfully, it’s still widely available – and just as awesome – despite being almost 40 years old.
Are all your classmates jealous because you’re going off to shoot movies all the time? “Maybe in the future they will watch it with their own kids and see things in it they didn’t when they were 7″. Pete’s Dragon will take you on an emotional journey filled with humor, adventure and magic.
At the beginning of the shoot it was hard to picture what the dragon was like. I give this film 4 out of 5 stars. More than anything, this is a slice-of-life tale, whisper-thin but still full of feeling and a generous sense of place – with the world’s most adorable dragon at the center of it all. “When I read it I was so, I mean, it made me weep, honestly. I don’t think I have matured beyond the age of 7”, says the 36-year-old director, only slightly joking.
“I even wrote in the script that the character had red hair because I wanted Bryce for the role”, the director says. They built one of those bull riding things, those mechanical bulls. When a movie scores a 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’re in for a real treat. Film criticism is a wonderful resource for people who love movies and want to know which ones deserve their attention. They are identical for the most part, but one of them “features a 5-in-1 sound chip that you can squeeze in his paw to hear Elliot’s signature roars, growls and snorts”. The dragon looks awesome. Though I had my issues with the jumping-off point of Adam’s article, I definitely agree with his conclusion: audiences should feel free to formulate their own opinions and “go to the movies and have a blast”, if that’s what they’re looking for. I suspect kids will get a thrill out of the film’s mild auto chase and bridge peril, and it is staged well-it’s modest and proportional.
How is this one different?
Advertisement
[The original] is a nice movie. The movie was filmed in New Zealand, but the woodsy landscapes are believably sold as the American Pacific Northwest, green and grand, lonely and cozy. He gets one Game Of Thrones-y moment battling Karl Urban’s perfunctory villain – who fancies capturing a dragon – but the action-packed climax never suffocates the bruised intimacies of Pete and Elliot’s friendship. Besides that, nothing else is the same.
