If you’ve lurked around CinemaBlend on the interwebs for a while, you may already know how obsessed we are with the How To Train Your Dragon live action film. Bringing the animated movie to life on the big screen literally made me tear up when I saw it at CinemaCon last year. However, the cast would be the first to tell you that even though the movie ultimately panned out, it did not come without some “cringe” moments.
Even weirder? Sometimes actress Nico Parker says watching the movie back makes her “cringe” just because she may not have been as in character as she should have been. She told CinemaBled that was especially true on days she and co-star Mason Thames got to shoot out in nature and not on the giant blue screen set that made up most of their day-to-day.
We kind of both say it quite often, but I do think the day when we did the scene that we did in our chemistry read, which we did on a cliff’s edge. It’s about to begin the third act of the film. I remember that was one of our last scenes that we shot together not on a dragon, surrounded by blue screen. …Our people days. I remember that feeling. It was just me and you and it was the only thing we were shooting that day and it felt like a big deal. Very like cathartic for the whole experience.
Honestly, filming the “people days” felt really refreshing to the actress… but that was perhaps the whole problem.
The two actors went on to joke with CinemaBlend that cringing is a hallmark of Nico watching herself back on film in general. The scene where Hiccup and Astrid bond on the cliff’s edge later on in the movie, after having been awkward with one another through most of its runtime, was a prime candidate for attracting the “cringe.”
- Nico: Though that scene makes me cringe when I watch it just because I was having such a nice time that day.
- Mason: She was cringing watching the whole movie…
- Nico: I feel like I can just see that I was having a nice time. I’m just like, ‘Oh shut up.’
I think in general a lot of actors and actresses have trouble watching themselves back on screen. This may be because of how they felt their performance might not have fit the tone of the film. Or, they might be seeing a mistake they felt they made that made it into the director’s final cut. Sometimes people don’t even like hearing their voice back in certain scenes. Or, the premise is too “whacked out,” as Nicholas Cage revealed withThe Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Sometimes there’s even a more tragic reason an actor won’t watch back, as happened with Christian Bale and The Dark Knight Rises.
Having seen the first movie and knowing where the second one leads, I think Nico Parker should be “proud” of the “people days” on How To Train Your Dragon. They’ll only get more intense with the already-announced How To Train Your Dragon 2, as Cate Blanchett will be coming back, and the cast is rapidly rounding out. But without the more emotionally-charged people days, I’d argue remaking the franchise in live-action has less of a point.
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