The live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon is officially available to watch at home now if you buy or rent it, meaning you can watch, re-watch and watch some more until your heart is content. However, that’s not the only benefit of getting the movie at home.
Special features of the home-entertainment version include a revealing (and often hilarious) gag reel of moments left on the cutting-room floor from the live-action How to Train Your Dragon movie that show some of the cast’s flubs that would have made the film less-than-stellar. However, after seeing the finished product, it’s always fun to go back and see the rare moments where things went awry. The cast certainly thinks so.
SPOILER ALERT: This article will spoil part of the How to Train Your Dragon movie and gag reel.
One such snippet finds actress Nico Parker as aspiring dragon-fighter Astrid having an issue with her weapon after a battle on the island of Berk. Those who have seen the movie will know that perhaps the most bada– moment of the film happened with Astrid’s slow-motion intro where she emerges from smoke and casually stows her trusty axe on her back.
Well, if you buy or rent the movie on home release, you’ll learn that the actual moment was not nearly the easy, casual intro it was made out to be on film.
Long story short: Her axe kept falling, leaving her “very annoyed,” she told SYFY.
“We wanted to let it be a cool moment, but it was honestly [difficult],” said Parker. “Well, just for context, it wasn’t me being useless! There’s a magnet on the axe and a magnet on my costume that was tiny!”
She added: “Having to try and swing the axe and have it match up with where the magnet is on my back, I’m going in blind! I can’t see what I’m doing, so it was actually really hard. So, as a result we did it so many times.”
The moment is featured heavily in the opening to the movie’s gag reel, which you can see now on its home entertainment release. After a flub, she’d grin and grimace. Sometimes she’d let out a groan.
Fortunately, the actress added, an assistant director was totally supportive take after take after take. Still, multiple redos can be axe-hausting.
Said Parker, “I was getting very annoyed by the end because I was like ‘stupid axe!’”
Indeed. And there’s the scene when she tosses an axe that appears to land perilously close to a camera operator. “Sorry,” she says in the video.
Martin’s missteps aren’t the only ones captured. Mason Thames, who plays Hiccup, a young Viking who learns that not all dragons are bad, has his moments that clearly went off-script.
Like when he breaks a prop spear or accidentally steps on a fellow actor’s line.
During the nearly 3-minute gag reel, it’s hard not to laugh when actors crack up when they shouldn’t. At one point when Thames breaks character, Gerard Butler, who plays Stoick, jokingly growls, “He doesn’t take me seriously as his dad.”
Watching unexpected bloopers and behind-the-scenes reminds us that even professionals have funny slip-ups.
What is the live action How to Train Your Dragon about?
As previously covered by Syfy, the Universal film revolves around a centuries old clash between fire-breathing dragons and warrior Vikings.
But Hiccup upends that bitter battle when he forges a friendship with a dragon called Toothless. Together they try to bring peace back to the mythical Isle of Berk.
The film is written, directed, and produced by Dean DeBlois, who oversaw the animated DreamWorks trilogy.
