Are we not entertained? Hiccup (Mason Thames) faces a Monstrous Nightmare.
Empire is in the arena. A towering one at that. Below us, etched deep in the dirt, are giant, ominous scratch-marks. Surrounding us are huge stone walls. This building is designed for one thing: dragon-wrangling.
The bricks are scorched, signatures of the same beasts whose talons have left impressive grooves in the ground. It’s March 2024, on an overcast day in Belfast, two months into the How To Train Your Dragon shoot, and to all intents and purposes, we’re standing in a living, breathing, battle-beaten Berk — the franchise’s fictional Viking town.
Beyond the arena lies a full-scale line-up of huts where the Vikings live, clustered around a glittering, intricate mosaic. A few weeks earlier, real fish had been kept in one of the huts, adding a potent layer of authenticity to the set, which has been painstakingly built on the lot usually reserved for Game Of Thrones spin-offs. A huge Viking ship rests near the dock. There’s not a blue screen in sight.
The live-action film, about cheeky dragon Toothless and his human pal Hiccup, is a retelling of the 2010 animated feature directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders. Based on Cressida Cowell’s popular children’s books, the story follows the unlikely bond between the dragon and the awkward son of a dragonslayer, who must prove to the dwellers of Berk that they’re stronger together than apart. The original film fuelled two DeBlois-helmed sequels, with the trilogy raking in $1.6 billion and four Oscar nominations.