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| Pete's non-dragon family |
A Review of Pete’s Dragon by Nick Olszyk
MPAA Rating, PG
USCCB Rating, A-II
Reel Rating, Three Reels
It
was not a difficult task to make 2016’s Pete’s
Dragon better than the original as the 1977 version is easily one of Disney’s
worst movies – if you remember that film fondly from your childhood, I invite
to listen to just the first song. Yet even if it had been a success, this
year’s adventure would probably still have been better. It’s rare to see a
movie strike the perfect tone from the first few minutes, then successfully
carry it through to the end, even if the story is completely predictable. The
sad part is that, like its two protagonists, this Dragon doesn’t fit well into any niche and will likely disappear as
soon as it is seen.
In
the first act of predictability, poor young Pete (Oakes Fegley) finds himself
another victim of a Disney opening. Orphaned and abandoned in the woods, he is
befriended by a friendly Dragon he calls Elliot (John Kassir). Six years later,
he is found again by Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), a kind-hearted forest ranger,
who wants to help Pete. The rest is easily guessed: Pete wants to go back to
the woods but can’t, Elliot is worried about Pete and goes looking for him, a
hunter who sees Pete wants to catch him, a finale occurs that involves a little
bit of danger but not too much, and everything works out for everyone, even the
hunter. One can imagine the plot of Pete’s Dragon being similar to a
ridiculously easy game of connect-the-dots. Yet the acting, writing,
cinematography, score, and visual effects are so good, it’s hard to notice.
Most
Disney films involve a sense of lost innocence as children deal with adult
problems, but it has never been shattered in such a dramatic way. In the first
scene, Pete – barely five years old – reads a picture book about a lost dog as
his parents drive through a windy forest road on vacation. They are happy and
safe. Suddenly, the father swerves to avoid a deer. In the backseat, everything
goes into slow motion. Pete looks puzzled, then curious, as he notices the
items next to him floating in the air. He knows nothing of death or suffering
and is unaccustomed to laws of physics. He smiles at the new world of upside
down objects. Then the crash. Pete walks away from the wreckage and looks back,
somehow knowing his parents cannot follow him. He realizes his world is over,
and there is nothing he can do. Yet he saved by a supernatural creature. Again,
due to his age, he finds nothing extraordinary about this, only grateful to
have a friend. Only later does the audience learn that Elliot too is lost, and
their common experience bonds them as friends in pain.
When
Pete is thrown almost violently back into the world of his species, he has no
idea how to behave. He is alone again until Grace and her daughter manage to
reach out to him. Unfortunately, the phenomena of feral children is quite real,
with many documented cases. These poor children, who lived on their own for
years with or without animal help, are so psychologically damaged that it is
nearly impossible for them to successfully integrate into society. Beyond these
rare cases, how many children have been abandoned, purposefully or
accidentally, only to die far from the eyes of society. Indeed, every person is
lost from original grace, far from Eden. Pete’s
Dragon allows its characters to feel this loneliness deeply and
demonstrates how it is only comforted through positive relationships:
friendships, romances, and spirituality. This follows from the first scene to the
last.
Grace
is skeptical of Pete when he talks about Elliot, but her father is not. Played
wonderfully by Robert Redford, he freely tells elaborate stories to
schoolchildren about his battles with the “Millhaven Dragon.” “Just ‘cause you
don’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there,” he tells her. “And just
because you say something happened, doesn’t make it true,” she smirks. It’s
easy to not believe when the story sounds fantastical, but as the facts line
up, Grace confronts her father. It turns out that his stories were highly
embellished, but not false. “I just stood and looked at him,” he says. The same
is true of many things that seem impossible. When someone trustworthy
experiences something supernatural, the first instinct should not be to disqualify
it based on its improbability but on the character of the witness. Pete’s
Dragon could have been told as a mystery where the dragon isn’t revealed until
the end or even not at all. Including the dragon front and center from the
beginning demonstrates that the Universe is full of the miraculous, and it’s
our job to discover and believe it, not the other way around.
Despite
being wonderful overall, there was one specific element that grounded the film
and took the audience out of the experience. Grace lives with a man named Jack.
They have a large, multi-story house with a fireplace. They have a twelve-year
old daughter together and read stories with her on the couch before they put
her to bed. They love each other dearly. By any standard, they look and act
like a married couple. Yet in a quick throwaway line, it is learned early on
that Grace is Jack’s fiancé, not
wife. This fact changes nothing in the story, and when it is implied they are
married shortly before the conclusion, nothing about the relationships changes.
There is absolutely no reason they should not be married. None except to prop
them up as a “modern family” that is traditional in everything but name. This
awful trend which had plagued Disney as of late is bad enough even when an important
part of the narrative, but here is totally unnecessary.
Pete’s Dragon is a lost film in search
of an audience. It is too sentimental and small for adults, yet too serious and
scary for children. Like its spiritual cousin The BFG, it will not make any money and be forgotten almost
instantly. Yet like Pete and Elliot, it will find a second chance among those
who browse the dark corners of Netflix and are willing to give effort in
finding quality entertainment.
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