Bearing little resemblance—visually or plot-wise—to the 1977 Disney original, this new and vastly improved version of PETE’S DRAGON is a heartfelt testament to friendship and family, with peripheral lessons about trust and treasuring the last remaining secrets of nature. The talented director and co-writer (with Toby Halbrooks) David Lowery came up in the indie film world as an editor for Shane Carruth, Amy Seimetz, and Kris Swanberg, among others, while also tackling his own films (ST. NICK, and most notably, AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS). But PETE’S DRAGON is another monster entirely for Lowery, in more ways than one, both in terms of scale and emotional appeal. Not surprisingly, what the filmmaker has done has taken a story that might have been told as a broad, sweeping spectacle about a boy and his dragon and turned it into an intimate work about protecting what is dearest to you, no matter the personal cost.
The film opens with probably its most gut-wrenching sequence. A happy family with a toddler named Pete in the backseat is in a car crash while they’re driving through a stretch of wooded road. Pete survives and wanders into the woods, where he meets an enormous but friendly (not-talking) dragon that he names Elliot, after a dog character in his favorite book. Elliot’s look is interesting, because he’s no Tolkien or “Game of Thrones” scaly creature with a mouthful of fangs. Elliot is furry, like an oversized dog or wolf. He still has wings and can fly, although he has a tough time sticking his landings, which might be my favorite things about him. We’re not even sure he can breathe fire until late in the film. And he’s great at camouflage (he can touch any object and become its color or pattern), or he can just become invisible to hide from prying eyes. As an added touch, Elliot does have sharp teeth, but the only ones that show all the time—his lower canines, one of which is broken—make him even more endearing.
Jumping ahead six years, there are a few sequences between Pete (Oakes Fegley, most recently seen in THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU) and Elliot that resemble certain getting-to-know-you scenes in the recent telling of THE JUNGLE BOOK. Pete’s hair is shaggy, he’s wearing something like a loin cloth, and he’s able to climb the tallest trees in the forest and even take a tumble out of one, without getting hurt. He’s essentially The Wild Child from François Truffaut’s film of the same name, and his language skills haven’t really progressed beyond what little he could say when his parents died. He’s aware that there are other human outside the woods, and he’s a curious kid, so eventually he gets spotted, and that’s when the trouble begins.
Lowery has set his story in a small town in the Pacific Northwest called Millhaven, which is particularly telling, as if placing the action there is his way of making sure that his version of PETE’S DRAGON is the total opposite of the previous one, which was set across the country in Maine, lest there be even the slightest chance of confusion. But the differences only start there.
PETE’S DRAGON is also the story of a second boy, named Meacham (now a wise old grandfather, played by Robert Redford), who saw a dragon decades earlier. The legend of the Millhaven Dragon in these parts is familiar to everyone, but he’s the only person who claims to have seen it with his own eyes, and hearing Redford spin the story to his granddaughter Natalie (played by the gifted young actress Oona Laurence, currently in BAD MOMS) and kids her age, gave me the first of many chills I experienced watching this work. Meacham talks about feeling something akin to magic wash over him the moment he realized what he was looking at all those years ago.
His daughter, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), is a park ranger who shares her father’s love of nature, but not his belief in a local dragon. Her husband, Jack (Wes Bentley), is a bit of a wet blanket and basically just goes along with what she says (that’s probably wisest). His alpha-male brother, Gavin (Karl Urban), heads a logging company that makes ignoring the boundaries of where he’s allowed to cut standard practice for his operation. So we know right away, he’s the bad guy. Pete is discovered by Grace fairly early in the film, and he immediately takes to Natalie. Before long, Pete admits that the person who has been taking care of him all these years is a dragon, and Grace assumes Elliot is imaginary, but Meacham and Natalie think otherwise; a quick trip to a hidden corner of the forest clears that right up.
There is something inherently displeasing about spoiling the magic of a relationship like the one between Pete and Elliot, and the deeper into the storyline director Lowery gets, the more the fairly tale dissipates and the ugly, real world creeps in. The real gift to the film is Elliot, whose personality and unspoiled kindness shines through almost immediately. He moves and reacts like a big dog most of the time, and his natural green coloring makes us see him as a part of the environment—at one with the trees that he takes great care not to knock down with all his lumbering strides. As a special effects creation, Elliot is even more impressive, feeling as weighty and tactile as anything else on the screen.
PETE’S DRAGON also deals with the give and take that humans have with nature, not with some heavy-handed message, but with more of a reminder that there’s a balance that must be struck. Urban’s character is perhaps too broadly drawn and driven by the idea of capturing Elliot (which he does, eventually) and declaring it “his,” without any real sense of what to do next. Truthfully, the movie works best when there are the fewest number of characters on screen. Lowery is a filmmaker who thrives in staging quiet, deeply emotional moments, so it’s not surprising that it’s the scenes with just Pete and Elliot that are the closest to perfection.
Unless you’ve had your heart surgically removed recently, I don’t see any escape from you shedding a few tears during this rich and moving piece. But the interesting thing about all the crying you’ll likely do is that the tears will come at unexpected moments, moments that illustrate the bond that Pete and Elliot have. The thought that sticks with us throughout the film is that somehow Elliot kept this little boy alive all those years. He’s far more parent than pet, and although no one in the film actually says this, it permeates every frame of the movie. There’s a love between these two that goes beyond selfless, and in those moments where that bond is expressed, you’re going to sob.
Above all other things, Lowery has made this story his. Unlike recent live-action versions of THE JUNGLE BOOK, MALEFICENT, or ALICE IN WONDERLAND, PETE’S DRAGON isn’t attempting to re-create something that came before. This is a the filmmaker’s work, which just happens to include a furry dragon (courtesy of Weta Digital). The director isn’t afraid to let things get tense and scary, without crossing the line beyond his PG rating. When Elliot is threatened by humans for the first time, even I was a bit startled by his violent response (hints of THE IRON GIANT at this moment, for certain). But we discover that even a dragon can take a pause, count to ten, and calm down enough to formulate a sensible response to the peril.
My advice to you is to buy a ticket to PETE’S DRAGON because you want to see a new kind of dragon, but don’t forget to watch how this mostly gentle creature influences and draws in the human characters around him. The movie is a remarkable achievement on both a technical and emotional level, and I’m guessing a lot of kids are going to wish they had a friend as good as Elliot to keep them company as the summer winds down.
