Perhaps remembered more with a hazy affection than any kind of passion, 1977’s Pete’s Dragon was second-tier Disney — a mix of live action, animation, horrible acting and humdrum songs. It was a fun idea — a lonely boy makes friends with a dragon — but one that wasn’t properly fleshed out. As such, it’s an ideal target — and a notable point of difference — in Disney’s current sweep of remakes, which has so far given us satisfying live-action updates of Cinderella and The Jungle Book, with Beauty And The Beast still to come. If Disney dares to revisit the classics, then why not also make something good from the mediocre?
Pete’s Dragon is a very loose reworking. There are no songs and the setting is entirely different from the original’s coastal town, as is the young boy’s origin story. The only real similarity is the retention of a dragon and a Pete. In this version, Pete is a young boy whose parents are killed in a car crash while driving through an unnamed woody area in the north-west United States. Pete scuttles weeping into the woods and is almost eaten by wolves, but is instead rescued by a huge, fuzzy green dragon, whom he christens Elliott.