MICHAEL LOMAX: ‘Pete’s Dragon’ soars to familiar heights

Disney has made a recent habit of turning its animated classics into live-action movies, and for the most part, the studio has been fairly successful. Released back in the spring, “The Jungle Book” was a visually impressive and wonderful story, and just last month “The Legend of Tarzan” showed that even when they’re not on top of their game, Disney can make a good movie.

“Pete’s Dragon,” the latest live-action remake to hit theaters, is luckily more of the same.

Based on the 1977 film that blends live action and animation, “Pete’s Dragon” diverges fairly early on from the source material, but the idea is the same. An orphan boy named Pete (Oakes Fegley) is lost in the woods following a fatal car crash. Pursued by wolves, Pete is saved by a giant green dragon he names Elliott. And so the friendship is formed.

Years later Pete is discovered by locals and taken back into civilization, which prompts Elliott to go looking for him. Now out in the open, Elliott is pursued by hunters and trappers, and only with the help of his new makeshift family can Pete return the favor from earlier and save his best friend.

With a cast that includes the likes of legendary actor Robert Redford and current star Bryce Dallas Howard, “Pete’s Dragon” is one of those solid Disney movies that satisfies top to bottom without drawing too much attention to itself or trying to do too much. And following a summer movie season full of incomplete and unfulfilling installments, a film like this one is more than welcome.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean I can get behind “Pete’s Dragon” 100 percent.

The writer in me wants Disney, and studios like it, to actually take some risks every once in a while. In Hollywood alone, there must be thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people creative enough to elevate any given franchise, and yet all we get are remakes and sequels.

Even if they’re fantastic remakes, they’re still remakes.

Then again, when you see just how poorly movies have performed this year, you can understand the fear. When you invest $150 million into a movie, the studio usually needs to make at least double that to turn a profit, sometimes a lot more depending on marketing and other related costs.

So do you take a chance on a new idea or go with one that has worked in the past? It’s not our money, so it’s easy for us to say. In either case, if the movie is good, it really doesn’t matter if it was an original, remake, sequel, whatever. And fortunately, though not great by any means, “Pete’s Dragon” is nothing if not good.

Michael Lomax is a writer-filmmaker currently at work on a film script to be set and shot in Albany.