I have made my peace with an unsavory truth: the Hollywood
of today is going to continue crafting live-action remakes of the animated films
of yesteryear until they run out of material. Why? Because audiences like them –
more often than not, they score big at the box office. Familiar stories and characters
all dressed up in new clothing. Then there’s the nostalgia element, although I
doubt it has quite the same impact with a property that’s only 15 years old as
it might with something from, say, the 1990s.
For this particular reincarnation of How to Train Your
Dragon, Dreamworks has brought back the original animated film’s co-director,
Dean DeBlois, to handle the writing/directing duties, as well as actor Gerard
Butler to grace the screen as Stoick the Vast not only with his voice (as he did
in the three animated stories) but his presence as well. Like Dwayne Johnson in
Moana, he has the physicality to go along with the pipes. Sadly, the
same cannot be said of Jay Baruchel (original Hiccup), America Ferrera (original
Astrid), and Craig Ferguson (original Gobber). They have been replaced by (respectively),
Mason Thames, Nico Parker, and Nick Frost.
stuff has been added, bloating the running time to over two hours and creating
some pacing issues in the early-going. Still, most of the things that worked about
the animated film – the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless the dragon,
the playful flirtation between Hiccup and Astrid, and the father/son dynamic
between Hiccup and Stoick the Vast – are effective here. That’s mainly because
Thames and Parker inhabit their characters effectively and Butler wears Stoick like
a comfortable coat that continues to fit. None of the secondary characters are
any more interesting this time around but they get more material, which
accounts for a lot of wasted screen time.
Our narrator and the main character is the teenaged Hiccup
Horrendous Haddock III (Hiccup for short), the son of the Viking village’s
chief, Stoick. Hiccup is a smart, thin guy who prefers reading and designing
things to learning ax-wielding, and he longs for a girlfriend – specifically
Astrid, although the only times when she singles him out is when she’s pissed
off. He’s essentially a medieval geek. When dragons attack his town (as they
often do), Stoick and Gobber the blacksmith declare war. Stoick gathers the menfolk
to seek out the dragons’ nest while Gobber puts the next generation through
their paces learning how to dispatch the beasties. As usual, Hiccup goes his
own way, discovering a wounded Night Fury dragon in the woods and bonding with
it, eventually giving it a name (Toothless). He soon realizes that
“everything we know about [dragons] is wrong” and they can be kind
and generous creatures if treated properly.
live-action than in animation because so much CGI is necessary to bring the
dragons to life that whole sections of the film still rely more on keyboard
artistry than human acting. Writer/director Dean DeBlois has spoken extensively
about trying to use more “practical” (tangible) effects but pretty much all the
scenes featuring dragons require heavy computer involvement. In an attempt to develop
a synergy between the two versions, he re-created certain sequences using a
shot-by-shot replication. (This is most clearly evident in the initial meeting
between Hiccup and Toothless.) As is often the case with CGI-rich films, there
are almost always occasional moments when things don’t quite look right. Kids
won’t care. Adults may not notice. But those paying careful attention might
find them distracting. That’s an inherent danger of transforming an animated
property to a live-action analog while still keeping elements from the unreal
world. Thankfully, these stumbles aren’t nearly as catastrophic as those
encountered by Disney in Snow White.
remakes, it’s hard to actively dislike the film. It does a decent job with
world-building, the characters are effectively realized, the dragons follow their
previous designs, and the story uses the same beats. It’s neither as fresh nor as
exuberant as the 2010 version, which was an accomplished telling of a
familiar-yet-engaging story, but the generated emotions are similar and it
crosses the same finish line. I’m not sure that 15 years is a long enough runway
(and the third film in the animated trilogy is only six years old) but that’s
what we have. How to Train Your Dragon represents
solid family entertainment even if it feels like it’s tracing over an existing
pattern rather than developing something new.
How to Train Your Dragon (United States, 2025)