Doing the Dragon Motions Again

Disney started a trend. The multi-billion company, with more IPs than you can shake a stick at, has frequently been a trendsetter, creating memorable characters, and memorable movements, over their hundred-plus years of existence. Sometimes that’s good, such as in the case of pioneering animated theatrical films, and sometimes… less so. Certainly there is still strong debate about whether live-action remakes of animated classics is a good thing for the film industry. It’s made Disney a lot of money, but it’s also led to a lot of terrible films and massive Box Office Bombs.

But… that money. When a live-action remake hits, such as in the case of The Lion King or Lilo & Stitch, you have a billion dollar hit on your hands and a license to print money. Other studios with their own animated classics can’t let that kind of money pass them by, and so the trend spreads. This year saw the first non-Disney studio create their own live-action adaptation of an animated “classic” (if we stretch how old a film has to be to become a classic) with Dreamworks Animation picking up the mantle and running with it for one of their most successful, and most beloved, hits: How to Train Your Dragon.

Originally released in 2010, How to Train Your Dragon had a small but solid run at the Box Office, making $494.9 Mil against a $165 Mil budget. That was enough alone to get a sequel greenlit, but when you factor in home video releases (which was still huge in the 2010s) along with toys and merchandise, Dreamworks Animation had a new franchise on their hands. Two more sequels, as well as direct-to video shorts and three different shows all set in the same universe, totaling a whopping 223 episodes. With a media franchise that big, it was inevitable that Dreamworks Animation would go back to the beginning and start it all over in live-action, especially since this would be a much easier franchise to take to live-action than their other massive series: ShrekThe tale of an ogre that just wants to be left alone but, instead, becomes the prince to a princess and the hero of a land, all while remaining an ogre through and through..

Of course, this being a live-action remake, a key question arises: is this a film we actually needed. The trick with many of the Disney live-action remakes is that they were for films that had been around for decades. It doesn’t feel as strange, or weird, for Disney to revisit Snow White or Beauty and the Beast (although, in fairness, neither remake was really all that great) when those films have been around for years. How to Train Your Dragon is new enough that there are still plenty of kids watching the animated version and falling in love with it. We haven’t reached peak nostalgia for the animated film yet. Could Dreamworks make something that didn’t just feel like a soulless cash grab, reiterating on a movie that really didn’t need a new version so soon?

The short answer is no. Make no mistake, How to Train Your Dragon is quite pretty, seamlessly blending real human actors with the detailed, animated dragons in such a way that you very quickly get sucked into the illusion of it all. As a technical marvel, 2025’s How to Train Your Dragon stands tall. But once you pull aside the gorgeous effects that make the film work, what you have is a retread of the original film – same story, same characters, same beats, same jokes – that only infrequently rises up to the same level as the previous version of the film. It’s good… but not quite good enough.

If you’ve seen the 2010 version of the film then you should already know the plot. Hiccup (Mason Thames) is the son of Viking chieftain Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler), a great and terrible warrior who strikes fear into everyone he meets. Hiccup lives on Berk, an island to the North that has an unusual problem: dragons. The Vikings of Berk have been fighting the dragons for decades, a generational war that will only end when the Vikings find the last dragon nest and wipe them all out.

Hiccup wants to be loved and respected by his father, but after a chance encounter with a nightfury, the most dreaded and feared of all the dragons, Hiccup realizes he can’t kill dragons. He just can’t. Instead, he befriends the injured nightfury, who he takes to calling Toothless. But Hiccup has to be careful; while he enjoys his time with Toothless, helping the injured dragon get back into the air so they can fly as a team, Hiccup also has to train to be a viking warrior. And as he gains knowledge about dragons from Toothless, the other warriors of their town begin to notice. He catches the eye of warrior-in-training Astrid (Nico Parker), and she’s none-too-happy to be upstaged. Hiccup’s secret will be hard to keep, and once it gets out it could cause all kinds of problems for Hiccup, Toothless, and all of Berk.

Live-action remakes can come in many flavors. We’ve had some that hew very closely to the source material, such as The Lion King, and others that stray very far afield, like Maleficent. Most generally adapt the name story but find little things, here and there, to add to expand the story and give people reason to watch the new version even if they loved the older one. And while there are a couple of minor scenes added into this new How to Train Your Dragon that give a couple of characters a little more fleshing out, this adaptation largely sticks to the original story in every single scene and beat. It’s practically a tracing in all the ways that matter.

In fairness, the original film is beloved so I’m sure the creative team, which includes Dean DeBlois who wrote and directed all three of the original How to Train Your Dragon films and also wrote and directed this one as well, said, “why mess with what worked.” So they carbon copied almost all of it, from opening narrative, to every plot point, through to the closing narration at the end. On the one hand you have to agree that the main story works. It worked once, it works again, and it still has all that punch that made the original work.

But that’s also the major flaw of this film: it doesn’t do anything to really set it apart from the animated film. Yes, this film is a technical marvel and very pretty to look at, but that’s really all this film has. That’s harder to accept when you go back to the animated film and see that it’s also very pretty, a handsome animated film that still looks quite attractive even 15 years later. While it’s impressive to see humans and animation blended so well, that’s really the only trick this film has and it only goes so far. After that, you slowly realize you’re watching the same movie again, remade in slavish detail.

At times that’s even a detriment. There are little character moments that are carried over from the animated film into the live-action version that don’t work as well the second time around. Scenes like Stoick motioning to all of Hiccup, or Astrid seeing Hiccup in a new light for the first time, were better done in animated form when the designers really hit the emotions right. Here the human performance isn’t as strong or as nuanced, even when you have human actors reprising characters they originally voiced (like Butler). Some little bit of soulfulness was lost in the translation.

That is the key issue with this remake: it lacks that needed bit of soul. It’s very pretty, and it has the story and the characters and decent performances throughout. Hell, for some side characters I may even like the new versions better, such as Nick Frost’s performance as Gobber the Belch (because Nick Frost is just such a great comedic actor he can’t turn it off). On the whole, though, this film lacks a true life of its own. By and large it gets by being a reasonably good copy of the previous film but then you hit a moment that doesn’t hit quite as hard, that doesn’t sing like it should, and you realize you’re watching a very well made copy.

I think anyone in the audience that hasn’t seen the original version will likely love this How to Train Your Dragon. It is a very good copy, made very well by the original writer-director. But if you go back and watch the original you’ll find that everything is just slightly better. Better performances (outside of Nick Frost, of course), better emotions, better everything. I like how this new film looks, but I love the original film for all that it does right. The only reason to hold this film up is if it’s the only version you have access to… but then, just go online and order up the original series of films. They’re still out there, still just as good as always. This new version simply lacks a reason for existing.