At what point did the phrase “it’s exactly like the original” not only become a compliment, but the driving force behind every Hollywood remake? The new, live-action How to Train Your Dragon is largely identical to its source, the 2010 DreamWorks animation, down to individual shots and the swell of John Powell’s recognisable score. It may not have been made with generative AI but it certainly replicates its process, scraping images from a pre-existing artwork and re-rendering them with the prompt, “make it more grounded and more realistic”. In practice, it’s merely blander and greyer. You have to wonder if studios are trying to prep us for the inevitable.
Dean DeBlois, who directed the original alongside Chris Sanders, returns here to recount the story of teen viking Hiccup (originally voiced by Jay Baruchel, here played by The Black Phone’s Mason Thames), a social outcast on the fantastical isle of Berk, who makes an unexpected friend in a supposedly deadly dragon he christens Toothless, a half-salamander, half-black cat kind of beast.
DeBlois has been quoted as saying he’s “not a huge fan of the animation-to-live-action trend” (ironically, he and Sanders were also behind another recent target of the remake agenda, Disney’s Lilo & Stitch). Yet he agreed to direct the new How to Train Your Dragon, despite his own reservations, because Universal were already committed to the idea, and he’d rather be a part of it himself and “try to do it right”. He has framed it, then, as a chance to perfect the original, which was made on something of a time crunch.
But even if the motivation seems admirable, the “tweaks” here feel borderline microscopic. There’s a slight expansion to the scale of the climactic battle. There’s a new, seer-type character, who’s a transplanted version of Björk from Robert Eggers’s The Northman. Hiccup’s love interest, Astrid (originally voiced by America Ferrera, here played by Nico Parker), is harsher and more strident, resentful of Hiccup’s nepo baby status as the son of the clan’s chief, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, reprising his role).
There’s a line tossed in about the historical trading network known as the Silk Road, which connected cultures across Europe, East Africa, and Asia – apparently, the existence of dragons is believable without justification, but the presence of non-white vikings is not. Everyone’s dressed in aged leather, fur, and intricate Norse knots in a way that makes them look as if they’re about to chop off someone’s head, right until they pop on one of their comically gigantic horned helmets.
Thames replicates some of Baruchel’s distinctive, nasally exasperation, but it’s hard to believe this kid who plays things with such classical, heroic sincerity would ever be considered a dork, let alone called Hiccup. And Butler has his funny moments, but he’s also turned down the dial on “hearty and jovial” to such a degree that memories of his Leonidas in Zack Snyder’s 300 start resurfacing (it gets very “This! Is! Berk!”at one point).
All that’s really changed is that How to Train Your Dragon is now distinctly less charming and less playful than before, with even its pièce de résistance Toothless losing some of the cute factor (he looks real mean when he growls). But we can only lay so much of that blame at Hollywood’s feet – after all, Disney’s blandly faithful live-action Lilo & Stitch made over $600m worldwide. What does it say when the kind of nostalgia that prevails today is the desire for the old to be presented under the illusion that it’s new?
Dir: Dean DeBlois. Starring: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerard Butler, Nick Frost, Julian Dennison, Gabriel Howell, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Ruth Codd. Cert PG, 125 minutes.
‘How to Train Your Dragon’ is in cinemas
