There are few scenes in movies as exhilarating as the first flight of Hiccup and his dragon friend, Toothless, in the now semi-classic 2010 animated film How to Train Your Dragon. That scene — and almost all others, with additions — get remade with a delicate touch in this year’s live-action remake from writer-director Dean DeBlois.
For those who do not know, the story — an adaptation of the books by Cressida Cowell — is set in the Viking village of Berk that is at the mercy of raids by an assortment of dragons, who steal their livestock. While most dragons are catalogued by their abilities, one “dangerous” (in a manner of speaking) dragon remains undocumented: the slick-skinned Nightfury, who is eventually captured by the town’s chief’s nerdy son Hiccup (Mason Thames), and named Toothless. Their friendship, at odds with the town’s perception about dragons, leads to a story that has a simple premise but a nuanced and sensitive, multi-layered story.
DeBlois, the co-director of the animated Lilo & Stitch and the three How to Train Your Dragon animated movies, does a shot-by-shot rework of the first film and, for the first time in a long line of remakes of animated films, everything works to utter perfection. In fact, the additional 20-odd minutes (the original animated film was 90 minutes, this one is about two hours), adds scenes that give better dimension and emotional relevance to the situations and the characters.
Immediately putting on the animated film — which one would have seen many times already on television, DVD or streaming — one realises that the live-action film is better written and directed. Hats off to DeBlois and cinematographer Bill Pope (Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films, The Matrix trilogy), as they make the seen-it-all-before work with a fresher perspective.
The live-action How To Train Your Dragon is better written and directed than the animated movie and its sequels
Gerard Butler, the only actor to reprise his role as Berk’s heroic chief, is as perfect a casting decision as Thames, who, honestly speaking, took a whole 30 minutes to get used to; Jay Baruchel who voiced Hiccup in the animated movie, was hard to unimagine.
The animation and rendering are fantastic — it blends photorealism with just the right balance of CGI-animation-quality near-photorealism of the dragons. Everything else, including the casting of the supporting actors (Nico Parker, daughter of actress Thandie Newton, and Nick Frost amongst others), is just as one saw it 15 years ago — but only better.
Released by Universal and HKC, How to Train Your Dragon is rated U, and is suitable for audiences of all ages, who ought to see it in cinemas
Published in Dawn, ICON, June 22nd, 2025
