I went in to watch the How To Train Your Dragon “movie” with a clean slate – no trailers, no teasers, no expectations. Just me, a seat, and the clinging hope they hadn’t ruined it. The hope of not seeing one of my beloved franchises being butchered once again because let’s be real – live action adaptations don’t have the best track record. But there was one silver lining, this one was also directed by the same legend behind the original animated franchise: Dean DeBlois.
And so, I sat there, clutching my free IMAX poster as if it was a ticket to nostalgia, and after what felt like a million trailers, the screen finally faded to black: and then, dragons! Within seconds, I was all in. The dragons, the cast, and the VFX delivered. Full stop.
This was most definitely NOT one of those live action adaptations that ends up feeling like fan fiction with a budget: all nostalgia, no nuance. This was real and thoughtful, with a real respect for the original trilogy. Somehow, this film managed to not ruin what came before it, and instead delivered a continuation that felt emotionally accurate, visually rich, and – dare I say – deserving. I left the cinema not rolling my eyes, but weirdly moved, with maybe a little bit of faith restored in the crazy idea of taking a piece of animation and remaking it with real people.
Mind you, the last time a live-action film moved me this much was P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan – which, in all fairness, might have had a little something to do with my eight-year-old self’s ever-loving zing for Jeremy Sumpter.
Our parents had the dinosaurs from Jurassic, we had the dragons from Berk.
As an early 2000s kid, DreamWorks was – as it was for many children at the time – my emotional support crutch. Every DreamWorks film released equates to a consistent reminder of the existence of magic, new additions to my sky puppy personality, and upgrades on my scaly emotional anchors.
2010 was a bittersweet chapter. While How to Train Your Dragon soared onto screens for the first time, introducing us to a Viking outcast and his unlikely bond with a Night Fury, another tale was coming to its end. At least that’s how it was publicized at the time. We all know it. The film that put DreamWorks high up on the pedestal: our beloved ogre Shrek and his noble steed Donkey. Shrek Forever After marked “the curtain call” for the swamp-dwelling ogre who had become family. I was nine, inconsolable, and clutching my mother’s hand in a dark theatre as the credits rolled. It was an ending that felt like a goodbye to part of my childhood. (Only it didn’t last all that long… Shrek 5, coming soon to a cinema near you!).
That was until Vikings and Dragons became the talk of my middle school and I simply just had to watch what everyone was on about. It was one of the best cinematic experiences I had ever had. The soundtrack, the characters, the accents, the dragons, the plot, all of it was achingly beautiful.
Back to the live action release. It’s 15 years later, and I can safely say that they really went copy and paste (CTRL+C and CTRL+V) on my original experience. No tom-foolery, no manipulations of the story, and respect provided “to” DeBlois, “from” DeBlois.
Mason Thames was the perfect embodiment of Hiccup. The chemistry between Hiccup and Astrid was adequate, but not the same (nor does it have to be). That said, I do believe Lucy Bevan, the casting director, did an exceptional job in filling out the rest of the roles as well. The plot has no major changes whatsoever; they played it safe there. They kept it simple. The didn’t try to fix something that wasn’t broken. And John Powell’s soundtrack hits all those expected layers of emotion. As per usual.
Now let’s talk VFX. Translating the raw emotion and fantasy of the original animated films into live-action is a monumental task, and we’ve all seen how badly things can go when the visual effects don’t hold up. But How to Train Your Dragon gets it right. The visual effects in this film are nothing short of breath-taking. Toothless doesn’t just look real – he feels real. In fact, he looks more devious than cutesy; exactly how a Night Fury is described to be. Every wing beat, tail twitch, and curious head tilt is rendered with such care and detail that you genuinely forget you’re watching CGI. It was oddly realistic and had amazing visual realism.
The VFX team has done the near-impossible: bringing the magic of Berk and its dragons into our world without losing an ounce of its heart. Five stars.
Could we have lived without this live-action remake? Absolutely. But if it inspires a new generation to rediscover the animated classics that started it all, then I’d call that a win in my books. All in all, in a world full of soulless remakes, this one soars. It’s not just a retelling – it’s a rekindling.
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