‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Review: Live-Action and CGI Remake Clutches Tight to the Original to Take Flight [C+]

When does an animated classic have a reasonable justification for being remade in live action? Is it when a fresh set of eyes brings a unique angle to the material, rejuvenating it for a new generation of audiences? Or is it when the new format genuinely adds something that wasn’t present in the original?

Those are, of course, naive and idealized answers. In reality, the idea usually originates when studios need an extremely low-risk franchise property to help bankroll their way through the current fiscal year, as it goes, time and time again. Most recently, that trend continued with Disney’s insanely lucrative recreation of Lilo & Stitch. The remake reimagines the original 2002 film, directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, with its stunning hand-drawn detail and vibrant watercolor backgrounds, through the prescriptive lens of a routine CG-meets-live-action family movie hybrid. All the wonder and chaos of the lightning-in-a-bottle original is diluted into a predictable, dull template. AwardsWatch critic Jay Ledbetter summed up the central dilemma with these remakes in his review of the new version, particularly when addressing the visuals: “It evokes the memory of seeing that awesome thing, which ends up making the interpretation in live-action deflating, more than anything.”

Now, not even a month later, DeBlois and Sanders’ 2010 hit How to Train Your Dragon is receiving the same treatment—this time with DeBlois himself at the helm, revisiting his own material. The new How to Train Your Dragon is somewhat easier to rationalize than Lilo & Stitch: while the latter’s animation style has ensured a timeless aesthetic, the former has begun to show its age, if only slightly. The bouncy, highly colorful DreamWorks CGI has had 15 years for cracks to develop, as they inevitably do with computer animation as technology moves forward. Still, the original film remains a perfectly pleasant one to look at, filled with terrifically dynamic set pieces and fun character design. 

In any case, having DeBlois on board to preserve the sanctity of this story—about a young, dweeby Viking who befriends a disarmingly cute dragon—is a reassuring factor in a movie that otherwise remains an inherently dubious prospect. General audiences will likely be content with the love letter to the original film’s legacy that’s been crafted here. Fans who grew up with the series will be glad to see one of their favorite childhood films revitalized as a majestically scoped family fantasy. Children new to the material will be enraptured by a blockbuster that carries genuine stakes yet speaks to broader, youth-oriented sensibilities.

For those with a sharper recollection of the film being adapted, this may be a mixed bag. DeBlois is precious with his material to the point of redundancy: How to Train Your Dragon is an exercise in seeing how much mileage can come from what is essentially a shot-for-shot, beat-for-beat copy. If you remember a stray line of dialogue or notable image from the animated movie, there’s a 99% chance it made its way into this version, planted firmly within an identical context of a movie you saw in 2010. Only now, the film requests that you accommodate a certain gravitas that it imposes on itself now that it’s operating outside the realm of animation. This is no longer a kids’ adventure from Dreamworks—this is adolescent Game of Thrones.

At least that’s how it feels when we get to the climax, which heightens the intensity of our Viking heroes fighting a big mega-dragon, even if the basic premise is ultimately the same. If there’s one fundamentally admirable thing that How to Train Your Dragon does with its second life, it’s that it amplifies the stakes that we’ve already seen, recasting all the dragons as fairly impressive and often intimidating creations and working them into environments to emphasize a sense of scale that feels appropriately epic in scope where it counts. It’s refreshing to see a children’s movie that puts its characters in genuine peril within a reasonably intense battle sequence, trusting that the young audience has faith in the film to do right by their emotional investment. 

The mostly new cast does what they can to sell that poignancy, though it doesn’t always pan out. Taking over our lead Hiccup from Jay Baruchel is Mason Thames, who resembles the scrawny meekness and conveys the intellectual ingenuity of the character, but is missing Baruchel’s distinct high-strung delivery that made him stand out. Most other cast members hold their own just fine, including Nico Parker as Astrid, operating as a decent foil-turned-love-interest for Hiccup; Nick Frost, having fun as hobbling dragon fighting trainer Gobber; and of course Gerard Butler, reprising his role of Hiccup’s father and town leader, Stoick the Vast, from the original film, holding nothing back under his extensive Viking garb, seemingly gleeful to be reprising this role. 

It’s the script’s clash of tones that drags the performances down. The film is stuck right in the middle of being a carbon copy of the original and a more sobering version of that same material. Lines of dialogue that work in a jokey animation don’t translate the same when watching live-action actors recite the same lines, which often come off as performers doing a simple impression of another movie. This means How to Train Your Dragon vacillates from having the heightened slapstick of a cartoon to the seriousness of an epic medieval drama with all the grace of Toothless trying to take flight for the first time. 

Speaking of Toothless, he retains his cuteness, and there are some worthwhile flying sequences shot in full IMAX showing off the scenic Irish coast and cliff sides—at least they shot this sucker on location and are happy to use that natural beauty to the film’s advantage. It’s the action sequences where the film visually stumbles, slipping into a well-worn visual disposition of murky lowlight gray-scale, as cinematographer Bill Pope does his best to find some kind of dynamism among the admittedly impressive CG creations, but is ultimately forced to conform to a standard type of uniformity with these large-scale blockbusters. 

Instead, How to Train Your Dragon’s best aspect is in its themes, specifically an idea inherent to this story, again, directly lifted from the original: that it is heroic to admit when you’re wrong after gaining an understanding for something you didn’t have previously, and that empathy and compassion are requisite qualities for a truly prosperous society, making life intrinsically better for everybody. As Hiccup navigates a village of people indoctrinated into the idea that killing dragons is the right thing to do, and as he has to convince them that there’s another way, one hopes that these elements of solicitude and genuine curiosity regarding a diverse world will rub off on the society outside the auditorium. 

Even so, the harsh reality is that How to Train Your Dragon is quite literally a movie you have seen before, in an updated format and with some new cosmetic bells and whistles that may make this a worthwhile venture for you. Or, you may just find yourself wondering when you would ever watch this version when you have the livelier and more succinct 2010 movie available to watch instead. It’s nice that younger viewers have their own age-appropriate epic fantasy adventure movie, but then again, it’s not like the original movie doesn’t fulfill that need already, and to insinuate otherwise devalues the artistic richness of animation—even aged animation. How to Train Your Dragon isn’t just indebted to the reputation of the original: it is the original, made with the foregone conclusion that it will always be an echo of a film that was just fine on its own.

Grade: C+

Dreamworks Animation will release How to Train Your Dragon on June 13.