Live-Action How To Train Your Dragon Trailer Looks Utterly Pointless

Trailers

Live-action remakes of beloved children's movies aren't just Disney's domain any more. DreamWorks is also getting in on the trend with "How to Train Your Dragon," a live-action adaptation of the 2010 animated film, which itself was based on the book series by Cressida Cowell. Dean DeBlois, one of the original two directors of the animated film, returned to helm this remake. Now, the first trailer for "How to Train Your Dragon" has dropped, introducing a familiar fantasy world that's been re-imagined with flesh-and-blood actors.

Mason Thames ("The Black Phone") stars as Hiccup, a 15-year-old Viking who lives in the dragon-hating village of Berk. As the son of the chieftain, Hiccup is under pressure to become a legendary dragon hunter, but instead ends up befriending a rare (and adorable) dragon called Toothless. DeBlois told Empire Magazine that the remake is "so dialled-up in terms of stakes — having a fully credible, photo-real dragon stomping around."

While most of the roles have been recast for this live-action remake, Gerard Butler will be returning as Hiccup's father, Stoick the Vast. The film also stars Nico Parker, Julian Dennison, Gabriel Howell, Bronwyn James, and Harry Trevaldwyn as Hiccup's fellow young dragon-fighters-in-training.

DreamWorks is following in Disney's footsteps

There are undoubtedly hundreds (if not thousands) of talented people who worked on this live-action version of "How to Train Your Dragon," and I don't mean to denigrate anyone's hard work — in fact, this movie actually doesn't look terrible, visually. The actual, physical locations and sets are doing a lot of heavy lifting; at the very least, it doesn't look like this was shot in The Volume. But my immediate and visceral reaction to this trailer is simply ... why? Why would you do this? I'm sure director Dean DeBlois will have his artistic reason why he wanted to return all set for the press tour next summer, and I don't actually blame him: This seems like one of those "it's going to happen with or without you" situations, and it makes some level of sense for him to recreate a world he knows so well in animation as his first live-action feature film.

The problem isn't with DeBlois, it's with DreamWorks, who decided to greenlight a movie that looks like an exact copy of the animation version. But I guess the real problem is with Disney, which greedily began remaking all of its animated classics in live-action and cashing in on audiences' nostalgia for those properties while almost never adding anything new or interesting to the new versions. Those remakes made so much money that now other studios feel like they have a template to copy, and it's depressing to see this creatively bankrupt decision spreading to other companies.

And look, maybe I'm being too harsh. "Scott Pilgrim Takes Off" looked like the reverse of this situation last year, when an animated version of a live-action movie (based on a comic) seemed to be a panel-for-panel recreation, but that is one of the rare examples of a project taking a wild swing, story-wise, and challenging the audience in a fun and interesting way while deepening the characters fans were familiar with. Maybe this live-action "How to Train Your Dragon" will do the same thing. But if DreamWorks is following the Disney template, the only reaction we'll have to this movie when it hits theaters is a dead-eyed shrug.

"How to Train Your Dragon" flies into theaters on June 13, 2025.