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.
