"Hot to Train Your Dragon" could be the best live-action ever made

Live-action animations have figured out how to appeal to audiences: by being an exact copy of their original counterparts. This happened with Disney’s Lilo & Stitch , which, despite some changes (and even a few minor controversies), told the same story that made an entire generation fall in love back in 2002. The same is true for DreamWorks Animation with *How to Train Your Dragon*, hitting Italian theaters on June 13. The story, based on the 2003 book How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, made its film debut in 2010 and quickly became a true franchise. In addition to the trilogy, which ended in 2019 with How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, there have also been four short films and two TV series. Determined not to miss out on the remake trend of its classics, DreamWorks pulled from its archive the story of the young Viking Hiccup — most likely in hopes that the adaptation sees the same box office success as Lilo & Stitch.

The live-actions of *Lilo & Stitch* and *How to Train Your Dragon* are connected by their director, Dean Fleischer Camp (Marcel the Shell), who directed both. While the original 2002 film set in Hawaii was directed by the duo Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, How to Train Your Dragon represents a fifteen-year professional journey for Camp, who also worked on the animation and is set to direct the sequel to the new live-action, coming out in the summer of 2027. There is strong confidence in the project — from both DeBlois and DreamWorks — who knew they had a quality product to offer audiences, perhaps because it is faithful to the original literary work and, in its own way, has a heart that beats with its own rhythm. Just like the animated How to Train Your Dragon, the live-action version succeeds in its originality even while conventionally telling the story of a protagonist who feels he doesn’t belong anywhere and does everything he can to be accepted, surrounded by a host of fantastic creatures that bring back the magic of cinematic feats.

The rigidity of replicating the animated film is softened by the way the actors make the characters their own, especially the young Mason Thames — who made his screen debut in 2021 with the horror film Black Phone and will return in the sequel this fall — as he embodies the humanity and insecurity of the protagonist Hiccup, making it his own without forgetting the boldness of having big dreams and the vulnerability of trying to make others, especially parents, proud. The actor credibly holds his own against screen father Gerard Butler, and tenderly portrays the friendship with the enemy species. “Why didn’t you kill it?” Astrid asks him; “Because it was as scared as I was,” Hiccup replies, having seen his own fears in Toothless’s eyes. And while How to Train Your Dragon follows the same script as the animated film, it does so also when it comes to emotions, which are not watered down by the remake and can be appreciated thanks to the creation of majestic dragons on the big screen. This version could be the opportunity for a new audience to discover one of the most adventurous and exciting sagas of recent times — beloved by many, though not always in the spotlight. And it might also lead them to revisit the animated classics, while they wait for the live-action sequels to come.