Dean DeBlois is getting ready to show off footage from his live-action adaptation of “How to Train Your Dragon.” But he wants to explain some things first.
The filmmaker — an animation legend who made “Lilo & Stitch” and the original “How to Train Your Dragon” with Chris Sanders and directed two more “How to Train Your Dragon” installments for DreamWorks Animation on his own — had flirted with live-action filmmaking before. He had sold a number of spec scripts, including “Sightings,” which would have beaten “Stranger Things” to the Spielbergian punch by a good decade. But none of those materialized. Now, with “How to Train Your Dragon” (2025), he finally has his shot.
“I myself am not a huge fan of the animation-to-live-action trend,” DeBlois admitted to TheWrap from an edit bay on the Universal Studios lot. “Universal wanted to revisit this story. It’s like, ‘We’re going to do it. Let’s try to do it right. And if you’re going to get into this story, which is full of characters I love, in a world I feel attached to, then I want to be part of it.”
The key to DeBlois was that they had to “pick a lane at the start.”
“When it comes to something so personal, it’s like, why don’t we fulfill the ambition we had? That first movie was made in a rush, and I’m super proud of it, but there are things that we could have done even better. My attitude was, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said. He and his collaborators decided to treat the animated film as “our latest test screening.” “We still had time and money to go a little deeper with characters, to enrich the experience, to make the action scenes, the flying, more visceral, more immersive, but also make the character relationships a little richer and deeper. Hopefully, the experience would be something that echoes to the familiarity and the nostalgia of the first movie, but with depth. There are many ways we could have gone, but that’s the way that felt most comfortable to me, because I am really proud of that animated movie.”
DeBlois said that departing from the narrative completely just because they were telling the story in a different medium didn’t feel right either. “There are people who have embraced the film and feel quite protective of it,” he explained, so this was the lane that he chose, “for better or worse.”
Still, he began to wonder – what if you could pick moments that are beats from the animated movie but “executed in a different way?” Same with the beloved characters from the original film. DeBlois pointed to Astrid (now played by Nico Parker) as a character that he got to dig into deeper. In the new movie, she is “a character with more weight and depth … you understand where she’s coming from, what she wants, her attitude toward Hiccup as being this person of privilege, whereas she’s had to work her way up. She comes from one of the many cultures that came together for this purpose of defeating dragons, so she’s part of the added mythology.”
There’s a scene early in the movie, which DeBlois showed, where the kids, including Hiccup (Mason Thames), Fishlegs (Julian Dennison), Ruffnut (Bronwyn James) and Tuffnut (Harry Trevaldwyn), are training to be dragon hunters. They are being trained by Gobber the Belch (Nick Frost), a blacksmith and dragon expert. And while there are definitely shades of the sequence from the original film, there is much more intensity present in this version. The dragons stomp around like the dinosaurs from “Jurassic Park”; the characters are funny, but they also feel like they are in real peril. And the connection between Astrid and Hiccup is really felt; she is the much more accomplished hunter, while he more haphazardly stumbles through the exercise. When she saves him, you can feel her exasperation. She worked hard to get there, he was there because his dad Stoick (Gerard Butler, reprising his role from the animated films) is the village chieftain.
When mounting the live-action version, DeBlois reached out to some trusty collaborators. His first call, he noted, was to composer John Powell, whose work on the movies is utterly unforgettable. Powell told DeBlois, “Our fans have grown up with this movie. If we do it right, this could be a way of not only stoking that nostalgia for them, but give them something that they could share with their families now.” Powell was in.
The second call DeBlois made was to Roger Deakins, the Oscar-winning cinematographer who advised on all the animated “Dragons” movies. “He said, ‘I’m not doing big effects movies anymore. I want to take a break from that to shoot small indie films,’” DeBlois recalled. “But he says, ‘I know the person you need to talk to.’” That person was Bill Pope, the legendary cinematographer behind “The Matrix,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and “Army of Darkness.” “He’s just one of those cinematographers who’s so focused on story and character and actors delivering truthful performances,” DeBlois shared. He also appreciated that he appreciated his “story-sense.” “He can read the script. He can look at actor auditions. He can look at a performance being blocked on the day and talk about what’s working and what feels false. And I really appreciated that, you know, being someone going into it as a rookie,” DeBlois said.
Another scene that DeBlois previewed was a sequence where Hiccup and Toothless, the jet-black dragon who becomes his bestie, are trying out the harness that Hiccup has designed. It was one of the most exhilarating moments in the original film, especially since it utilized then-nascent, post-“Avatar” 3D technology (former DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg was very into 3D). This sequence is still just as breathless, and like the aforementioned training scene, had an increased sense of danger. Everything is heightened and more tactile. It really is something.
Also, for real “Dragons” heads, the aspect ratio has gone from 1.85:1 to 2.35:1, which adds a more cinematic flair. DeBlois said that he and Pope shot it open matte for Imax theaters, with the aspect ratio switching for “the scenes that benefit from it.” “It’s basically all the scenes with the dragons – if they’re training or flying or anything, that has a sense of grandeur and action to it,” he added. Much like the “curtain raiser” moment in “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” where Tom Cruise stands at the end of an open window and the screen expands, so too does “How to Train Your Dragon’s” organic way of introducing the Imax screen. DeBlois said that it will be timed to the dragon’s breathing, so each breath expands things a little bit until the image is taking up the entire screen, which is both incredible and adorable. “I think it’s going to be additive,” DeBlois said.
The final scene that he showed off involved a moment when Hiccup is meant to fight a dragon. His father is watching him, as are an arena of spectators. But Hiccup puts down his weapon and approaches the fearsome dragon, working from a place of kindness and compassion, instead of hatred and anger. (Among other things, the original “How to Train Your Dragon” is one of the great animal rights films.) Of course, Stoick ruins the moment and Toothless is forced to save Hiccup. It’s an 8-minute sequence, full of thrills and emotion. If there was any doubt that this new version of the story was vital and completely necessary, seeing this sequence washed all of those fears away. It’s a doozy.
“It’s a nice encapsulation of everything, because you get a little bit of the Hiccup/Astrid relationship. You get Hiccup trying to be Hiccup and do what he has to do to defy his father, but to try to change their ways. And then Toothless coming to his rescue,” DeBlois said. “It gives you a little bit of everything.”
And speaking of Toothless, his new design was the “biggest challenge” on the new movie, according to DeBlois. “We knew we wanted to hold onto that character and that personality, and we’d be judged pretty heavily if we went too far from it. But how do you take those cartoony proportions and render them into a creature that feels like it could walk through the jungle in Jurassic Park and look like it belongs?” DeBlois questioned. “Finding those hyper-real cues blended with the signature shapes and proportions of the animated character was pretty tricky.”
Ultimately, DeBlois got some guidance from John Dykstra, one of modern cinema’s greatest visual effects artists (he was a co-founder of Industrial Light & Magic and his camera system made the original “Star Wars” possible, among many other breakthroughs). Dykstra was consulting at Universal and offered this advice to DeBlois – “You should think about the animated movie as coming after the live-action ‘How to Train Your Dragon.’” DeBlois started thinking about the animated Toothless as “an exaggeration and caricature of the real creature.” “It was a really nice mentality to be in, when it came to designing all of the dragons,” DeBlois said. And you can see that mentality all over this new “How to Train Your Dragon.”
“How to Train Your Dragon” opens in theaters on June 13.
