Dean DeBlois makes friendship with an unfamiliar creature worth caring about, giving a familiar family adventure patience and warmth. We rate that gift highly; his live-action return to How to Train Your Dragon shows how little copying it achieves.
Fi1m perspective
Hiccup meets the wounded Toothless and starts to doubt the wisdom of fighting dragons. In How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders give that doubt enough attention to make the boy's change of mind convincing. We were moved by his growing concern for the creature, because the film takes time over his reasons for questioning what he has been taught. The lesson is familiar. The care taken over the friendship makes it worth hearing again.
DeBlois had already co-directed Lilo & Stitch (2002) with Sanders. Away from animation, he directed Heima (2007), a documentary about Sigur Rós's homecoming concerts in Iceland. For How to Train Your Dragon, he consulted cinematographer Roger Deakins in pursuit of realistic lighting. We welcome that attention to making the surroundings credible, though the writing of the friendship does more to persuade us that the dragon deserves a closer look.
The 2010 film also makes some weaknesses plain. Its opening is unsettled, the jokes sometimes get in the way, and the human supporting characters receive less care than Hiccup and Toothless. DeBlois, Sanders and fellow screenwriter William Davies rely on family-adventure conventions that make the plot easy to anticipate. It remains a warm, exciting film we recommend, with the caveat that the people around the boy can feel like obligations the script has yet to attend to.
DeBlois went on to direct How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) without Sanders as co-director. His next return, How to Train Your Dragon (2025), is much harder to recommend. He writes, directs and produces a live-action version that keeps the story, the scenes and most of the lines of the animated film. Having once made something of his own from Cressida Cowell's books, he seems reluctant to reconsider any of his choices.
The flying still works, and Mason Thames gives the remake a good Hiccup. Real rock and weather offer something to look at, but the longer, slower telling adds almost nothing the earlier film lacked. There is care here, and little curiosity about what actors might let him do differently. Start with the 2010 animation, and leave the remake for an evening when familiarity is the point.
Biography
Dean DeBlois is a Canadian filmmaker, writer and director. He studied Classical Animation at Sheridan College while working as an assistant animator and layout artist.
DeBlois co-wrote and co-directed the animated feature Lilo & Stitch (2002) with Chris Sanders for Walt Disney Animation Studios. He later co-wrote and directed the How to Train Your Dragon animated trilogy for DreamWorks Animation: How to Train Your Dragon (2010, also with Sanders), How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019). He also directed the 2007 music documentary Heima about the band Sigur Rós.
DeBlois wrote, directed and produced the live-action remake How to Train Your Dragon (2025), his first live-action feature film.
