8 Biggest Challenges How To Train Your Dragon’s Live-Action Remake Must Overcome

Universal announced a How to Train Your Dragon film is forthcoming, but instead of a sequel to the original trilogy, it will be a live-action film, resulting in some big challenges ahead. The first How to Train Your Dragon came out in 2010 and was a huge hit for DreamWorks, launching a franchise that included How to Train Your Dragon 2 in 2014 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in 2019. The movies centered around Viking Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his coming-of-age story of trying to become a dragon hunter until an unexpected friendship with an injured Night Fury turns his village from dragon-fearing to dragon-riding.

Each new film provided more world-building, deeper character development, and more and more inventive dragon designs. Fans who grew up with the franchise have been protective of it, and a live-action remake may risk alienating a very nostalgic fanbase as it tries to secure a new one. Even in an era of remakes, trying to make realistic versions of the How to Train Your Dragon characters and settings will present numerous challenges, particularly because of how well-known (and regarded) they already are worldwide.

8 Toothless’ CGI Needs To Be Just Right

Toothless is one of the most iconic characters in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise thanks to his recognizable shape and appearance. Unfortunately, the smooth features that combine the grace and agility of a cat and a reptile could look very strange if made to look hyper-realistic, so his CGI would need to be just right in order to properly capture what makes him so identifiable while still allowing him to move and fly like a real dragon. The live-action movie might repeat Sonic’s design curse by turning a beloved character like Toothless into a horrible CGI monstrosity.

7 How To Train Your Dragon’s Original Trilogy Only Finished In 2019

Given that the How to Train Your Dragon original trilogy just ended in 2019, it almost feels too soon to be thinking of a live-action version. While superhero movies don’t seem to have a problem with reboots and remakes every time a certain storyline or cast doesn’t successfully launch a dozen sequels, it doesn’t mean that a How to Train Your Dragon live-action remake so soon after the franchise concluded will be as welcomed as The Suicide Squad being released five years after Suicide Squad. Fans just said goodbye to the original cast of the franchise, and might not be ready to adjust to a new one right away.

6 How To Train Your Dragon’s Young Live-Action Cast Will Age Quickly

The original trilogy was released over a decade, which had no real consequence for the How to Train Your Dragon voice actors, most of whom were adults voicing children, and could continue to voice the characters regardless of their ages. With a live-action cast, however, the young cast could age too quickly to successfully adapt all the films in time. If the films ended up looking as lush and vivid as Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water, each one could take a decade, and James Cameron had the benefit of being able to use many of the same actors because their performances involved CGI and motion-capture.

5 Live-Action Remakes Are A Box Office Risk

There have been a lot of live-action remakes in the last decade thanks to Disney mining its back catalog of animated classics, but that doesn’t mean they don’t carry risks. Live-action remakes like Aladdin, Cruella, The Lion King, and Maleficent have made the House of Mouse the most money, with some even breaking 1 billion dollars, but even The Little Mermaid, which made over $5M dollars, was the second-most expensive Disney live-action remake and the 7th most successful. If Disney still hasn’t figured out a winning strategy, it’s hard to see how How to Train Your Dragon will.

4 The Crazy Armor & Weapons Will Look Fake In Live-Action

Hiccup and all the rest of the How to Train Your Dragon characters wear armor and utilize weapons that could end up looking fake in a live-action setting. It can be difficult with such brightly colored and exaggerated aesthetics to look anything but cartoony and cheesy. While crossbows and swords would look fine, some of the battle axes might be harder to craft without making Gronckle Iron look like styrofoam. Weapons like the spear carried by Hiccup’s mother could end up looking like something from the Flintstones, which is one of many reasons why a How to Train Your Dragon live-action movie is a bad idea.

3 The Cost Of CGI (Possibly Meaning Fewer Dragons)

With the number of fantasy creatures in How to Train Your Dragon, it’s possible that the cost of the necessary CGI could spin out of control, possibly resulting in things like fewer dragons. From Deathgrippers and Stormcutters to Buffalords and Crimson Gorecutters, there are so many dragon species that a live-action How to Train Your Dragon would have to be very selective about what it could include and what it would be forced to cut. There’s also a chance that with so much CGI, the movie would look too busy unless it could somehow look like the Avatar films in which case it would take too long to make.

2 How To Train Your Dragon Live-Action Will Look Like Every Other Fantasy Movie

The How to Train Your Dragon films have a very specific aesthetic that, if turned into live-action, could become generic. A lot of world-building went into creating Berk, the fictional Viking village where Hiccup and his friends live, and in order to do its islands and fjords, justice it would need to be rendered in a way that helped it stand out from locations found in other fantasy movies like Narnia or Middle-earth. Since the films feature dragons so prominently in a pseudo-medieval setting, a live-action How to Train Your Dragon movie would really need to not look like a Game of Thrones clone.

1 Fans’ Nostalgia For How To Train Your Dragon’s Original Trilogy

Fans who grew up with How to Train Your Dragon are protective of the franchise, and rightly so, considering its themes about self-empowerment, diversity, teamwork, and family shaped them into the adults they are today. In many ways, they grew up with Hiccup, and while they might not have become a dragon slayer and become their village’s chief, they hit their own milestones right along with him. That’s why a live-action How to Train Your Dragon will need to take fans’ nostalgia into consideration during the creative process and make sure that it’s not just trying to find a new audience at the expense of disrespecting the old one.