How to Train Your Dragon: Still a thoughtful fantasy

How to Train Your Dragon (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, perhaps generously, despite intense fantasy action and peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.15.25

I deemed this film’s 2010 animated predecessor perfect, which is a term I rarely use.

 

Writer/director Dean DeBlois’ (mostly) live-action remake therefore had mighty large shoes to fill.

 

After spending several days trying to earn this massive dragon's trust, Hiccup
(Mason Thames) achieves an important breakthrough.

On the encouraging side, DeBlois also co-wrote and co-directed the 2010 original — and its two sequels — all loosely based on British author Cressida Cowell’s children’s book series; he therefore knows the material quite well. DeBlois also cleverly reused one of the original voice actors in his same role here, which is a nice touch of continuity ... as also is retaining John Powell as score composer.

While the result here isn’t up to the original’s quality, it gets reasonably close, and avid fans of the 2010 film will recognize key moments and bits of dialogue.

 

Perhaps too many of them, actually; at times this feels like a scene-for-scene copy.

 

The setting is a long time ago, in an isolated Viking community far, far away. The island of Berk consists of dwellings nestled amid rocky outcroppings, whose inhabitants have long dealt with a unique pest problem: an assortment of imaginatively named, bad-tempered, fire-breathing dragons that frequently raid the community to torch homes while snatching sheep ... and the occasional luckless human.

 

The beasts have been catalogued in a massive book that describes size, speed, levels of danger, weaknesses (if any) and other details. As was the case in the animated film — and Cowell’s book — the story’s whimsy comes from the syntax-mangling names given the creatures: Gronckle, Deadly Nadder, Scauldron, Hideous Zippleback and many more.

 

Along with the legendary Night Fury, which nobody ever has seen.

 

Under the guidance of tribal leader Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) and inventive blacksmith/weapons designer Gobber (Nick Frost), the villagers have managed to hold their own. Sort of. Stoick occasionally leads ocean-going sorties in an effort to locate and destroy the dragons’ nest, but they’ve never been able to find it; each attempt merely produces more casualties.

 

Stoick’s overly impetuous son, Hiccup (Mason Thames), can’t wait to follow in his father’s footsteps, by joining one such mission. Unfortunately, Hiccup is uncoordinated, timid and completely useless during dragon raids; he therefore has been apprenticed to Gobber, who fails to credit the boy’s clever dragon-battling gadgets.

 

Godzilla vs. Kong: Thud and blunder

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) • View trailer

Two stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, relentless carnage and brief profanity

By Derrick Bang

Back in the golden age of Universal Studios monster movies, when one character’s popularity began to wane, he’d be set against another.

 

Although completely dwarfed by the massive Kong, Jia (Kaylee Hottle) isn't the slightest
bit afraid of him; indeed, she and the mighty ape share a special bond.

Ergo, we got Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943, followed by the triple-threat of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man in 1944’s House of Frankenstein.

 

And when Universal got really desperate, their monsters became shameful comedic foils for Abbott and Costello.

 

Despite being silly, pratfall-laden spoofs, even they were far more entertaining than this noisy, landscape-leveling dust-up between Godzilla and Kong (this revived franchise apparently having dropped the “King” from the latter).

 

In fairness, director Adam Wingard’s monster mash — available via HBO Max, and at operational movie theaters — is somewhat better than 2019’s thoroughly deplorable Godzilla, King of the Monsters (although, yes, that’s damning with faint praise). Wingard and editor Josh Schaeffer move this entry along more efficiently — at least until the interminable third act — and the CGI animators get a welcome level of emotional depth from Kong.

 

But the major problem, as before, is the script: a sloppily assembled, seemingly random collection of set-pieces populated by — for the most part — stiff-as-a-board characters too vacuous to be regarded as even one-dimensional. (A few exceptions stand out, and I’ll get to them in a moment.)

 

This (ahem) Frankenstein’s monster of a story is credited to Eric Pearson, Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields and Max Borenstein, the latter three responsible for writing the aforementioned Godzilla, King of the Monsters. So I guess we can credit Pearson and Rossio with this new film’s slight improvement.

 

Matters begin well, with Kong safely — but unhappily — housed in a huge biodome located on Skull Island (presumably cleared of all the other huge and nasty beasts we met in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, by far the best of these films). He has bonded with Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a young, deaf/mute orphan whom the mighty ape both trusts and — to a degree — obeys, via their shared sign language. This relationship is the film’s strongest note, due to the nuanced sensitivity of Hottle’s performance; she immediately wins our hearts and minds.

 

Jia shares a similarly loving and caring bond with her adoptive mother, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), an anthropological linguist attached to Monarch, the world government’s crypto-zoological agency dedicated to the study of “Titans” such as Kong. Hottle and Hall work well together; it’s a shame they’re not granted larger roles. Like, in place of everybody else in the film.

Deadpool 2: Still gleefully gory

Deadpool 2 (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for relentless violence, profanity, gore, sexual candor, tasteless humor and rather bizarre nudity
By Derrick Bang

If it’s true the world is going straight to hell, this film series is pushing us into the abyss.

Having been made an X-Men trainee by the metal-skinned Colossus, Deadpool (Ryan
Reynolds, left) attempts diplomatic persuasion in order to defuse a volatile crisis
involving a rogue mutant. Needless to say, that won't work...

The character of Wade Wilson, known as Deadpool while concealed beneath red and black Spandex, occupies a tasteless subdivision of the Marvel Comics universe. His insolence and appetite for blood-drenched vigilante justice set him apart from superheroes who obey a higher moral calling, and his mutant talent — accelerated regeneration, like a lizard that can re-grow its tail — encourages all manner of gross-out melees.

To its credit (?), the companion film series quite faithfully replicates the vulgar tone, rude banter and hyper-violent carnage. If anything, Deadpool 2 is even more deplorably disgusting than its 2016 predecessor, which — no doubt — will delight the fans who’ve pushed that first film to a ludicrously high IMDB rating of 8.0. 

To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the movie-going public.

Needless to say, these films can’t — shouldn’t — be taken seriously. They must be approached vicariously, enjoyed (endured?) as examples of the sick and/or dark-dark-dark humor typical of Pulp Fiction, Bad Santa and both Kick-Ass entries.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying caveat emptor. If your idea of a good time doesn’t include watching our anti-hero groan and crack wise after literally getting ripped in two, bloody entrails dangling from both halves, better go for some other option at the multiplex.

This film picks up more or less where the first one left off, with the hideously scarred Wade (Ryan Reynolds) having settled into his role as masked mercenary and executioner of grotesquely vile criminal dons, drug kingpins, human traffickers and, well, you get the idea. Alas, that sort of behavior cuts both ways, and Wade gets hit where he lives. Literally.

Thanks to a quasi-alliance established with a few members of the X-Men, Wade is rescued from his subsequent funk by the imposing, metal-skinned Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic), who — with ill-advised optimism — makes Deadpool a trainee member of the team. Their first mission: to quell a crisis at a home for wayward mutant orphans, where a distressed teenage pyrotic named Russell (Julian Dennison) is carrying out his own scorched-earth policy.