![Live-action dragons: Krokmou does not fully successfully take off [critique]](https://gruntstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Live-action-dragons-Krokmou-does-not-fully-successfully-take-off-critique.jpg)
Live-action dragons: Krokmou does not fully successfully take off [critique]
Fifteen years after the original, the director returns with a live-action adaptation of his dragons. Technically impeccable but artistically a little empty, this remake plan by plan questions: can we recreate magic without animation?
Fifteen years after having co-produced one of the most beautiful animated films DreamWorks, Dean DeBlois returns alone to the controls (without Chris Sanders) for a live-action reappropriation of its Dragons. Why not. But from the first images, the approach questions: what good is it to transpose into reality what worked so well in the animated imagination? The answer struggles to emerge from the mists of this conscientious remake but devoid of soul.
This is the paradox of this new version: technically irreproachable, visually licked, it reproduces with manic fidelity the narrative structure of the original, its great moments of emotion and its spectacular flights. As if Deblois, aware of having signed a treasure, had dared to touch it only with white gloves. The result evokes the films generated by AI or 3D restitutions of ancient works of art: pretty, neat, but completely emptied of their original breath.
The wonder of the first film, this ability to transform this great learning story into a great poetic adventure is completely diluted in the passage to live-action. The flight sequences, formerly carried by the grace of animation and the partition of John Powellbecome pure digital virtuosity exercises. They are impressive, but do not have the magic that made us really think Harold and Krokmou dance in the clouds.
Mason Thamesyet convincing in Black Phonestruggling to exist or to make people forget the attractive voice of Baruchel in the original. He is a prisoner of an exercise in style that leaves him no room for maneuver, no space to reinvent the character. Same observation for Nico Parker also forced to replay Beat by Beat the scenes of Astrid without being able to bring his personal touch to it.
Alone Gerard Butler manages to breathe new dimension into its stoïck. Touching, violent, tender or threatening, it is the asset of this film if not too wise.
The most disturbing remains at the bottom this impression of permanent deja. Each plan, each replica, each twist resonates like a weakened echo of the original. Deblois and his teams may deploy treasures of technical inventiveness – the dragons are magnificent, the island of Beurk magnificently reconstructed -, they never manage to justify why this story deserves to be told a second time. We think at a time of Psycho by Gus Van Sant, another remake copycat of a masterpiece. At least, he asked the question of the reproducibility of art. Here, no meta or existential questioning. Just the desire to make new with old people, in the hope that a new generation takes hold of this story …
There remains an honest family entertainment, carried by an undeniable know-how and some moments of sincere emotion. By dint of wanting to capture the magic of the first film, Deblois ended up imprisoning it in an overly wise, too cold setting. This time Krokmou missed his flight.
