Although I have fond memories of watching DreamWorks Animation movies like Antz, The Prince of Egypt and Shrek when I was a kid, I haven’t kept up nearly as much with the studio’s work as an adult. Part of this has to do with how from the late 2000s to mid-2010s, for whatever reason, I wasn’t interested in watching animated movies unless they were Pixar or DC-related. So I missed out on How to Train Your Dragon when it came out in 2010 and never felt a strong urge to check it out in the years to follow.
However, with the live-action How to Train Your Dragon set for a summer release on the 2025 movies schedule, and after watching the latest trailer and reading about the early footage our own Sarah El-Mahmoud saw, I decided to rectify this. I’m happy to say the animated original exceeded my expectations, and I plan to watch its two sequels soon. More importantly, there’s a specific moment from the animated How to Train Your Dragon that I’m looking to seeing depicted in live-action in a few months time: the emergence of the Red Death.
At the beginning of How to Train Your Dragon, the people of Berk have no qualms about killing the dragons that attack their village because these winged beasts are seen as evil. Once Hiccup meets Toothless, he realizes this isn’t true at all, both through his experience with the Night Fury and running into other dragons while these two are flying around. That said, the gigantic Red Death is the closest this movie comes to delivering a malevolent figure, as it’s the reason these other dragons have been attacking Berk in the first place.
Hiccup and Astrid learn about the Red Death while they’re riding on Toothless, who suddenly drawn to the dragons’ nest. After seeing all the other dragons flying to this location with dead animals in their claws, and then witnessing the rise of the Red Death, Hiccup and Astrid realize that this towering predator forces dragons to deliver food to it so they’re not eaten. Without it being around, Berk wouldn’t be such a target for terrorizing, and once Hiccup and Toothless destroy the Red Death, this allows for humans and dragons to finally live together in peace.
Although you can briefly spot a portion of the Red Death if you look closely while watching the latest How to Train Your Dragon trailer, I’m glad that the marketing has revealed the dragon’s full look. This is something that needs to be saved for when audiences are seated at the theater and can witness it wreaking havoc on the big screen. I’m eager to see how the creative team went about realizing the Red Death in live-action, in particular when this thing emerges from its hidey hole for the first time.
The How to Train Your Dragon remake has done a good job of making Toothless closely resemble his animated predecessor, but then also tweaking him enough so that he looks like he belongs in this live-action world rather than overly cartoonish. I really hope this ends up being true for Red Death as well, because if done properly, I could see myself getting chills watching this beast rise up to snatch away all the food the other dragons have brought it, and even swallow a few of its smaller brethren too… just because it can. It could also end up being the movie’s defining scary moment, as Gerard Butler has already said this version will be a lot more frightening.
I still have my reservations about if the new How to Train Your Dragon will come anywhere close to reaching the quality level of the original, but I will go into the movie crossing my fingers that the Red Death’s first appearance is handled exceptionally. For now, if you’re like me and want to watch the original Dragon trilogy before the remake’s June 13 release, the first two movies are streaming with a Peacock subscription, while The Hidden World can currently only be viewed digitally through rental or purchase.