Chris Sanders
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The Sea Beast (2022)
Directed by Chris Williams
influenced by How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Themes Plot Visuals
Williams and company have borrowed heavily from the likes of DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon to classics like Moby Dick, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mutiny on the Bounty, Master & Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean to even Williams’ own Moana.
Sure, hardened cynics could argue that the premise of “The Sea Beast” borrows heavily from “How to Train Your Dragon” (2010) with another brave youngster teaching Medieval adults not to fear the unknown, this time replacing Toothless with a sea monster named Red and an adorable sidekick named Blue that acts a lot like “Lilo & Stitch” (2002).
It helps that the beast's design evokes memories of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon , and it's just as adorable and characterful.
His nemesis isn’t a great white whale but the mighty Red Bluster, a humongous beast with a manatee-ish shape, a rhino-reminiscent horn, a wide mouth of incisors that recalls the animal faces in How to Train Your Dragon , and expressive yellow feline eyes.
The story however may recall How to Train Your Dragon : humanity is forced to reconsider how they see fabled monsters when a young girl befriends the titular Moby Dick.
The similarities to DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise will be lost on no one.
…in places it gets highly reminiscent of both The Wild Robot (2024) and Pom Poko (1994)…
It’s no Hundreds of Beavers, but Hoppers still plays like the hilariously caffeinated offspring of The Wild Robot and Teen Titans Go!.
Will and I disagree a bit on where it lands, especially once The Wild Robot enters the conversation.
In this respect there’s glimpses of recent Dreamworks adventure The Wild Robot, a similarly ecologically minded story featuring a zany critter cast…
Similarly to 2024’s The Wild Robot, Hoppers gets a bit cutesy with its talking animal community, showing predator and prey all being friendly with each other…
In the vein of Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot, the film captures the overlap between aiming to help with technology and embracing the natural world and its processes.
How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
Directed by Dean DeBlois
influenced by How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Themes Plot
How to Train Your Dragon (2025) tries to breathe fire—and manages only a mild spark.
The extra 27 minutes brings with it some impressive look-at-me moments—particularly in the final battle scene—but I found it less charming than it animated counterpart.
Few modern animated films have achieved the emotional clarity, visual majesty, and thematic resonance of 2010’s How to Train Your Dragon and its two sequels.
The film is a live-action remake of the 2010 animated feature of the same name, directed by DeBlois and Chris Sanders for Dreamworks Animation.
It is hard to dissuade people from seeing this, especially if the 2010 animated film, or How to Train Your Dragon animated franchise has meant anything at all to you.
More than a decade after Toothless first charmed audiences, Universal Pictures has breathed new fire into "How to Train Your Dragon" with a live-action adaptation that manages to capture the magic of the original while offering a fresh cinematic experience.
Despite the outlandish success of the “Shrek” movies, there’s often a sad, also-ran vibe to DreamWorks’ animated movies.
The company’s animation output has hitherto been of the Shrek model: packed with tiresomely knowing pop cultural references that jar you out of the story every five minutes like an elbow to the ribs.
But it is an especially nice touch in the dragon tale itself, which is both heartwarming and heartfelt, a significant departure from the pop culture saturated sarcasm that had become something of a DreamWorks Animation staple à la “Shrek.”
But even if Dragon leads with its visuals, be glad that Dreamworks has largely moved away from the inane pop-culture referencing and wiseass temperament that marked the Shrek films.
There's no compulsion to break into impromptu karaoke or drop jokey pop-culture references, the way DreamWorks' "Shrek" franchise and its many imitators have done.
Abominable (2019)
Directed by Jill Culton
influenced by How to Train Your Dragon (2010), The Croods (2013)
Plot Visuals
I bring this up only because the studio’s two 2019 films, March’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and the recent Abominable, both seem to be driven by the same basic artistic impulses and inclinations.
That it also makes obvious nods to the studio's first How To Train Your Dragon, as well as the classics King Kong and E.T., doesn’t take away from its inherent charm.
Writer-director Jill Culton’s Abominable is, by and large, a gene splice of How to Train Your Dragon and Ice Age, with its nefarious corporate-military villain drawing comparison to Incredibles 2 and its quirky background animal characters recalling the Madagascar series.
For every memorable franchise like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and How To Train Your Dragon, there’s a Boss Baby or The Croods that effectively weakens the brand.
It recycles a key element from DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon series: a nonhuman, nonverbal character who forms a touching bond with the human protagonist.
It’s tough to dislike any of these characters, but it’s tough to be particularly invested in them, either, and Abominable doesn’t have the visual grandeur of similar DreamWorks franchise How to Train Your Dragon to make up for the flat characters and dull narrative.
…one that begins the film with an opening copycatting The Wild Robot…
…an opening copycatting The Wild Robot, there also exists a shipwrecked container full of new “Hi-Tech Edition” Buzz Lightyear dolls…
You might think the scenes are stolen directly from another animated feature, the 2024 “The Wild Robot.”
…surviving a crash like the Wild Robot and then journeying into the world…
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Directed by Tim Burton
influenced The Call of the Wild (2020)
Visuals Themes
This isn’t quite Andy Serkis-level motion capture brilliance ala Planet of the Apes , but you often forget that Buck is a CGI creation throughout thanks to the trick-of-the-mind the film manages.
The final triumph of dog-kind in the film recalls, of all things, Matt Reeves's superlative Planet of the Apes trilogy, postulating a future in which hyper-intelligent, non-human mammals inherit the earth.
Special mention must also be given to actor Terry Notary who was the motion capture reference for Buck, and much like he’s done in the past playing Kong in Kong: Skull Island and Rocket in all three of the recent Planet of the Apes adventures, he adds a layer of emotional authenticity that’s outstanding.
Accomplished motion-capture performer Terry Notary, known for his work on the most recent “Planet of the Apes” films and a thrilling and terrifying ape-inspired performance art piece in “The Square,” brings Buck’s movements to life, and it’s a truly skilled performance.
Terry Notary, the movement coach who taught actors how to mimic simians on the recent “Planet of the Apes” films, played the dog on the set before animation, in what the film bills as a “live action reference performance.”
In the recent Planet of the Apes reboot, the motion capture simians were an ethical alternative to real apes, who shouldn't be exploited for human entertainment.
The Black Stallion (1979)
Directed by Carroll Ballard
influenced How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Themes
The human/dragon scenario is reminiscent of both the delicate human/animal alliance in such films as The Black Stallion (1979) and the illicit romance of Romeo & Juliet (although here it is definitely a bromance).
The Croods evokes the memories of The Flintstones, in which gags transposed the post-war American life of cars, hair-dryers and phonographs onto the Stone Age.
There is a long and undistinguished tradition of comic-strips and films set in prehistoric times, including Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit in Knockout during the 1940s, The Flintstones on TV in the 1960s, the dire 1981 Hollywood feature film Caveman starring Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach, and now the animated The Croods .
Directors Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders seem hell-bent on avoiding "The Flintstones" comparisons, creating an environment that's closer to James Cameron 's "Avatar" world than the Paleolithic era audiences are used to.
Basically, it’s a mashup of “The Flintstones” and “The Land Before Time.”
Forget The Flintstones — this is more like Ice Age with humans.
For everyone who loved The Flintstones, but didn’t find it depressingly conventional and conservative enough.
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
influenced by How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Themes Characters Plot
I suppose it’s not fair to compare CGI animated movies about a boy — or girl — and their dragon, but if I must, let me just say this right off the top: I really prefer DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon and both of its sequels to the latest entry from Walt Disney Animation Studios, Raya and the Last Dragon.
Awkwafina’s dragon isn’t menacing like “Game of Thrones” (2011); it’s more adorable like Toothless in “How to Train Your Dragon” (2010).
“Raya and the Last Dragon” needed a truly memorable magical creature — like Toothless in DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon” — to set it apart, whereas Sisu looks weird, like someone stuck a plastic “My Little Pony” head on a floppy feather-boa body.
If one reads Disney’s press notes synopsis their latest sounds a lot like “Mulan” crossed with “How to Train Your Dragon.”
Avatar (2009)
Directed by James Cameron
influenced The Croods (2013), How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Visuals Themes
It's a joy to behold, a freewheeling exploration of impossible vistas that recalls, and arguably betters, the similar moments in Avatar .
It’s a combination of the wonder of flight in Avatar mixed with the speedy dogfights in Top Gun.
I have no emotional investment in the books, so I was nothing but totally thrilled with what ended up on the screen: a rousing tale beautifully animated to take full advantage of the current technology to create an invented world that is as touchably real as anything James Cameron showed us in Avatar.
How to Train Your Dragon blends the mythic-culture awesome of DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda, the geek chic of Sony’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the dragon-riding euphoria of Avatar into an uneven but rollicking adventure that manages to be touching, funny, exhilarating and ultimately about as thrilling as a climactic battle with Vikings and dragons can possibly be.
We saw the movie in 2-D, but between this and Avatar, 3-D was specifically created to capitalize on our collective desire to fly a dragon/alien creature that’s basically a dragon with flammable breath.
The swoops and dives of the exuberant 3-D DreamWorks Animation feature "How to Train Your Dragon," in which the teenage hero breaks all the Viking rules and befriends the winged enemy, should prove as addicting to its target audience as similar scenes have in a little something called "Avatar."
Love and Monsters (2020)
Directed by Michael Matthews
influenced by How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Plot Themes
If one were to draw comparisons between Love and Monsters and other films, it would be easiest to say the film is a mix of the family-friendly How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and science-fiction adventure Monsters (2010) with a dash of Monster Trucks (2016) silliness.
If you're a fan of the How To Train Your Dragon series, but you’re in the mood for something with a little more mature sensibility, this adventure is one you should definitely go on.
Much like 1995’s Babe , Buck is given humanistic traits (physical reactions, expressions, etc) that often push the boundary of believability (at one point he convinces Harrison Ford’s gruff, isolated traveller John Thornton to give up drinking), but seeing as how some of the situations Michael Green’s script calls for would be near impossible with an actual dog – animal-on-animal violence, human-on-animal violence, the drastic weather conditions of the icy Canadian setting – the CGI decision, distracting as it may be, makes sense; plus, following the backlash A Dog’s Purpose managed when footage of its animals being mistreated went public, The Call of the Wild ‘s decision is all the more sound.
Although some films with talking four-legged friends - like “Babe” (1995), “The Lion King” (2019) or even “The Cat from Outer Space” (1978) - have a nestled place in moviedom, thankfully in “The Call of the Wild”, the computer-constructed pooches - including our sympathetic hero - behave like dogs and aren’t asking one other, “Hey, when will we break for dinner?”
It gets to the point where they let Cage off his leash (never a good idea) and do this bit where Grug tries to be a thinker like Guy, only Cage sounds like he’s trying to channel Jeff Bridges in “ The Big Lebowski .”
This is strictly a toon tale for the whole family, meaning that anyone on the lookout for a comeback by Fritz the Cat creator Ralph Bakshi (MIA since 1997) will have to keep waiting and hoping.
For Sanders, the benchmark of organic animated forests was set by Tyrus Wong’s animated backgrounds in Disney’s Bambi and the painted backgrounds of Hayao Miyazaki in My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, and that is what the art style of The Wild Robot aspired to.
There is a long and undistinguished tradition of comic-strips and films set in prehistoric times, including Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit in Knockout during the 1940s, The Flintstones on TV in the 1960s, the dire 1981 Hollywood feature film Caveman starring Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach, and now the animated The Croods .
The dialogue isn’t much here – some teenage jokes, ribbing of Crood father Grug (spoken by Nicholas Cage) by his wife (Catherine Keener) and mother (Cloris Leachman), and a hapless fat son lifted from King Of The Hill (Clark Duke).
Nevertheless, this is the first big-budget full fantasy animated movie since 1985's tragically ignored The Black Cauldron .
It's enough to convince Grug to join up with Guy on the road to a mystical mountain straight out of Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings , though their final destination looks more like Cabo.