Okay, I need to get this off my chest—I still haven’t fully recovered from the cursed nightmare that was live-action Sonic back in 2020. You know the one: human teeth, broad nose, creepy little eyes without the expressive eyebrows. It was like someone tried to turn a cartoon icon into a taxidermy experiment gone horribly wrong.
And now, I’m panicking all over again because How to Train Your Dragon is going live-action, and I swear, if they mess up Toothless like they did Sonic, I will absolutely rage. That little dragon is precious! I need the wide-eyed, cat-faced, goofy boy we all love.
I panicked over Toothless after 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog
To be honest, every time a beloved animated character gets the live-action treatment, my anxiety skyrockets. Because history hasn’t been easy on live-action animations. Take the dwarves from the Snow White remake to the live-action Sonic in the 2020 movie—these characters felt like a fever dream I didn’t ask for.
So naturally, when I heard Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon franchise was next in line for the live-action makeover, my brain went straight into panic mode. Toothless isn’t just a dragon—he’s THE dragon. He’s our goofy, purring, big-eyed bestie. He’s part sleek black panther, part giant flying kitten, and messing up his design would feel like a personal betrayal.
Not to mention, even director Dean DeBlois left me panicking further, when he told DiscussingFilm that the design almost “went too far” with photorealism, compromising the character’s magnetic screen presence. Translation—in an attempt to make Toothless look overly realistic, the animators almost made the dragon look like he was pulled straight out of a dark fantasy where he eats villagers and doesn’t play fetch.
We went too far a couple of times in exploring where Toothless could have come from. We received some advice from John Dykstra. He’s a legendary visual effects person from ILM, and he was consulting with Universal at the time.
He said to think backwards, like if the animated movie is a stylized and exaggerated version of these creatures, then what did they look like in real life? It was a great philosophy to adopt as the designers at Framestore started to explore the other dragons.
Upon hearing this, I kept imagining yet another Sonic-style disaster. You know, tiny eyes, long snout, and maybe even—god forbid—visible gums. Honestly, I almost lost it imagining Toothless looking like the lovechild of Smaug and a salamander. But then, Dean DeBlois added further updates in his interview, and that calmed me down.
Director Dean DeBlois dropped an animation update
Thankfully, after almost leaving me teary-eyed with their attempted photorealism, director Dean DeBlois dropped major updates about how they eventually created Toothless to look like a cute goofball as well as a realistic dragon. Explaining how they initially went with dragon ideas from Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings, DeBlois noted that they failed to apply the same format to Toothless.
So, Dean DeBlois, who co-directed both Lilo & Stitch (2002) and How to Train Your Dragon (2010), took matters into his own hand and began to look for different ideas. Ironically, he found the solution in the live-action animation of his own 2002 movie, Lilo & Stitch. He noted that they did what Disney recently did with Stitch. They kept the instantly recognizable proportions of the eyes, nose, and mouth intact.
We could depart from some of the cartoonish designs with the other dragons. But with Toothless, in particular, he’s so iconic and so expressive. He’s already quite specific that as we tried to change his face and maybe make his mouth or eyes smaller, or shift proportions around, he stopped feeling like the character very quickly.
So, we decided to retain the Stitch-like proportions of the eyes to the nose to the mouth, but then work on his body and make it feel convincing and realistic in terms of his skeleton, musculature, and iridescent scales. We really wanted to lean into his black panther animal reference.
Thankfully, the team managed to pull back before Toothless went full nightmare-fuel. Dean DeBlois’ attempt to imitate Disney’s idea for Stitch worked wonders. So eventually, they kept those instantly recognizable eyes, nose, and mouth proportions, and just upgraded the textures. The result? A design that respects the OG while still making sense in a live-action world.
How to Train Your Dragon was released in theaters worldwide, on June 13, 2025.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
