Whether soaring through the sky or sharing a playful moment with his human bestie Hiccup, Toothless, the dark-hued dragon with a friendly face and an injured tail, disarms you with his endearing nature.
It’s no surprise that he’s become the emblem of the “How to Train Your Dragon” animated movies, the first of which arrived in 2010. (There have since been two sequels, three separate TV series and five shorts.) A fan favorite among Gen-Z viewers, Toothless now returns to the big screen in a new hyper-realist iteration for the live-action remake, now in theaters.
And in an unprecedented move, Dean DeBlois, who directed all three “Dragon” animated films — as well as 2002’s original “Lilo & Stitch,” along with Chris Sanders — was asked to helm the live-action reimagining. It was his priority to preserve Toothless’ essence.
“He is our most recognizable dragon within the entire assortment,” DeBlois says on the phone. “And he has a lot of sentience and personality that comes through. And so much of it is expressed in this face that’s quite Stitch-like with the big eyes, the ear plates and the broad mouth.”
In fact, the entire live-action endeavor hinged on whether Toothless could be properly translated as a photorealistic dragon among human actors and physical sets, while retaining the charm of the animated movies.
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An image from the original 2010 animated “How to Train Your Dragon.”
(DreamWorks Animation LLC)
According to Christian Manz, the new film’s visual effects supervisor, when Peter Cramer, president of Universal Pictures, initially considered the project back in 2022, he wasn’t convinced Toothless would work. His touchstone for a fantastical creature that successfully achieved believability was the Hippogriff, a winged four-legged creature seen in 2004’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.”
To test the viability of a new Toothless, DreamWorks enlisted British visual effects and computer animation outfit Framestore to spend three months trying to create a “realistic” version of Toothless. Framestore has had some popular successes to its name: Paddington Bear in the film series, Dobby from the “Harry Potter” universe and Groot and Rocket Raccoon from the Marvel movies.
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“We always knew that we weren’t aiming for a real dragon, as in a ‘Game of Thrones’ dragon,” says Manz, via video call from the U.K.
Toothless’ design, particularly his facial features, presented a challenge for Manz and the team at Framestore. If they made his eyes or his mouth too small or if they tried to drastically reshape his head with more naturalism in mind, he quickly lost his personality.
“His big, expressive face with eyes that are larger than any animal in the animal kingdom, including the blue whale, had to remain because, without them, we felt like we were going to be delivering a lesser version of Toothless,” says DeBlois.
A stage show based on the first film called “How to Train Your Dragon: Live Spectacular,” which toured Australia and New Zealand in 2012, radically changed the design — to a mixed response. “Toothless was too creature-like and it just wasn’t as appealing and as charming,” says Simon Otto, head of character animation for all three animated movies, via Zoom.
While they may be too subtle for an untrained viewer to notice, certain design changes have been made that differentiate the live-action Toothless from his animated counterpart.
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“He’s now bigger, his head’s smaller, his eyes are actually smaller,” says Manz. The nuanced reshaping of his head and his body was intentional: an effort to make him blend into a photorealistic world.
“The interesting thing is that when people see the live-action movie, they say, ‘Oh, it’s Toothless, like he stepped out of the animated movie,’” says DeBlois. “But in truth, if you put them side by side, you’ll see quite a few differences.”
The texture of Toothless’ body needed to be more intricate for the live-action version, so he would feel more convincingly integrated within the environments.
“In the animation, he’s quite smooth,” says Manz. “We tried very snake-like skin, but it just made him look very unfriendly. You wouldn’t want to put your hand on his forehead.”
Mason Thames in “How to Train Your Dragon.”
(Universal Pictures)
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Both on-screen versions of Toothless were crafted using essentially the same digital technique: computer animation. The difference here is that the one meant to share space with a flesh-and-blood world, with distinct aesthetic concerns. Even if seeking realism in creatures that only exist in our imagination might seem counterintuitive, the goal is to make them feel palpable within their made-up realm.
“One of the things I don’t like about live-action remakes is they seem to try to want to replace the animated source, and I find myself very protective of it,” says DeBlois with refreshing candor. “We tried to create a version that lives alongside it. It follows the beats of that original story, but brings new depths and expanded mythology and more immersive action moments and flying. But it’s never trying to replace the animated movie because I’m very proud of that film.”
Toothless as we now know him originated expressly for the screen. The Toothless in Cressida Cowell’s originating book series is tiny and green (a design that can be seen in the first animated movie in the form of a minuscule dragon known as Terrible Terror).
But when DeBlois and Sanders came aboard, 15 months before the 2010 release, replacing the previous directors, their first major change was to make Toothless a dragon that could be ridden.
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It was the screensaver of a black panther that first inspired the look of Toothless in the animated films. Otto, one of the designers who knows Toothless best (he drew the original back in 2008), recalls his real-world animal references.
“He is a mix between a bird of prey, like a peregrine falcon, with extremely streamlined shapes — of course a feline but also a Mexican salamander called an axolotl,” Otto says. Sanders’ design for Disney superstar Stitch, namely his large almond-shaped eyes, ears and pronounced mouth, also influenced the design.
“There’s a little bit of a design influence from Stitch in Toothless’ face that makes them feel like they’re distant cousins,” says DeBlois.
He believes that making Toothless more closely resemble a mammal, rather than a reptile, and giving him pet-like qualities were the keys for him becoming so memorable.
“[We] spent a lot of time on YouTube looking at videos of dogs and cats doing funny things,” he says. “And we would try to incorporate a lot of that behavior into Toothless with the hopes that when people watched the movie, they would say, ‘That’s just like my cat’ or ‘My dog does that.’ We wanted him to feel like a big pet. Ferocious and dangerous at first, but then a big cuddly cat after.”
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Mason Thames interacts on set with the puppet version of Toothless.
(Helen Sloan)
On the set of the live-action movie, Toothless and the other dragons existed as large puppets with simple functions, operated by a team of master puppeteers led by Tom Wilton, a performer who had worked on the “War Horse” stage play.
Using puppets was meant to provide the actors, especially Mason Thames, who plays Hiccup, a real-world scene partner. The Toothless foam puppet had an articulated jaw and articulated ear plates that allowed for a subtle, interactive performance.
“There’s a performance that Dean can direct and that Mason and the other actors could act against, so that the interaction is utterly believable,” says Manz. “[The puppets] are obviously removed from the frame in the end, but it just means you believe that connection.”
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As for the impressive flight sequences, in which Hiccup rides Toothless, the production created an animatronic dragon placed on a giant gimbal that moved on six different axes to simulate the physics of flying.
“If the dragon was diving or ascending or banking and rolling, Mason would be thrown around in the saddle, like a jockey on a racehorse,” says DeBlois. “And it married him to the animal in a way that felt really authentic.”
Mason Thames rides the flying Toothless on an animatronic model.
(Helen Sloan)
For all his success in the animated realm, DeBlois has never directed a live-action film until now.
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“I do commend Universal for taking a risk on me knowing that I had not made a live-action film, but also recognizing that I knew where the heart and the wonder was, and I was determined to bring it to the screen,” he says.
Otto, the designer who trained Toothless before anybody else, candidly says he would have “peed his pants” if he knew the drawings he did back in 2008 would spawn a franchise and a theme-park attraction (a re-creation of the films’ Isle of Berk opened at Universal Studios Florida earlier this year).
“The most critical choice they made for the live-action was making sure the audience falls in love with Toothless,” he adds. “And that you understand that if you have a creature like that as your friend, you wouldn’t give up on it.”
A family and friends gather for a naming-day ceremony at a Danish seaside hotel, but an unexpected appearance by one uninvited attendee (Trine Dyrholm) ruptures the veil of bland, happy-clappy familial unity in director Mads Mengel’s gutsy, well-wrought debut feature, The Guest.
The most audacious move here may be Mengel and co-screenwriter Christian Bengtson’s choice to write something that will inevitably invite comparisons with Festen (The Celebration), arguably the most notorious Danish-language film of the last 30 years, which similarly revolved around a bougie gathering disrupted by angry revelations. But there’s a savvy 2026 vibe about the way the film refuses to create florid melodrama out of quotidian crisis, and instead observes with generosity as the characters grope awkwardly toward emotional détente and mutual forgiveness.
The Guest
The Bottom Line
When wetting the baby’s head goes too far.
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Venue: Karlovy Vary Film Festival Cast: Simon Bennebjerg, Trine Dyrholm, Josephine Park, Peter Gantzler, Petrine Agger, Mette Klakstein Wiberg, Kristine Kujath Thorp, Buster Lund Luscher Director: Mads Mengel Screenwriter: Christian Bengtson, Mads Mengel
1 hour 40 minutes
Festen-alumnus Dyrholm, having a bit of a career moment with outstanding performances both here and in the recent The Girl With the Needle among others, leads a uniformly excellent cast in a work that deserves celebration on the festival circuit and beyond.
Dyrholm’s Vibeke is technically the first person we meet, although she’s seen only in shadow at first as she smokes and drives while her unattached seatbelt, caught outside by a closed door, clatters on the road. This is the kind of unsafe driving her son Karl (Simon Bennebjerg) so deplores, a point of contention later on in the story when he will steal her car keys in interest of her own safety and that of others.
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But well before we get to that flashpoint, the film introduces Karl, effectively the film’s protagonist, as he arrives at the swanky resort with his wife Emilie (Mette Klakstein Wiberg) and their infant son Elliot (Buster Lund Luscher). The young family, who’ve chosen this new, secular tradition instead of a christening to welcome their child to the world, are there a day before the ceremony to meet up with core family members.
As this advance party settles down for dinner, a table that includes Karl’s sister Rikke (Josephine Park) and Emilie’s parents Frank (Peter Gantzler) and Kirsten (Petrine Agger), there’s a surprise: Vibeke is coming, courtesy of Rikke’s invitation. Karl is quietly furious and seems determined to turn her away, even when she shows up minutes later. Poor Frank and Kirsten look on confused, determinedly polite in their insistence that all family members should be welcome.
Bengtson and Mengel’s economical script carefully dripfeeds backstory as the film unfolds to explain that Karl hasn’t spoken to his mother in years, that Rikke has taken over all the daily mom management and that she’s very worn out by it. Even so, she insists Vibeke is regularly taking her medication and isn’t a problem these days, although to Karl every weird anecdote and moment of emotional intensity is an augur of impending chaos. Rikke counters that their mother is just “big, that’s her personality not her condition.”
Interestingly, that specific condition is never named throughout, although armchair diagnosticians might spot many of the signs of bipolar disorder. But the film’s emotional focus on the person and her actions rather than the label is also very contemporary, reflecting a more holistic, inclusive mindset and approach to dealing with mental health issues.
Which is all fine and dandy, until Vibeke duly does skip a dosage and starts getting manic. One of the first signs of chemical imbalance arrives during the ceremony on the beach, when Vibeke carries little Elliot much further away from the shore than anyone wants, creating a panic. From there it just gets worse as Vibeke picks up on the censorious feeling emerging from the other party guests, who had found her so charming the night before when she’d led everyone to the casino to play roulette and diverted a bunch of partying teenagers from the room next to Karl and Emilie so they could get some sleep. When the toasts at the formal dinner begin, Vibeke’s mood darkens much further, and if we’ve all learned one thing from Festen, it’s be very afraid when a Dane gets up to make a toast.
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Cinematographer David Bauer’s nimble-footed lensing and use of natural light does indeed hark back considerably to the look of those Dogme 95 movies back in the day, as does the naturalistic editing style deployed by Louis Emil Ramm Seeberg. But there are plenty of sins against the rules of cinematic chastity that marked that movement, such as the ample space made for Lasse Aagaard’s affecting, low-key score that amps up the anxiety as Vibeke starts to spiral.
That said, Mengel keeps things simple in sonic terms when it really counts, letting the musicality of Dyrholm’s deep, sonorous voice ring out on its own in the big monologue scenes. She is, as ever, utterly mesmerizing but the performance is made even more powerful by the muted, expressive reactions of the rest of the cast as they look on, frozen like deer in the headlights of the car crash of pseudo-christening. Moments of levity puncture the gloom, but the final feeling is one of numbed sorrow and pity for all these kind, fallible people, just trying to do their best.
Rhea Seehorn was nervous about whether “Pluribus” would be recognized by Emmy voters Wednesday when nominations were announced. So she was jubilant when she and the surreal sci-series on Apple TV scored 18 nominations, the most for a first-year drama.
“I’m just so grateful,” the actor said in a phone interview. “People were like, ‘Why were you nervous?’ Honestly, you never actually know. I’m just so thrilled for the show, my co-stars, the production design, the editing, the writing, the music, the sound. I haven’t moved from my couch since they first announced everything because I’m still trying to call everybody on the show.”
Seehorn received a nomination for lead actress in a drama series for her portrayal of cynical Carol Sturka, a fantasy romance author who finds herself in a mystifying situation after a virus seems to have wiped out most of Earth’s population. The series was created by Vince Gilligan, who created the acclaimed series “Breaking Bad” and co-created its spinoff “Better Call Saul,” which also featured Seehorn.
The actor compared her experience of being nominated for “Pluribus” to “Better Call Saul,” which earned her two supporting actress nominations: “ ‘Better Call Saul’ was such a family that supported and cheered each other on, and I’m so grateful I have that environment again. People could not be happier for each other, and we get to celebrate the show together.”
She added, “The only part that feels different is that it’s my first nomination as a lead. It’s the process of Vince writing this for me and seeing the mountain which he wanted me to climb and going through that process. The whole thing has been its own journey, so ending up with awards and nominations, and being so well received by critics and fans is not lost on me.”
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The series has been applauded for its mix of drama, comedy and strangeness in its portrait of a woman coming to terms to what seems like an impossible dilemma.
“I love the storytelling, how much Vince and I would drill down on making this as authentic as we could in terms of an everyman who has to deal with an insane situation,” Seehorn said. “Most of us are just not heroic or leaping off the couch to go save the world. And Carol is dealing with immense grief and confusion in an utter dystopian crisis. I love the humor and the drama that comes out of us being as realistic as we can with her amidst an unrealistic event.”
Fans of “Pluribus” have been relentlessly curious since the finale in December about when the second season will launch.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Seehorn said. “I don’t have to keep secrets because I’m not great at keeping them, and I know nothing. I don’t know what I’m doing with an atom bomb in the driveway. I can’t wait to find out. The writers want to have the same quality and reward the intelligence of the fans and never phone a single thing in. So their process is their process.”
In a roundabout way, the fact that I don’t have a strong attachment to The Wizard of Oz as a film (my late mother loved it, so that memory is deeply rooted in me, but the movie itself never did much for me) contributed directly to how amusing I found Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass to be. This comedy spoofs the plot of the classic fantasy movie, though the jokes are largely about Hollywood. The humor is big and broad, with some of the jokes really landing. Others? Not so much. Still, more than enough do to warrant a recommendation.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass gets a lot of mileage out of sending up show business, even if the observations, while funny, are not particularly new. Besides the deluge of jokes, there’s also a lot of likably broad characters to spend time with, especially our lead. They make the 90 minutes and change spent together with them go down very easy.
Sony Pictures Classics
For Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), her life as a small town hairdresser is perfect. Engaged to her high school sweetheart Tom (Michael Cassidy), she’s the picture of happiness, at least until a trip to a celebrity book signing. There, Tom meets and ends up sleeping with his “celebrity pass,” a term Gail wasn’t even really previously aware of. Feeling betrayed, Gail impulsively joins her co-worker and friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) on a trip to Los Angeles. There, a psychic convinces her that the can save her marriage by sleeping with her own celebrity pass: Jon Hamm (Jon Hamm).
Journeying through Tinseltown in a manner that recalls Dorothy’s adventure in Oz, Gail and Otto won’t have to find Hamm alone. Joining forces with talent agency assistant Caleb (Ben Wang), down on his luck paparazzo Vincent (Ken Marino), and actor John Slattery (John Slattery). As they search for Hamm, some for their own purposes, they meet other celebrities, while also being hunted by a group of Italian assassins after a case of mistaken identity. Eventually, they come across Hamm, and the moment of truth is at hand.
Sony Pictures Classics
Zoey Deutch dives headfirst into a broad comedy like this, absolutely relishing the opportunity to get silly again. She’s able to make Gail a babe in the woods but also someone you laugh with, not at. It’s a wildly enjoyable turn. Deutch started out in comedies and was always a talented comedic actress, so it’s a pleasure to watch her back at it. Miles Gutierrez-Riley and Ben Wang get some very funny moments, while Ken Marino is a reliable comic presence. Jon Hamm and John Slattery are delighted to be sending up themselves, with amusing results. Supporting players here, in addition to Michael Cassidy, also include Kerri Kenney, Richard Kind, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Fred Melamed, and more, plus some cameos.
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Filmmaker David Wain, again co-writing with Ken Marino, continues to make it look easy. Few can make a silly comedy like Marino and Wain, especially as they pack their flicks with extra bits that only subsequent viewings reveal. Is Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass on the same level as Wet Hot American Summer or They Came Together? No, not quite. At the same time, is this, scattershot approach and all, funnier than most other 2026 releases? You bet. Marino and Wain have a hit rate that allows some of the jokes to miss, as you only have seconds to wait before the next one, which probably will hit.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is very amusing, and occasionally hilarious, even if not as many jokes land as you might expect. Zoey Deutch is great in the lead role, David Wain is in his comfort zone, and the laughs come hot and heavy. If you’re a Wain fan, this new movie should be a must see.
Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics
