Since I saw my late dad cry for the first time during Fruitvale Station in 2013, my love for Ryan Coogler has only grown, and he has become one of my favorite filmmakers. As a cinephile, it has been a delight to watch the Oakland-based filmmaker evolve alongside his homies and collaborators, actor Michael B. Jordan and composer Ludwig Göransson. Around the time of Fruitvale’s release, I was years deep into the cult of Jehovah’s Witnessing, which forbade me from watching 50% of all movies. Fuck an MPA, JW’s will make sure you’re not watching any horror movies featuring mythology, wizardry, Satanic imagery, and most definitely no vampires. Many Black creatives of various religious backgrounds have faced this oppressive religious atmosphere, but not addressed it in their work.
Cut to Ryan Coogler’s [long-overdue] first original feature, Sinners, which deconstructs the pillars of religious faith in America in a sophisticated, genre-bending southern horror period piece with so much on its mind and sharpened fangs ready to bite. It’s part Lover’s Rock, part From Dusk to Dawn, but overall Coogler’s most personal film to date. Sinners is the culmination of his directorial and storytelling talents I first saw in Fruitvale, and will surely go down as some of Black Cinema’s finest.
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MPA Rating: R (Strong bloody violence, sexual content and language.)
Runtime: 2 Hours and 17 Minutes
Production Companies: Proximity Media
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Ryan Coogler
Writer: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Li Jun Li, Delroy Lindo, Yao, Lola Kirke, Peter Dreimanis, Saul Williams
Release Date: April 18, 2025
1932, the height of the Jim Crow era. Infamous gangster twins ‘Smoke’ and ‘Stack’ (Michael B. Jordan) return home to Clarksdale, Mississippi from Chicago with a wad of cash to open a juke joint in an old mill. They pick up their younger cousin, Sammie (Miles Canton), a prodigious blues player and the son of a disapproving priest, and together they assemble a team and get the word out for opening night. The cold and logistical Smoke wrangles his crew, including bodega owner couple Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo Chow (Yao) and his soulmate, Hoodoo woman Annie (Wunmi Mosaku). Meanwhile, Sammie and the people-pleasing and reckless Stack enlist alcoholic Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to play the harmonica and sharecropper Cornbread (Omar Miller) to work security. During their errands, Stack also has a run-in with his past flame, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld).
Club Juke’s doors open at nightfall, and working class Black folks flock to engage in a night of celebratory freedom full of dancing, debauchery, and live music. But when Sammie hits the stage, his passionate blues songs summon a fanged evil (Jack O’Connell) who arrives at the club looking for more than a good time.
How to Train Your Dragon is by no means Dean DeBlois’ first flight into live-action. He has previously directed visual albums and music videos for Of Monsters and Men, Sigur Rós, and their frontman Jónsi when he went solo. (I suppose that explains why he has songs in every How to Train Your Dragon film.) DeBlois and his production team do a great job of bringing the animated vision of Berk to life in a live-action setting by filming on location (in Iceland and the Faroe Islands), eschewing the soulless green-screen norm. The production design by Dominic Watkins also gets good marks for faithfully recreating many of the original locations while adding a larger sense of scope and scale. No, I’m not saying, “Hey, you did a great job recreating it exactly,” but it is impressive to see how this kind of computer-generated animated landscape maintains its beauty in the live-action version. Unfortunately, DeBlois’ unimaginative direction and poor lighting decisions frequently hinder it.
The film’s lighting is a mixed bag. In some cases, it adds a shockingly bright splash of color that you don’t see regularly in big-budget movies these days. On the other hand, the use of a significant amount of single-source, natural lighting lessens the emotional impact of some of the well-known, intense emotional beats. This is extra frustrating since DeBlois had the potential to create a sufficiently accurate cinematic translation with the contribution of ever-talented director of photography Bill Pope (The Matrix and Scott Pilgrim). When they aren’t copying the animated film’s whole freaking flow, word for word, bar for bar — which is 75% of the time — they adhere to the medium-shot conformity of contemporary blockbuster filmmaking. You know, where the majority of the shot composition mockups consist of closeups and medium shots with no depth of field. The film stagnates, and its flat presentation undermines the more impressive technical aspects of production, including the costuming and set decoration. As aforementioned, it can’t break from the shackles of looking like a YouTube fan film.
In his reprisal as Stoick, Gerard Butler delivers an S-tier performance
What elevates How to Train Your Dragon are a few performances. By God, Gerard Butler is worth the price of admission as Stoick the Vast (screw hyperrealistic CG Toothless). The love he has for that character after 15 years of voicing him is worn on his sleeve in his gruff cadence and thickly Scottish line-deliveries. The man at times carries Mason Thames in their shared scenes, capturing the weight and strain in Stoick and Hiccup’s relationship. Much of the added material here is attributed to Butler’s screentime, but not for a moment does it seem like he’s mugging the screen or delivering over-the-top cosplaying. He is Stoick in every sense of the word and this real-life portrayal might be one of his top performances.
Mason Thames is a good Hiccup when it comes to his silly facial expressions and natural curiosity, but he doesn’t have the shy, awkward personality that makes the character Hiccup unique. Nico Parker is a mixed bag as Astrid — she captures her toughness and fierceness and subsequent overarching empathy, but some line deliveries leave something to be desired.
Toothless but earnest?
The CGI animation, provided by VFX studio Framestore, is largely serviceable but not necessarily impressive. Toothless is still adorable, yet, much like live-action Stitch, they dial back his menacing attitude, probably to appease milquetoast helicopter parents. Something that does feel weird is how he maintains his cartoonish, expressive design while the other dragons have been redesigned to push hyperrealism. Every other dragon has such small pupils. Side by side with Toothless, it is distracting.
DeBlois’s direction feels sincere, as shown through the ensemble’s performances and additions to his script that convincingly deepen character dynamics rather than simply padding the runtime. The few times the film breathes its own fire are when DeBlois has the confidence not to rely on the animated cheat sheet, as Hiccup does during the memorable “Test Flight” sequence. It’s brief and sporadic, but it helps this film soar above most other live-action Disney movies. Even though the innocent, non-cynical nature of the adaptation kept me entertained, I couldn’t help but feel that I could be watching the original instead.
I’m practicing self-care and finding a way to not actively dismiss this adaptation. Yes, it’s pointless and every facet of it pales in comparison to the significance of the animated masterpiece, like every damn live-action adaptation ever made. However, this film possesses genuinely decent qualities and is a watchable enough summer blockbuster. It doesn’t soar to the heights of what DeBlois and Sanders did before but it does glide! Hey, gliding beats crashing during takeoff.
In contrast to the original’s strong simplicity, How to Train Your Dragon (2025) is a harmless, passable live-action adaptation, saved only by the production’s unwavering earnestness and a striking Gerard Butler performance.
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