Nevertheless, in the aforementioned Chip’n Dale romp, the original Sonic look, now dubbed “Ugly Sonic,” appears for one of the film’s most memorable meta-gags. He is portrayed as a longingless wannabe longing for the glory days that will never come again, cementing his place in the infamy of the pop culture zeitgeist.

Back in 2019, Paramount decided to delay the first one Sonic the Hedgehog seemed a simultaneously bold and desperate risk-taking move. But it paid dividends for the studio, which Sonic flick became one of the most successful video game adaptations of all time, which has since spawned a series of sequels and TV shows with streaming services.

Which brings us back to How to train your dragon. Watching this first teaser, it becomes apparent that the “live-action” Toothless (or realistically rendered) is more Neo-Sonic and less Ugly Sonic. Now compare this to how Disney over-designed their animated characters when they made the transition to photorealism. Inanimate objects like Lumière and Cogsworth from Beauty and the Beast (1991) went from being simplistic and cute to nothing short of terrifying and unpleasant in the 2017 film. The crazy characters Alice in Wonderland (2010) concerned audiences worldwide while the carriage from Cinderella (2015) was full of a hectic aesthetic.

To see the most egregious example of Disney overdoing it with their live-action adaptations, look no further than the animal actors seen throughout their films. The lions in 2019 The Lion King remake just looks like regular lions. Gone are the expressions of the revered animated image, replaced with ironically lifeless interpretations of the four-legged characters. Despite impressive work from the CGI artists, the 2019 rendition of The Lion King lacks soul, partly due to the emotionless look on the big cats’ faces, especially when they sing.

The Little Mermaid (2023) remake faced a similar problem. Sebastian and Flounder went from being creative cartoons of a crab and fish to very realistic depictions of the animals – the latter coming across as particularly creepy to audiences. This looked particularly awkward during musical numbers, making viewers feel detached from the source. While Disney’s announcement to make the film as down-to-earth as possible makes sense on paper, one begins to question the decision as to why realism is necessary in the movie about mermaids and underwater kingdoms.

For DreamWorks’ venture into live-action to succeed, they must avoid this. Even with only a short teaser released, How to train your dragon avoids this problem. Toothless looks like Toothless. Of course, he has more detail than the animated version, paying attention to specific characteristics of the dragon on his scales, retinas and movements. But in the end, it’s undeniably toothless, and fans embrace the accuracy with open arms. Whether or not the film will fully connect with audiences remains to be seen, but DreamWorks is off to a good start, convincing fans that How to train your dragon remake is more than a soulless cash grab.