CREDIT: Atsushi Nishijima/A24; Universal Pictures

How to Train Your Dragon

Starring: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerard Butler, Nick Frost, Julian Dennison, Gabriel Howell, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Ruth Codd, Peter Serafinowicz

Director: Dean DeBlois

Running Time: 125 Minutes

Rating: PG for Dragons Taking Humans Higher Than They Should Go

Release Date: June 13, 2025 (Theaters)

Materialists

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Marin Ireland, Zoë Winters, Dasha Nekrosova, Louisa Jacobson

Director: Celine Song

Running Time: 117 Minutes

Rating: R, mostly for Discussions of a Date Gone Very Wrong

Release Date: June 13, 2025 (Theaters)

Picture this: it’s the weekend of June 13-15, 2025, and you want to see a new release at your local multiplex. How are you supposed to ever decide?! Especially if they’re total opposites? That isn’t quite the situation we have here, although the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon and the Celine Song-penned-and-helmed rom-com Materialists are certainly aiming for separate lanes. So if you’re a thorough cinephile like me who tries to see absolutely everything, where should you focus first? Or should you try to pull a Barbenheimer and make a double feature out of it? Let’s suss out the situation.

HttYD initially seems to be following the same playbook as the Disney live action reboot glut: basically the exact same story, but somehow 20-30 minutes longer. Also, the fantastical creatures aren’t live action, but just a different kind of animation. But the formula is actually different enough here to hold my attention. Dean DeBlois is once again the screenwriter and director (after sharing those duties with a few others on the original animated version), so this feels more like a personal artistic exercise rather than a simple cash grab. Plus, Bill Pope’s stunning cliffside cinematography is breathtaking in a way that the original just was never equipped to pull off. When you get right down to it, I can’t deny that I found myself getting unexpectedly choked up as Hiccup (Mason Thames) taught his most cherished companions how to fly.

Materialists landed in my lap with a more promising pedigree, as Song’s last movie, Past Lives, was one of my favorites of 2023. This latest venture flies closer to the edge of likability, with a premise that promises to boil love down to a cynical checklist. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a successful matchmaker who’s getting kind of fed up with her clients’ petty and superficial demands, even though she knows just what to say to push them over the edge for the right business deal (i.e., marriage). Elsewhere, things get unexpectedly messy AND fiery in her own love life when she suddenly finds herself pursued simultaneously by a rich bachelor (Pedro Pascal) and her ex (Chris Evans) that she’s never fully gotten over following a money trouble-fueled breakup. There’s also a dark subplot about one of Lucy’s clients being assaulted that threatens to overwhelm the flirtatiousness. But instead, that swerve ultimately allows Materialists to deliver on a deeper level. There are some elements of this movie that I absolutely loved, and others that I found defiantly frustrating, but none that deviated from its thesis.

So here’s the verdict: if you’re only buying a ticket for yourself, and you have all the time in the world, and money is not tight right now, then you absolutely owe it to yourself to make it a “How to Materialize Your Dragon” Double. If instead, your options are a little more constrained, I’d opt for a full consumption of Materialists (and maybe even a second viewing to chew through the complicated bits) plus a few peeks of the most gravity-defying Dragon sequences if you can get away with it.

Grades:
How to Train Your Dragon (2025): 3 out of 5 Wings
Materialists: 4 out of 5 Cavemen