A few weeks ago, I wrote about my double feature experience with Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning and Lilo & Stitch. The films had attempted, half-heartedly, to be the next Barbenheimer, but they simply weren't. Still, my day at the cinema reminded me of how much I enjoy a double feature. So with the current onslaught of summer movies, I decided to attempt something even more ambitious: a triple feature.
My selections were The Life of Chuck, Materialists, and How to Train Your Dragon (2025). At first glance, these films have no connective tissue. They come from three different studios, markedly different directors, and cover very different genres. Nevertheless, after my day watching all three of them–a trend I am self-titling ‘The Life of a Materialist Dragon’–I realised these movies do share something unexpected: they're all life-affirming (and they made me cry).

I began the day with How to Train Your Dragon. This film is Universal's attempt at jumping on the animated live-action remake trend that Disney has been leading, and is a rehash of the original, even utilising the same director, Dean DeBlois. I'll admit I think the 2010 animated film is a masterpiece, so I wasn't expecting it to improve on perfection. And it didn't. How to Train Your Dragon is exactly the shot-for-shot remake that the studio has been promoting, and yet I still found myself having all the same feelings I do when watching the original animated movie. It doesn't go to any effort to try and say something new with the story, but then again, why would you when the source material is already this good?
I'll admit the few changes they did decide to make didn't always land with me. Some of the humour just doesn't play as well in live-action, and a lot of the scenes feel stretched out, sometimes unnecessarily (the remake adds about 20 minutes to the runtime). Mason Thames is a decent Hiccup and captures the character's awkward charm, although he's outshone by Nico Parker as Astrid, the changes to whose character I did appreciate. The film wins by bringing back Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson in the roles they voiced in the original. But I found Hiccup's bullies-turned-allies group of dragon-training peers (Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut, and Fishlegs) to be quite lacklustre when compared to their animated counterparts. Nevertheless, when the film landed those one-to-one moments from the original, combined with John Powell's remastered score, I was emotional.
To recapture the spirit of the original was the least How to Train Your Dragon could do to succeed. But as we've seen with several of these live-action remakes, that doesn't always happen, so I was grateful it landed more or less the same here, and it didn't butcher my childhood nostalgia. That being said, the movie didn't justify to me its reason for existing (beyond selling theme park tickets to Universal Studios).

Following a hop across town, my second film of the day awaited: The Life of Chuck. The marketing for this film hides a lot of the plot, and having not read the Stephen King story it's based on, I went in mostly blind. I came out definitively alive.
Without giving too much away, The Life of Chuck follows a man named Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, Benjamin Pajak, and Cody Flanagan) at several distinct ages, where he experiences the ups and downs of life and what it all means. True to King and Mike Flanagan's style, the film utilises moments of strangeness and some soft sci-fi conventions to house its greater metaphor, but it's nothing like what you'd expect from these two horror maestros' previous work together (eg. Doctor Sleep). The Life of Chuck isn't about scaring the audience with the potential of our world; it's about appreciating it.
At their core, stories are a way of decoding life and offer us a way to contemplate our existence. That doesn't always sound like it would make for the most interesting movie to watch, but The Life of Chuck makes it so. It asks big thematic questions and then answers them in the most emotional and entertaining ways possible on screen. It doesn't always offer the neatest explanations, but that's also kind of the best part; it's a movie that demands you fill in the blanks yourself.

My final film of the day was the one I was most excited about: Materialists. Celine Song broke onto the scene with the deeply thoughtful romantic drama Past Lives in 2023, which earned her two Oscar nominations. I have a lot of respect for Past Lives, which is why I hate to admit it didn't move me as much as it did some others. Still, I went in optimistic about her follow-up film, Materialists, and had those expectations well and truly met.
Materialists is a more straightforward romantic drama compared to Past Lives. It explores the expectations of modern-day dating through the journey of a 30-something New York City matchmaker named Lucy (Dakota Johnson), who is torn between dating for money or love. This is represented in her two suitors, the wealthy “unicorn” Harry (Pedro Pascal), and her long-term ex and soulful struggling actor, John (Chris Evans).
Despite the marketing, Materialists is not a complete subversion of the love triangle, romantic dramas of the 80s and 90s, but it's far more moving and thoughtful than most of the rom-com/dramas we've seen in recent years. It's a delight of a film with career-best performances, artful dialogue and gorgeous cinematography that makes emotion leap off the screen. It's not exactly subtle, but Materialists is a reminder that Celine Song is one of the best filmmakers working today who can capture innate human questions about love and longing on screen. In the end, I resonated with Materialists more, I think, because it speaks more to my life experiences than Past Lives does (although a rewatch is definitely in order after this).

My goal for the triple feature was just to get through three movies I wanted to see in a day. I didn't expect a rollercoaster of emotion where joy was the most common peak. I expected that How to Train Your Dragon would make me emotional simply from Hiccup and Toothless' first flight, but I didn't know that The Life of Chuck's street busking dance, or Materialists' garden wedding would soon rank on the all-time list of heart-wrenching scenes that will make you smile/cry (or both at the same time).
I also hadn't realised how perfectly paired these movies might be. Like I said, none of them seemed to share obvious tonal similarities or storylines from the outset, but I left the cinema feeling positive and contemplative about the world and my place in it after all of them. I'd started the day appreciating the power of friendship in How to Train Your Dragon, before experiencing the glorious multitudes of life in The Life of Chuck, and then ended by learning the value of love in Materialists. A long walk was needed afterwards.
I don't think ‘The Life of a Materialist Dragon’ is anything close to being the next Barbenheimer. But it did serve as a reminder that there are still movies out there that exist to bring us joy. So many of my top films this year (Sinners, Bring Her Back, The Brutalist), while excellent, have also been kind of grim. It was a nice change to leave the cinema feeling good about the world.
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