HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

How to Train Your Dragon, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 12, 2025

Anyone who has seen the animated original doesn't need to see the live-action How to Train Your Dragon, and in some ways, bringing this story into the real world doesn't do it many favors at the start. The animated film was full of charm and whimsy, and that specific brand of cartoon-ish appeal is almost folly to try to re-create for real. It's one thing to see a hulking man dressed in full Viking gear and speaking with a Scottish brogue as an exaggerated animated character. It's entirely another thing to see Gerard Butler dressed in that fashion and speaking in that way as his mountaintop village is attacked by computer-generated dragons.

To the credit of the actors and filmmakers, though, this remake gradually looks and feels less silly than it begins, and by the time our young protagonist Hiccup (Mason Thames) takes to the sky with his newly trained dragon, there's a certain magic to the trick writer/director Dean DeBlois has pulled off here. This version is essentially a replication of the 2010 animated film with real actors, physical sets and locations, and plenty of visual effects, but the story remains so simple, pure, and big-hearted that it once again pulls us in with its inherent strengths.

It doesn't come across as cynical, in other words, which is something that can't always be said of live-action remakes of popular animated films. There might be some practical or subconscious reasons this one doesn't come across that way. For one thing, DeBlois directed or co-directed the entire trilogy of animated films, so he knows the material as well as or, perhaps, more than anyone else. For another, the original was based on a book by Cressida Cowell, so it's as much an adaptation of that as it is a remake of the animated film.

Mostly, though, this version has enough respect for its predecessor to copy it beat for beat (and shot for shot at times), but the film also has enough passion—made apparent in the performances and the spectacle it sometimes achieves—for its own existence to play this material with utter sincerity. Everyone on screen and behind the camera clearly cares about this tale, and that feeling comes through in every moment of the film.

Again, it is a straightforward re-telling of the animated film, from the prologue to the finale. In the introduction, we're once again introduced to the village of Berk, which sits atop a mountain on a remote island and is populated by hardened warriors. From all parts of the globe, the people of this village have one goal in mind—to rid the world of dragons—and have inhabited this place because it's close to the location of a nest. The dragons, of course, don't take kindly to humans encroaching on their territory and routinely raid the village.

Eventually, this setup becomes as much a philosophical battle as an actual one. On one side, there's Stoick (Butler), the chief of the village, who believes the only good dragon is a dead one, and he's determined to locate the nest in order to kill every beast within it. On the other side, there's his son Hiccup, more an inventor than a fighter, who hits a dreaded Night Fury variety of dragon with a makeshift bola launcher during the opening action.

Following the path of the downed dragon later, Hiccup finds the creature, discovers it's still alive, and, unable to bring himself to kill a helpless animal, sets it free. The dragon, which Hiccup names Toothless because of its retractable teeth, and the boy become friends.

There's almost no reason to summarize anything else about the story, except to say that it's wholly faithful to the original, albeit with a few additions (Nico Parker's Astrid, Hiccup's rival and eventual love interest, seems more fleshed-out in this one, for example). The one thing the film needs to get right, perhaps, is Toothless, and as soon as Hiccup sees the wounded beast tangled in ropes and unable to escape, it's obvious the filmmakers have gotten that part right.

The dragon in the animated film was a loveable creature, as much like a cat as a fire-breathing monster. DeBlois is wise enough to copy the design and that characterization, while the visual effects team is skilled enough to make this Toothless appear seamlessly within the film's realistic setting and interact with a real sense of both tangibility and weight with the actors. The early back-and-forth between Hiccup and the dragon, as the two get a measure of each other, sets the tone for the rest of the story, while also making us forget how awkward some of the previous scenes are in trying to translate the world and characters of the animated film into a more "real" world.

Essentially, the film becomes its own entity at that point, because it's so easy to believe the dragon and its relationship with Hiccup (Thames is quite good here, especially since so much of his performance, not to mention the film's success, depends on his ability to bond with a visual effect). As the pair soar through the sky and maneuver between the island's jagged rock formations, the camera initially moves as if it can't keep up with them, but as they figure out a rhythm to flying and have to face off against a colossal dragon during the climax, the film's sense of spectacle becomes a fairly decent excuse for remaking the material.

Like any other live-action remake of an animated film, How to Train Your Dragon doesn't "need" to exist. Once this film reveals its genuine admiration for the original and its own strengths, though, it's easy to be pleased that this one does.

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