Movie Review – How To Train Your Dragon (2025)
Principal Cast : Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerard Butler, Nick Frost, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Peter Serafinowicz, Ruth Codd, Murray McArthur, Andrea Ware, Anna Leong Brophy, Marcus Onilude, Peter Selwood, Daniel-John Williams.
Synopsis: As an ancient threat endangers both Vikings and dragons alike on the isle of Berk, the friendship between Hiccup, an inventive Viking, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, becomes the key to both species forging a new future together.
********
Another live-action remake of an animated film, another bazillion dollars at the box office. Sigh. Spare me the predictable drivel about keeping properties in the public consciousness, expanding an established universe or — even worse — introducing new viewers to a venerable franchise; the 2025 live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon, the DreamWorks Animation classic from ahem 2010, is competent, handsomely mounted and definitely honours the films that precede it. Hell, it even brings back the original animated film’s director, Dean DeBlois, to helm this remake, and goes so far as to include Gerard Butler reprising Stoick the Vast in the flesh, so it makes my cynicism feel overheated and distinctly old man yells at clouds. And fairly, if you’re under the age of about twenty there’s a lot to like in this replication of the animated classic (a phrase I still can’t quite come to terms with, given at the time of this review the adventures of Hiccup, Astrid and Toothless on the big screen have only been around for fifteen years), but it definitely falls into the heavy nostalgia-bait category, failing to bring anything new or unique to the story and content to coast along comfortably on memories of a tighter, more concise cinematic adventure.
The story centres on Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Mason Thames), the inventive yet physically underwhelming son of Viking chieftain Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler), who longs to prove himself a worthy dragon slayer on the embattled Isle of Berk. During a fierce dragon raid, Hiccup manages to down a mysterious Night Fury but, unable to kill the wounded creature, instead forms a secret bond with it, naming it Toothless and discovering that dragons may not be the enemies his people believe them to be. His burgeoning friendship with the fierce and determined Astrid (Nico Parker), alongside rivalry among fellow trainees such as Fishlegs (Julian Dennison), unfolds against mounting pressure from Stoick and the village elders, forcing Hiccup to challenge generations of fear and ultimately redefine what it means to be a Viking.
Critiquing the remake of How to Train Your Dragon purely on its merits, the film is beautifully shot, well produced and, at times, engaging and thrilling in all the right moments. The cast are clearly trying very hard to honour the tone and feeling of the original animated movie, and the casting of Gerard Butler as Stoick — the character he voiced in the animated films — is a stroke of marketing genius. There’s a certain DreamWorks hutzpah in simply replicating their animated classic with minimal changes or updates — the most noticeable here being that Astrid is raven-haired rather than blonde — but otherwise they follow the design aesthetic of the principal characters nearly exactly. And I suppose if scraping over half a billion dollars at the box office against a budget north of $150m isn’t seen as a success, then Hollywood truly is broken. The film hits neatly in the four quadrants the finance boffins really love.
I could ruminate on the expanded running time, blowing a tight ninety-minute animated film into a two-hour VFX showreel that labours under its own emphatic length, or the seamless blend of live-action humans and sets with the extraordinarily realised CG dragons that form the centrepiece of this franchise. I could wax lyrical about Bill Pope’s exquisite cinematography or Wyatt Smith’s charming aping of John Powell’s iconic themes without feeling overwrought or too on-the-nose. But I won’t. Those elements work well for what I would expect from DreamWorks’ intentions with this movie: drag in new viewers (sigh) and, more obviously, tap into the memberberries of older kids who watched the originals — the third film is only six years old, for the love of God — or adults in a similar demographic. The 2025 How to Train Your Dragon is remarkably predictable in its aversion to graphic violence, its bland, kiddie-friendly emotional arcs and occasionally stilted dialogue, offering comfortable, knowing nostalgia simply for its own sake — so for that, I suppose, it rises exactly to expectations.
But goddamn, I fucking loathed this movie.
Everything about it is designed to capitalise on the work of the artisans behind the animated films. DeBlois hasn’t the inclination to expand or amend his previous work, instead moving the camera through this story in loving slow motion as he tries valiantly to recapture past glory. The story wasn’t particularly deep to begin with, and whereas the animated film’s subtext about father-son relationships, about a kid growing into a man, about friendship and loyalty, felt organic and resonant, it never truly manifests on screen here. Poor Mason Thames has the unenviable task of replicating Jay Baruchel’s vocal turn as the gormless teenager Hiccup and, while certainly looking the part, he flails against the imbalance between fantasy, reality and the kind of humour you can only truly sell in animation.
Animation affords a suspension of disbelief — kooky and crazy characters inhabiting a believable fantasia that works — while live action is far harder to pull off when dealing with similar sight gags. Stoick’s right-hand man Gobber, played with earnest sincerity by Nick Frost, is missing his right hand (a wonderful meta-gag in the original films), and whereas his constant swapping of prosthetics into various tools and weapons is played for laughs, they fall flat here. Mainly because this isn’t animation and the verisimilitude just isn’t there. This kind of nonsense is offhandedly (ha) handled in animation but needs far tighter control in live action, and DeBlois simply isn’t a strong enough filmmaker to make that happen in this format.
For my adult brain — a brain that’s grown up with How to Train Your Dragon through my children — I couldn’t parse the poor imitations of the animated versions. Nico Parker tries her best but isn’t yet capable of turning the feisty Astrid into a legitimate leading lady in this context, while the comic relief of Ruffnut, Tuffnut, Fishlegs and Snotlout — once capable allies of Hiccup — feel like pale analogues lacking charm or truth to their schtick. If you didn’t know who these characters were, you’d think you’d had a stroke: they’re dumb, stripped of nuance and nowhere near as evocative as their animated counterparts. Perhaps I’m biased because I’m such a fan of the animated films, but this version does very little to reintroduce them in a way that gives us reason to watch them again. Julian Dennison, taking on the role once voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, is about the only real highlight, but even his comedic gift can feel overextended and, honestly, it occasionally smacks of stunt casting.
Watching Gerard Butler step back into the role of Stoick — all spittle and fiery-eyed Viking bravado — is fun, but again, it feels like a calculated move. I love me some Butler, and no shade to him taking the paycheque, but if this film was ever going to stand on its own it needed to distance itself from the animated movies. That’s the trouble here: How to Train Your Dragon certainly looks fantastic, but it’s essentially the exact same film as the 2010 original, with only minor, inconsequential differences, and is deathly afraid to attempt anything genuinely new. It’s a beautiful facsimile — the kind of film you might get if you asked an algorithm to generate its own version of the animated movie — and as I watched it I began to realise that no, I wasn’t wrong, it’s the moviemakers who’ve sold out.
The existence of this film is purely to trade on nostalgia and existing IP. It offers nothing to new viewers that they couldn’t get from the original movie — and I’d recommend that over this by a long stretch — and my indifference to its near-perfect replication of the animated film’s designs and settings goes nowhere near averting how pointless and tiresome these live-action remakes have become.
As a long-time film critic, I’m loath to continue railing against the obvious fiduciary success these toadstools of cinematic fungi have become. I cannot deny they make absolute bank, and as a business decision I’d concede that remaking five hundred Lion Kings and Snow Whites is arguably more profitable than taking a risk on new ideas or new filmmakers. Again, no shade to DeBlois or the team behind this movie, because if it wasn’t them making it, it would absolutely be somebody else. But the fact that nothing new is added to the story, nothing to differentiate it from a shorter and better animated original, nothing to suggest this film might open up the property for reinvention or a different take, is an egregious waste.
It’s hard to make a sow’s ear from a silk purse, but DeBlois and DreamWorks have done it to the satisfaction of cynics everywhere. How to Train Your Dragon is well made but astoundingly safe; kids, go rewatch the original and its sequels for far better entertainment value.
Who wrote this?
