Review | DRAGON Soars with Flying Colors

How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
Screenplay by Dean DeBlois
Based on the Book by Cressida Cowell
Produced by Marc Platt, p.g.a. and Adam Siegel, p.g.a.
Directed by Dean DeBlois
PG, 2hr 5m

[all images: Courtesy of Universal Studios]

It would seem that Universal has decided to beat Disney at its own game one more than one front. Not only are they likely to pull out a massive victory with Epic Universe in Orlando, but they also look to be delivering on the “animated to live-action” adaptations as well.

How To Train Your Dragon is a remake of the CG-animated film of the same name from 2010, in which the residents of the ancient island of Berk are locked in an all-or-nothing war with fantastic beasts. These dragons have been raiding the island, attacking the Vikings’ homes and stealing the livestock, and the Vikings have vowed to rid the world of the menace once and for all.

The live-action version follows the same beats as its predecessor: young Hiccup (Mason Thames) is the son of Chief Stoick (Gerard Butler reprising his previous voice role), and he desperately wants to fit in a be a real Viking, but he just can’t quite get everything together to accomplish this. He’s a tinkerer, an inventor, and one night during a raid manages to successfully bring down the elusive Night Fury. Only no one knows it, and they wouldn’t believe him if he told them anyway. So when he goes out and finds the dragon and sees that it’s injured, naturally he can’t kill it. Instead, he nurses Toothless back to health in secret.

Meanwhile, Stoick leads another raid party in search of the dragons’ lair, leaving Hiccup and other warriors-in-training with the blacksmith Gobber (Nick Frost). During this time, Hiccup learns various ways of subduing dragons, techniques that don’t involve killing them, much to the frustration of the star pupil, Astrid (Nico Parker).

If you’ve seen the animated version, you pretty much know what to expect from there, so I won’t spend too much time on the story itself. What surprises me is how much I was able to forget that this version is a remake of that version. The immersion is pretty thorough, even to the point where you could believe the live-action edition is the very first time the story has been on screen. There’s no self-reverence or winks to the camera; it’s just another straight re-telling of the story, but it’s done in such a way (even those beat-for-beat scenes) that pulls you in and keeps your attention throughout the entire film.

Oscar-nominated director Dean DeBlois returns to helm this version as he has previous entries into the animated series, once again drafting the screenplay based on the book series by Cressida Howell, and with a sequel already in development, one wonders if this is just the first of the twelve books that might get the big screen treatment.

Thames and Parker deliver solid performances as Hiccup and Astrid. And while Parker may not look exactly like her animated counterpart, the only real noticeable difference is her hair color. She’s got the same rough-and-tumble attitude that drives her ambition to one day be the Chief of the clan. And she’s just as frustrated by Hiccup’s refusal to fit in. Even after she discovers his secret and conspires to help him keep it, she still doesn’t quite understand him fully.

Gerard Butler, likewise, delivers an inspired rendition of Stoick. He could very easily have just duplicated his performance from the animated version, but now that he’s able to bring Stoick in front of the camera, he’s able to add layers to the Chief. And as DeBlois recently noted in an interview about coming back to this story, Butler gets an arc that has Stoick almost the “bad guy” (ish) at the beginning, dismissing Hiccup almost completely because of the boy’s inability to fit in and be a real Viking. So he has an emotional journey himself as he fights to keep the clans together and keep them on task, all while trying to figure out his son.

From a technical standpoint, this is Universal looking at Disney’s attempts at live-actioning their cartoons and saying, “Hold my beer.” This film does what Disney hasn’t been able — or willing — to do: stay as faithful to the source material while making slight adjustments to accommodate the new format. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the animated version, but I didn’t see anything in this new one that struck me as being so completely off-base that it didn’t fit. DeBlois has confirmed some changes, but those exist mostly to expand on the original.

It should also be noted, as DeBlois does in an interview, that this is the first time the live-action remake employs the director of the animated original, and DeBlois thinks that it helps for him to be involved because he, better than anyone else, understands the heart of this story. I would say he’s right. There are three emotional hooks in this story: Hiccup’s relationship with Astrid (and by extension the other Vikings who don’t respect him), with Stoick, and then with Toothless. Each one of those threads is handled with dexterity, and Stoick gets his own moments as well as he searches not only for a way to defeat the dragons, but also his own redemption in the eyes of the tribe. Along the way, he despairs about his lack of connection with Hiccup, but that arc has a satisfying payoff as well.

Composer John Powell also returns to add the musical layer, and since I don’t have that particular soundtrack album, I’m going to assume that at least some of the cues are similar, but I expect there are some new tracks as well. And the score works in every way: it’s not overbearing or distracting, it fully supports the emotions of each scene, and it runs only where it needs to run. I found myself thinking of John Williams and James Horner as I was watching this, especially the flying sequences, as they tend to lend themselves more to the risk of bombastic orchestras. But Powell does just enough, and it absolutely works in tandem with the visuals.

The flying sequences are excellent, and one in particular brought to mind the process used to shoot Top Gun: Maverick. Everything felt fully baked, and I found myself wondering how many other options per scene were left in the VFX studio in a file marked “Just In Case They Change Their Minds Again”… The integration of the dragons into the live-action environment was seamless, and there are only a handful of places where the CG work was somewhat noticeably CG. For most of the picture, you’re fully immersed in this world because the dragons look to be a natural part of it. There’s nothing to bounce you out of the story and make you look at it sideways with a jaundiced eye.

And ultimately, that’s what you want from a movie, right? An immersive communal experience that people can enjoy, and you don’t have to fumble your way through every time you eyes get hit with a piece of dodgy half-baked (or overbaked) computer graphics that bend reality the wrong way.

Leave that for Marvel, right?