Film Review — How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

A near shot-for-shot remake begs the obvious question: What’s the point?

Credit: Universal

If you look up “superfluous” in the dictionary, you’ll find the new take on How to Train Your Dragon. An utterly unnecessary live-action remake of Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois’s 2010 animated gem, this features DeBlois at the helm once more. Apparently, he didn’t want to see anyone else’s version of the story. I understand that to a point, given how misguided changes can create a Snow White (2025) situation. But the 2010 film made significant departures from Cressida Cowell’s books, so narrative or thematic fidelity ought not to be an issue. A because-we-can, near shot-for-shot remake, has no good artistic reason to exist. It’s as pointless as Gus Van Sant’s 1998 shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (1960).

The only legitimate creative reason to revisit animated classics is to craft significantly different takes that aren’t misguided or cynical attempts at cash grabs. Guillermo Del Toro’s highly personal stop-motion take on Pinocchio (2022) is a case in point. By contrast, this film feels more akin to watching fans of the original cosplaying a recreation. What makes it doubly pointless is how much of this new version is animated, in any case. There’s very little “live-action” amid the sea of CGI islands, creatures, and other digitally created environments.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, it concerns Viking chief Stoick (Gerald Butler) leading a war against marauding dragons. His awkward but inventive teenage son, Hiccup (Mason Thames), is constantly ridiculed by his dragon-slayer-in-training peers, including the girl he loves from afar, Astrid (Nico Parker). In his keenness to prove his mettle, Hiccup manages to shoot down a legendary “Night Fury”; a much-feared deadly black dragon no one has ever seen. But when he finds out where it fell, he can’t bring himself to kill the creature and instead secretly befriends it.

In other words, it’s a spin on the time-honoured boy-and-his-dog story (though the dragon, who Hiccup names Toothless, behaves more like a cat). The most memorable variants of this tale include Lassie Come Home (1943), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and The Iron Giant (1999). Female takes on the formula include girl-and-her-geese flick Fly Away Home (1996), and the girl-and-her-wolf story, The Journey of Natty Gann (1985). The original How to Train Your Dragon (2010) belongs to this splendid cinematic pantheon. The live-action remake does not.

In all fairness, because the original got everything so spot-on, a scrupulously recreated live-action remake can’t, by definition, be terrible. The screenplay is essentially a copy-and-paste of the original with some minor tweaks that are scarcely worth mentioning (Astrid’s character gets added nepotism disgruntlement, there are representatives from other parts of the world among what is essentially Stoick’s dragon-fighting coalition). Other elements of the original are present and correct, including Gerard Butler’s return and John Powell’s magnificent score (rerecorded and almost cue-for-cue what features in the original).

It all begs the question: What’s the point? Money, obviously. I’ve also heard arguments that children who didn’t grow up with the original will enjoy this one. That’s probably true, but then why on earth not simply show them the original? Better still, why not give it a big-scale cinema re-release? It’s quite simply a better film. Animation was the right choice for the subject matter, and that’s particularly obvious with the human characters. No matter how hard they try, their live-action counterparts don’t come across with the same comedic aplomb, especially Mason Thames. He can’t hide how handsomely heroic he looks compared with the animated Hiccup’s nerdier demeanour. All of which means the slapstick laughs don’t land as well. For my money, the father-son themes had more emotional punch in the original too.

Beyond the human cast, there are other problems. The opening dragon raid looks too dark and low contrast, failing to pop in the manner of the original opening. Certain dazzling shots in the original are absent (the camera spin during Hiccup and Astrid’s romantic ride on Toothless, for instance), and much of the dynamism is lost (though admittedly, the IMAX format does work well in Hiccup and Toothless’s initial flying sequence). There are other nits to pick, but the biggest problem throughout is the nagging sense of no-one-asked-for-this.

In summary, whilst the new How to Train Your Dragon isn’t objectively bad, it is objectively a complete waste of everyone’s time. Show your children the superior original instead.

(Originally published at Medium.)

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