How to Train Your Dragon (live action)

On the Viking island of Berk, scrawny Hiccup, a brainy misfit, befriends Toothless, a wounded Night Fury dragon. Defying his tribe’s dragon-killing ways, Hiccup learns that dragons aren’t the enemy. The duo battles to stop a growing danger, pushing for peace between Vikings and dragons.

How To Train Your Dragon Review

If the last decade has proven anything, it’s that the live-action remake is a lose-lose proposition. Should it remain too faithful to the source material, it’s considered to be a creatively bankrupt cash grab (and rightly so). However, if it strays too far, uproarious fans declare it a bastardization that disrespects what came before. The margin of error is thinner than your average girl boss, and How To Train Your Dragon isn’t the exception.

The co-director/co-writer of the original and seemingly unable to cut the umbilical, Dean DeBois, has wrought unto us a slightly less energetic, marginally less sincere, recreation of his now fifteen-year-old former glory. This updated version of How To Train Your Dragon follows the original almost shot for shot, except that its energy is lacking, the onscreen “talent” is nominally less talented, or maybe less interested, and there’s far less empathic connection between the characters, the action, and the audience.

Mason Thames, who one or two of you might remember from the Mel Gibson-led Monster Summer, stars as Hiccup. Regrettably, where the 2010 Hiccup benefited from Jay Baruchel’s signature style and unique introverted charisma, Thames’s generic not-quite-ready-for-the-lead vibe isn’t enough to bridge the gap that separates forgettable kid-friendly offerings and classics that the whole family will love.

That said, it’s almost certainly not Thames’ fault, as everyone from the decades-long silver screen veteran, Gerard Butler, down to nameless extras seems a half-beat off from connecting with the material. It was like their souls understood what their paychecks didn’t—this How To Train Your Dragon has almost no value.

At almost 30 minutes longer than the 2010 animated hit, the live-action knockoff manages to do less with its characters, relegating the original’s fun and quirky group of misfits to game pieces regularly adjusted to move the plot along.

                   

What this HTTYD does get right are the same high points of the original, but as a retread with less impact. When both your peaks and valleys are lowered, you end up flying just above water. And that’s where this version of How To Train Your Dragon hovers.

Ultimately, this remake is a minimally entertaining, wholly unnecessary, and totally uninspired product that audiences will soon be seeing on the regular when they need only prompt Grok to “Generate a live-action version of (fill in the blank).”

Kids will enjoy 2025’s How To Train Your Dragon and, if you haven’t seen the original, you’ll enjoy it more than I did, but no one will remember it in a year.

PARENTAL NOTES

What if Gods Was One of Us

• Naturally, the Vikings are polytheists who believe in the Norse Pantheon of gods. As such, there are a handful of times in which they use their gods’ names in vain in a “comical” parody of how modern folks use God’s name in vain.
  • “Oh my gods,” etc.

Double Hockey Sticks

• Near the end, Gerard Butler yells, “Let’s send these devils back to Hell.” They regularly invoke Thor and Odin. Why not say Helheim instead? The context would have been sufficient to convey the idea.

WOKE REPORT

¼ Woke

• If wokeness, especially in movies, is nothing more than a merry-go-round of meaningless, virtue-signaling activism and ego stroking as Leftist bubble-huffing zombies play-act at solving imaginary inequity, there can be no more woke casting decision than casting a snowy-skinned (at least in this movie), quarter-black actress to play the live-action version of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordic character. She has just enough black to get the filmmakers invited to all the right parties and just enough white to silence those they perceive as “haters.”
  • The casting choice for Astrid might not have raised eyebrows on its own—if not for the fact that the casting directors, costumers, VFX team, and hair and makeup artists went out of their way to make nearly every other character (aside from one we’ll get to) look like they stepped straight out of the animated original. When that much care is taken across the board, how can you not conclude that Astrid’s casting wasn’t about finding the best actress for the role, but about checking a box?
    • We’re not dancing around it—Nico Parker’s casting was 100% a woke decision. No question. The real debate is: does that automatically make the movie woke, and if so, how much? There’s no preachy messaging about race or equality. Her character isn’t used as some political statement (even if her presence is), and she doesn’t alter the original story. Honestly, neither Hiccup nor most of the other white Viking characters (we’ll talk about “diversity” in a bit) look particularly Nordic either. Heck, Gerard Butler couldn’t sound more Scottish if all his lines were “haggis, haggis, haggis, kilt.”
    • The point is, we see the BS for what it is. But when it comes to slapping a Woke-O-Meter score on it, it’s probably lower than you’d think because we rate the wokeness of the films, not the wokeness of the filmmakers.

Tons of Fun

• In the original, both Tuffnut and Ruffnut are painfully skinny and gawky. While the live-action Tuffnut couldn’t look any more like his animated counterpart if you sculpted him out of clay, Ruffnut has been replaced by a body-positive (aka fat) pretender. Again, it wouldn’t matter if the rest of the casting weren’t so on the nose. There’s even a line in the film about how the twins’ parents can’t tell them apart, despite being of opposite sexes. The original joke is that they were hard to tell apart, and now it’s to point out how silly it would be to confuse them with one another.

  

Most Contrived Diversity in the History of Ever

• There’s just the most token and hamfisted dash of utterly meaningless diversity that you’ve ever seen in any movie ever.
  • If you’ve seen the previews, you’ve no doubt noticed one or two black and east asian “Vikings” amid the denizens of the Isle of Berk. Instead of ignoring it, as many other PC remakes (or even fantasy prequels) have done, Gerard Butler’s character is given the clunkiest non-sequitur line, introducing these characters as immigrants (without using that term) from different lands.
    • Aside from one or two camera shots in their general direction and the weakest raised fist of warriorly acknowledgement in cinematic history (the most distracting split second I’ve ever experienced in a movie), these very few  “characters” are nothing more than checkbox extras.

Lazy Clams

• The sheer laziness of the woke casting makes me think that, despite being Canadian and a Hollywood filmmaker, director Dean DeBlois (co-writer/co-director of the animated Lilo & Stitch and How To Train Your Dragon) was forced to meet a quota rather than having done so out of a sense of moral obligation. Because, in addition to the above uber-token diversity casting, the one or two lady Vikings look like they’d faint if they tried to open a pickle jar, and each is given a single throwaway line and then forgotten about.

A$$ Turd

• Casting choices aside, there’s no getting around Astrid’s girl bossness. Sure, she was one in the original, but she wasn’t nearly as nasty as she starts out in the live-action remake. Where she more or less resentfully ignored Hiccup in the original, in this, she goes out of her way to be a straight-up bee-yotch.
  • In one exchange, she lays in to him, accusing him of having everything handed to him as a nepo-baby (she doesn’t use that exact verbiage, but that’s the idea she’s expressing) who’s “had everything handed to him) while contrasting it with the assertion that she “came from nothing” and “no one ever helped her.” Mind you, neither sentiment is ever actually represented on screen. Instead, Hiccup is constantly dumped on while she’s treated like she farts saphron. It’s nothing more than a contrived moment artificially inserted to espouse modern inequality victimhood BS.
• In the original, she’s introduced by pouring a bucket of water on a fire, and it’s Hiccup’s infatuation with her and idealization of her that’s on display, more than any special skills she might possess. However, in this, she’s flipping around like a parkour cartoon, putting out massive blazes like she’s the Matt Murdock of the fire brigade.
• Long after, Hiccup has mastered dragon riding and solved the riddle of how to integrate dragons into village life successfully… and shown himself to be the most innovative, cleverest, and most resourceful member of his society… and displayed incredible bravery, selflessness, and self-sacrifice… and taught others how to master dragon riding, as he and his crew prepare to fly to the rescue, he says to Astrid, “…you’re the strongest fighter. We need you to lead us.”
  • 1. He’s been the de facto leader up till now, and for clearly good reason.
  • 2. What does being good at swinging an axe have to do with battling while upon a dragon?
  • 3. Seems to me that the most experienced dragon rider, one who mastered every dragon in the arena tests, one whose relationship with his dragon mount is more than a few minutes old, would be the best choice for a dragon-mounted assault upon other dragons.
  • 4. Being good at fighting doesn’t in any way translate to being good at leading.
  • 5. In the very next shot, he’s the leader and she’s his second.
• Don’t take my word for it. Here’s Nico Parker saying it for all to “hear.”

  • ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Star Nico Parker Says Astrid Is a ‘Boss Bitch’ in New Live-Action Film https://t.co/UxvFTG8m96

    — Variety (@Variety) June 13, 2025

Indigenous Dragons

• During an argument with his father, Hiccup posits that “we’re the problem—moving in on their lands and eating their food.” Mind you, the film’s conclusion proves this false.