How To Train Your Dragon (2025) - Review

Spoiler warning!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22w7z_lT6YM

Story

The new live-action How to Train Your Dragon, Directed, produced, and written by Dean Deblois, who also created the original How to Train Your Dragon movies, had David Cain, Michael A. Connolly, Roy Lee, Chris Sanders, Marc Platt, and Adam Siegel all producing alongside him.

How to Train Your Dragon follows Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (played by Mason Thames), who lives in a Viking village called berk. The movie starts with Berk being under attack from dragons, during this attack it is shown that Hiccup is an apprentice of a family friend and village blacksmith, Gobber (played by Nick Frost). Hiccup has been Gobber's apprentice in attempts to overcome his physical weaknesses.

During the attack, Hiccup shoots down one of the rarest dragons, a night fury but he is not believed when he tries to tell his father, the chief of berk, Stoick the Vast (played by Gerard Butler). Once Hiccup is escorted home, he instantly leaves, searching for the night fury to kill it and take it to his father. However, once Hiccup finds the dragon and is about to kill it compassion overtook him and he sets the dragon free and the night fury chooses not to kill him.

Meanwhile, Gobber and Stoick have a conversation that concludes that while Stoick sells away to find the dragon nest, Gobber will teach the teens, including Hiccup, to fight dragons. When these classes start Hiccup is frequently Picked on by his classmates, Astrid Hofferson who Hiccup also has a crush on (played by Nico Parker), Snotlout Jorgenson (played by Gabriel Howell), Fish legs (played by Julian Dennison), Thorsten twins Ruffnut (played by Browyn James) and Tuffnut (played by Harry Trevaldwyn). Later on, He returns to the Nightfury that is trapped in a cove, he realizes that the dragon is missing half of its tail fin, causing the Night Fury to be unable to fly.

Hiccups ends up befriending the dragon he names Toothless, On the next visit to the night Fury, he brings a fish to feed the dragon with, as well as a prosthetic fin for its tail allowing Toothless to fly with Hiccup riding on his back to guide him. Hiccup also learns about different dragon behaviors from Toothless, which allows him to progress in his dragon fighting class, impressing the villagers, but making Astrid fall suspicious.

Meanwhile, Stoick and the people that went with him to 'find the dragon's nest' which was an unsuccessful mission, arrived back to berk with damage to their boats.

After Hiccup finds out he will have to kill a dragon in front of the whole village, due to his doing so well in his dragon fighting classes he attempts to flee the village toothless. However, Astrid finds hiccup and toothless in the cove before they leave. At first, Astrid is skeptical about Toothless, but after hiccup and Toothless essentially kidnap her and takes her on a flight to show Toothless is friendly after all, hiccup changes Astrid's opinions on dragons. During this flight toothless is drawn to the dragon's nest, where Hiccup and Astrid see what is to referred to as the 'queen bee' of the nest.

Once Astrid, Hiccup, and Toothless get back to berk, Astrid wants to inform the village about what they found, however, Hiccup is against this as they would then have to tell the village about Toothless, which would put him at risk of being killed. The following day Hiccup has to kill the dragon with the whole village, including his father watching, however instead of trying to kill the dragon he tries to prove to the village that dragons aren't dangerous, but Stoick isn't happy with this and is enraged the dragon. Toothless emerges from the cove and flies to the village in an attempt to save Toothless.

Stoick captures Toothless and disowns Hiccup after discovering the truth. The village of Berk uses Toothless to guide him to the nest despite Hiccup warning Stoick it was not safe. Meanwhile, Astrid has Hiccup rally the other teens to tame the training dragons. Together, they go to find the people of Berk and the nest. Stoick and his fleet locate and break open the nest, but the Red Death ('the queen bee') awakens and tries to kill the people of berk. The dragon riders come up with a plan and split up, distracting the Red Death, as Hiccup attempts to free Toothless from the ship that is sinking. Stoick rescues both Hiccup and Toothless from drowning and reconnects with his son. Hiccup and Toothless lure the Red Death into the air, damage its wings, and set its insides alight, causing it to crash and explode. The dying Red Death's tail hits Hiccup and is toothless, and he falls into the explosion's fireball. Although Toothless rescues Hiccup, Hiccup loses half of his left leg.

With the Red Death's threat neutralized, the Berk villagers co-exist peacefully with the dragons. Gobber creates new prostheses for Hiccup and Toothless, and Hiccup, now admired by his fellow villagers, begins a relationship with Astrid.

Review

Well, I loved this. It felt like I was watching the original for the first time again. I am a massive fan of the original movies, and they couldn't have done this live-action any better than they did.

I had very high expectations going into this, when they first announced it they were doing a live-action I was worried that they would ruin it but they didn't. Considering this was DreamWorks' first live-action remake it was amazing, and considerably better than Disney's live-action. All of the actors portrayed the roles they were playing amazingly. Mason Thames, Nico Parker, and Gerard Butler all especially did incredibly. I loved that they had Gerard Butler play Stoick, his voice is the same as he did in the animated movies.

I loved how it was essentially a scene-for-scene remake, instead of changing loads of bits. I've seen a lot of people complaining about the fact that if it's a scene-for-scene remake what is the point in remaking it? Realistically is there ever a point in making a live-action remake besides money and fan service? No, no there is not. Also if they did change things everyone and their mother would complain about the fact they changed bits, so overall I loved the scene-for-scene format they did as it worked for HTTYD, however, other live-action remakes are good with changes.

Visually, this remake was also incredible, the graphics and quality were amazing and the scenery of where they filmed it was beautiful too. Whenever there was a flying screen it was almost like you were there. The CGI and the way they bought the dragons to life was jaw dropping they looked so realistic, but also not having toothless looking like a typical 'realistic scary' dragon but looking like the animation.

One thing I will say though, is no matter how amazing this is, nothing can beat the original.

Rating - 5 out of 5

Release Date: Friday 13th of June 2025

Watched: Sunday 15th of June 2025