Movie Thoughts: How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

• Released: June 6th, 2025
• Directed by: Dean DeBlois
• Running time: 2h 5min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

In a Viking society where hunting and fighting dragons is seen as the greatest honor, a boy named Hiccup befriends a dragon named Toothless. Now it's up to him to undo his tribe's prejudice against dragons.

My Thoughts

You guys all know that I love the first How to Train Your Dragon dearly. I have mixed thoughts on the sequels, but the first is still one of the best Dreamworks films ever, in my opinion.

This remake? Well, it certainly exists. Honestly it's just 90% a direct shot-for-shot remake down to a lot of the shots and dialogue just being taken directly from the animated movie, except remade in live-action. So if you were expecting them to take some risk and add a lot or change things, they didn't. For the most part.

There are a few added character quirks (e.g. Astrid fighting for Stoick's approval, Snotlout wanting a better relationship with his father, Hiccup being disliked by the other Vikings because he's the chief's son and thus has it easier than some of them) and one or two added or extended scenes. But aside from that, this is pretty much the same movie as the original. Except worse.

Yeah, I don't know what it is, but this one just did not hit for me at all despite so closely resembling the original movie. I couldn't really get into it for the entire runtime. It lacked any charm the original had. And emotionally I just wasn't invested at all. I can't even really pinpoint why exactly, but this one just really didn't do it for me.

It's not bad or anything, just, well, mediocre. A more mediocre rendition of the first movie in live-action. Without all the charm and likability. It visually doesn't look bad (the sets, costumes and dragon animation are all solid), but just writing-wise this felt like a much lesser version of the original.

It just kinda felt like it lacked in heart to me. For example, in one scene in the original movie where Hiccup expresses care about Toothless to Astrid, the dialogue in the live-action movie was changed from "Make sure they don't find Toothess" to "Don't get involved". Hiccup also comes to the conclusion that dragons are actually nice if treated well way too early in this one. In the original, it takes him time as he gets to know Toothless and the other dragons better. In this movie, he basically after his second meeting with Toothless already concludes that everything Vikings know about dragons is wrong. Which just felt rushed and lacked the slow building relationship between the boy and his dragon that led to this conclusion organically in the original. 

The movie puts more focus on Astrid, which I don't mind, but I couldn't really get into the delivery of her actress all that much. She just felt a bit more flat and subdued than the Astrid in the original, who is very expressive. Especially in some of the (supposed-to-be) more emotional scenes her delivery just kinda missed for me. Though in part this could also be blamed on the script and direction she had to work with. That said, I don't have an issue with all the recasts. I liked this movie's version of Fishlegs and Gobber especially. The rest is just mostly just fine but nothing amazing. Though of course Gerard Butler is still great as Stoick, but that's nothing new.  

This movie just, I don't know, kinda frustrates me. By all accounts, because it's so similar to the OG, I should probably still like it at least a bit. But in reality this feels like a flatter, less engaging and emotional version of the original we hold so dear. I don't hate this one or anything and I do think it falls into the "decent" 3 out of 5 category rating-wise, but for me personally it failed to do anything, especially on an emotional level. I will probably forget about this movie in a few days and not look back.