In an entertainment ecosystem filled with remakes, spinoffs, and sequels, it’s hard to conceive of a less ambitious project than How to Train Your Dragon (2025). Based on the 2010 animated film of the same name, the movie is the story of Hiccup, an all-brains-but-no-braun outcast in the Norse-inspired settlement of Berk. Under the leadership of Hiccup’s father Stoic, Berk is constantly attacked by dragons. To the vikings, killing dragons has become a rite of passage, and that duty is taken especially seriously by Hiccup’s eventual love interest Astrid. When Hiccup builds a machine that successfully injures one of the beasts, he finds that he can’t quite bring himself to finish off the dragon he names “Toothless,” and learns that perhaps the dragons aren’t as bad as they seemed.
The original How to Train Your Dragon had built up a lot of nostalgia in the 15 years since its release, notwithstanding two flawed sequels. With compelling characters, a plot that was both simple and meaningful, and an iconic score, it came by the goodwill it garnered honestly.
How that goodwill has been spent, well, that’s another matter. Which brings us to How to Train Your Dragon (2025), a live action adaptation of the animated film.
And “adaptation” is perhaps being politically correct. This film is almost a shot-for-shot remake of the original, a unique approach that comes with pluses and minuses. The main advantage, and this cannot be overstated, is that How to Train Your Dragon declines to change core story beats from the original. So many pieces of entertainment that are adapted from other works (including a certain TV show that heavily features dragons, I might note) seek to “improve” the original by changing key story moments. Largely, though not entirely, this particular remake spares us of that.
On the other hand, one has to ask why the film was made in the first place if it wasn’t going to say anything new. The novelty of live action? Perhaps. Even with that, there are nuances lost in translation from animation. Think of it like trying to repeat back a sentence you just heard in a foreign language: you can probably make some noises that sound pretty close to the original. But because you don’t quite know what it’s supposed to mean, there are some inflections and nuances that you miss, and the overall meaning feels garbled.
The most visible way this manifests is the acting. Consider: in animation, every single facial movement of every character has to be drawn by somebody. It forces creators to really consider what everybody is thinking and feeling throughout the story. Thus, in animation, the physical “acting” is always perfect.
Unless you have truly stellar performers, live action simply isn’t going to capture the same depth. In How to Train Your Dragon (2025), the only actor who really measures up is Gerard Butler’s Stoic, whom he also voiced in the original film. Stoic has to wrestle simultaneously with finding Hiccup to be an embarrassing failure, while also deeply caring about him. Butler absolutely nails the nuances of the character. Though, it was a bit difficult to take seriously him fist fighting a realistic looking dragon and winning.
Unfortunately, part of the reason he stands out is that nobody else is even close to measuring up. The character that suffers the most from the changes that are present, and turns in the worst performance, is sadly Nico Parker’s Astrid. The live adaptation introduces a new dynamic where she feels bitter about Hiccup’s supposed “privilege” and that she wants to become chief and take his house. Rather than just somebody who wants to be the best version of a viking in her society, Astrid feels bitter and power hungry… and the film seems to endorse her perspectives. She doesn’t ever have a moment where she is humbled and has a change of heart. The matter is dropped as unceremoniously as it was raised, leaving the viewer to wonder why it was introduced at all.
Put simply, this is a misunderstanding of her character in the original. In the animated version, Astrid wants to be the perfect viking not for personal glory or for power, but to protect people. While flawed, she is fundamentally altruistic. That’s why there’s this great moment, kept in the show but stripped of the character motivations that supported it, when she follows Hiccup to Toothless’s lair and confronts him about how exactly he’s been training. She’s obviously losing it because in spite of all of her hard work and dedication, this twerp who’s been the town laughstock forever has been upstaging her. But when she sees the dragon, she throws Hiccup to the ground in an attempt to protect him. Despite the fact that she dislikes and is furious at him, her first instinct is still to protect people. One doesn’t get the sense that the live adaptation’s version feels that way.
Astrid and Hiccup’s actors simply don’t sell me on the characters. Line delivery aside, they just don’t look right. Hiccup is supposed to be this weedy guy who can’t properly lift an axe — indeed, that’s the impetus for his character’s development and journey. Mason Thames, however, looks reasonably normal and physically fit. His Hiccup towers over Astrid, certainly. I take the argument that Astrid in the animated version was already a semi-girlboss character, but I could buy that Hiccup felt physically threatened by her. With these actors, I just don’t.
Even Toothless doesn’t measure up — his emotions are decidedly more muted than the original version despite (obviously) being CGI. While you got to know and like Toothless as the story progressed, you never lost the feeling in the original that he was quite a scary being to have for an enemy.
As to Thames’s acting, if I was in a charitable mood I’d call it mediocre. That said, and despite having an occasionally odd cadence, Hiccup’s story is still pretty good besides. There’s a reason why people found him to be a compelling character. Here you have this guy who’s looked down on by everybody and feels like he doesn’t fit in. He’s a laughingstock — nobody, not even his father who loves him, thinks he has the makings of the next chief, or even a useful member of the tribe. But using his unique talents that aren’t properly recognized by others, he achieves something nobody else could in taking down a very dangerous dragon. But when the time comes to kill the dragon, he doesn’t. He stands with his moral code against the judgement of everybody around him. And through his own brand of competence and determination he wins them over to his side. He gets the respect and admiration he never had before, including from his love interest, by leaning into his unique virtues nobody had noticed or credited before.
In short, Hiccup was a wish fulfillment character for a certain kind of nerdy teenage boy. Or at least that’s what a lot of people say. I definitely wouldn’t know. In any case, he was a compelling character that really worked.
All said, I can’t recommend this film. Aside from the novelty of being live action, everything about it is worse than the animated version. The original How to Train Your Dragon was something that’s vanishingly rare today: a good, new story. If you absolutely can’t take cartoons seriously, then maybe How to Train Your Dragon (2025) is worth your time. But if you value things like plot, characters, and emotional resonance, stick to the original.