Director – Dean DeBlois – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 125m
****
Instead of fighting dragons like other viking teenagers, Hiccup shoots a dragon out of the sky then secretly trains it as his steed– live action remake of animated classic is out in UK cinemas from Monday, June 9th
Following in the footsteps of Disney, who are slowly but surely turning their back catalogue of animated features into live action movies, Dreamworks have taken the plunge and turned the first of their three animated How To Train Your Dragon movies into live action. Director DeBlois previously directed the three animated outings, and clearly cares a great deal about the franchise because he has made a live action equivalent of the first film with the same plot, dragons that look near identical, and locations that feel like those in the original.
If you’re an admirer of the first film, which I am, as you’re watching this new one, you feel like you’ve seen it all before. Except, this is in live action. It’s enjoyable enough, and avoids the obvious trap of trying to redesign its classic animated characters for live action (the trap that Disney’s Snow White remake (Marc Webb, 2025) walked straight into with its hyperrealist dwarfs).
The plot, for those who haven’t had the pleasure either of seeing the original or reading Cressida Cowell’s wonderful children’s book on which it is based, concerns a tribe of vikings living on the isolated island of Berk which has an infestation problem. Dragons. Young teenager Hiccup (Mason Thames from The Black Phone, Scott Derrickson, 2021) who, as his name suggests, isn’t turning out to be the manly warrior his viking chief father Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, who voiced the character in the animated originals) had hoped he would. Along with the other children on the island, Hiccup undergoes warrior training under Gobber (Nick Frost from Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, TV series, 2024-25; Timestalker, Alice Lowe, 2024; Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright, 2004) which consists of fighting dragons who are kept in separate pens leading to the combat training arena. Gobber’s best student is destined to become the next chief.
The reason Hiccup doesn’t take well to warrior training is that he’s a bit of a nerd, the type that rather than taking on dragons in hand to fire-breathing combat as is expected would prefer to design an anti-dragon weapon to knock them out of the sky. While using such a weapon for the first time, he appears to everyone else to be a clumsy good-for-nothing endangering the lives of the ‘real’ fighters. He, however, is convinced his projectile took down a dragon, as he later proves when the finds a dragon trapped in a secluded glade bounded by high cliffs. It can’t fly away because the projectile has damaged its tail. The dragon is a rare species known as a Night Fury.
Hiccup befriends the creature, building it a rig to replace its tail and training the beast to let him fly it. All this puts him on a collision course with the island’s culture, that vikings kill dragons because dragons kill vikings. His conservative father won’t see things any differently, although he finds an ally in Astrid (Nico Parker from Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Michael Morris, 2025; Dumbo, Tim Burton, 2019), a fellow trainee warrior who is highly skilled in combat with dragons, is the favourite to become the next chief, and suspects Hiccup is up to something in his spare time…
Toothless the Night Fury looks exactly like he does in the animated films, which is remarkable considering he and the other dragons portrayed are realised on the screen by a combination of digital effects, practical effects and puppetry techniques. At no point, at least on first viewing (on the massive screen at London’s Waterloo IMAX) could this writer see the join; as in the animated films, you completely buy these creatures as real. To pull this off in live action is clearly more of a creative achievement, although to my mind it’s debatable whether that ultimately has any greater impact than realising everything in animation. Still, Toothless and the other lesser character dragons are here, and prove no less impressive here than in the animated original.
Gerard Butler’s voice acting in the original films is good, solid work, and the same is true of his turn playing the viking chief in live action, the format allowing his and Mason Thames to make something very special of the disappointed father / pro-dragon son relationship. Otherwise, though, the characters and relationships were striking in the original films, and this doesn’t really add anything to them. If anything, you had a stronger sense of the other kids in the original.
As a great admirer of the books and the animated films, I’m at a loss to know exactly what this live action remake adds to audiences who saw the original. Of course, if you’re little and your parents took you to see the original on release, or you’re little today and they take you to see this one, you’re likely to enjoy either one just as much. However, apart from making a pile of money for Dreamworks, as the new version (and the inevitable two live action sequels, the first of which DeBlois is already working on), undoubtedly will, it’s difficult to know why anyone would remake the original animated films when they are as good as they are and this live action remake doesn’t really add anything.
How to Train Your Dragon is out in cinemas in the UK from Monday, June 9th.
Trailer: