How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

Live-action remakes are the new legacy sequels. After watching Disney turn much of its animation catalogue into big budget, effects-laden modern-day tentpoles, repeatedly to 10-figure grosses worldwide, someone else finally decided to get into the act. That someone is DreamWorks, a studio that once stood tall with its stream of blockbuster franchises. For its first foray in live-action, DreamWorks has wisely chosen to give How to Train Your Dragon the remake treatment.

Released in 2010, the animated adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s children’s book easily ranks among the most beloved of DreamWorks’ films, rivaled only by the original Shrek. Whereas Shrek has concrete plans to be revived in animation in 2026 and a bunch of cartoony elements that wouldn’t really lend to photorealism, Dragon ran its course with three well-received films and is full of human characters and natural splendor.

Dean DeBlois, a director and screenwriter on all three animated films (handling those roles by himself on the two sequels), returns as writer, director, and producer here. He does not seem to have any misgivings about his animated trilogy and not enough time has passed for cultural insensitivities to warrant Disney-esque addressing. And so, DeBlois’ live-action Dragon is an awful lot like the animated one he made with his Lilo & Stitch collaborator Chris Sanders. Which I’m guessing should be just fine with pre-existing Dragon fans.

As you probably remember, this fantasy adventure is set on the island of Berk, where the rugged viking community wages an ongoing war with the local pests: fire-breathing dragons. Our young protagonist Hiccup (Mason Thames, the spitting image of his animated counterpart) wants to be a brave dragon fighter and make proud his widowed, bombastic chieftan father Stoick (Gerard Butler, reprising his previously vocal role in the flesh). But Hiccup is clumsy and more suited to ideas than physical heroism.

Hiccup’s life changes course when he happens upon a black dragon of the mysterious Night Fury class. Unable to bring himself to kill it, Hiccup ends up naming the injured, giant beast Toothless and, secretly, grows close to him when he’s not training to slay. Their increasingly friendly interactions together lead Hiccup to believe that dragons as a kind have been woefully misunderstood. We are obliged to agree, having seen Toothless behave like a giant cat: slow to trust, wildly playful, potentially fierce, and ultimately loyal and protective.

That depiction helped make Dragon the ultimate animated film for animal lovers. While most feature animation opts to put words in animal characters’ mouths and human thoughts in their minds, the Dragon series succeeded by simply celebrating animals for the way they are. Dragons may not be real, but they absolutely feel real here. Toothless elicits more sympathy than virtually any other character DreamWorks has ever brought to the screen and he continues to do so here, surrounded by human actors and real settings.

The dragon design remains faithful to the animated version. John Powell’s score makes extensive use of his work for the original. This live-action production also found the perfect filming locations in Northern Ireland to represent Berk. No budget has been announced beyond the fact that more than $50 million was spent before filming began. Nothing about this movie looks or feels cheap, with its fantasy world feeling lived-in and full of extras and detailed yesteryear designs.

DeBlois is right not to shake the tree on what is his first narrative live-action feature. His faithful adaptation shows respect for his thrice Oscar-nominated earlier work in this world and for the fans who made it successful. It’s an approach inherently preferable to Disney fixing things that were not broken. About the only major criticism you can lob at the 2025 Dragon is to question its necessity, given that at times it often feels like a shot-for-shot remake. But I suspect DreamWorks and current parent company Universal will soon have hundreds of millions of answers to that question, not to mention millions of satisfied moviegoers.