Dragons are vicious creatures. They steal sheep for food and destroy homes and crops with their fire. Every attack is a reminder that life in Berk is dangerous and unpredictable.
But Berk is home to the toughest and meanest Vikings. They don’t back down from anything, not even fire-breathing, high-flying dragons. The people of Berk are fearless. When a dragon appears, they fight it, capture it, punch it, or kill it.
Hiccup (Mason Thames) is the son of the Viking chief, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler). As the chief's son, everyone expects great things from him. But Hiccup doesn’t fit the Viking mold. He’s thin, weak, clumsy, and far from fearless. He often ruins whatever he touches, much to the disappointment of his father.
His peers don’t see much value in him either. Snotlout (Gabriel Howell), Fishlegs (Julian Dennison), Ruffnut (Bronwyn James), and Tuffnut (Harry Trevaldwyn) each have unique strengths and bravery that makes them useful in battle. Even Astrid (Nico Parker), Hiccup’s crush, is a fierce and skilled warrior. She’s easily the best Viking of their generation.
Still, not everyone has given up on him. Gobber (Nick Frost), Hiccup’s mentor, sees potential in the boy. He believes that maybe Hiccup doesn’t need to be a typical Viking. Maybe he just needs to stop pretending to be someone he’s not and start embracing who he really is: a thinker, a builder, a problem-solver. Someone who sharpens swords, creates strange gadgets, and invents new things.
Then one day, everything changes.
Hiccup encounters a trapped dragon. Not an ordinary dragon, but a Night Fury. Night Furies are known to be incredibly fast, dangerously powerful, and extremely rare. According to Viking law, if you see one, you must kill it on sight.
But Hiccup can’t do it. He raises his knife, then lowers it. Instead of killing the Night Fury, he sets it free.
The dragon, however, can’t fly away. Hiccup soon realizes that the Night Fury’s tail fin is damaged, making flight impossible. Hiccup decides to do something crazy, he builds the dragon a prosthetic tail fin.
Before he can test it, though, he must first do the impossible: earn the dragon’s trust.
As Hiccup spends more time with the dragon he named Toothless, he realizes something that could change everything: dragons might not be the enemy after all. They’re not mindless beasts. In actuality, they’re intelligent and emotional creatures.
This revelation forces Hiccup to question everything his father and his entire community believe. Maybe they’ve been wrong about dragons after all.
As I said before, live-action remakes don’t exactly have the best reputation. More often than not, studios fumble the adaptation and end up tarnishing the legacy of a beloved animated classic.
So, there was definitely some fear going into this film.
If there’s one movie that’s incredibly easy to get wrong, it’s this one. The original animated film is many things. It has Vikings and dragons. It’s cute yet grounded, a children’s story that is deeply emotional and surprisingly mature.
Thankfully, the live-action remake somehow pulls it off. And how did it manage that? By simply sticking to what worked in the original. In many ways, it tells the same story, almost shot for shot. I understand that might be a negative for some viewers, though. It can feel like yet another argument for why live-action remakes are unnecessary.
But How to Train Your Dragon proves an important point about doing remakes. To make a live-action adaptation work, and to give it genuine heart, the story needs to stay true to the source material. As the saying goes, “Don’t fix what isn’t broken,” and that seems to be the exact approach this film takes. Because truthfully, there is very little about How to Train Your Dragon that needed fixing. It was already a solid and rich film.
There are still some changes here, of course, but they are subtle and purposeful. You can tell they were made to deepen the lore, explore more character emotion, and set up future events. But in essence, it is still the same movie as the animated one.
Even so, I truly appreciate how it still knows when and how to hit the emotional beats. It captures the key moments that matter most, like Toothless and Hiccup’s first encounter, which is just as touching as ever, and the montage leading up to their flight test. I think it is just as exhilarating as the original, maybe even more so in this format.
One of the smartest choices was bringing back composer John Powell. His music is nostalgic, powerful, and full of emotion, lifting every scene to a higher level than it should. I would not be surprised if he receives another Oscar nomination for this score.
If I have one gripe, it is that the remake loses a little of the original’s charm. The realistic design of the dragons, while impressive, may be a bit scary for younger audiences. Toothless still resembles his animated counterpart, but he has lost some of the cuteness and expressiveness that made him so adorable and beloved.
In summary, I liked this remake. How to Train Your Dragon succeeds where many others live-action movies have failed. It shows that adaptations can work when done with care, respect, and heart. I wouldn’t be surprised if this film become a template for how future remakes will be handled.
4/5
