"How to Train Your Dragon" the Most Unnecessary Disappointment of 2025

For decades, Dreamworks has been one of the world's leading animation studios. Their films hold a special place in the hearts of millions worldwide, but none have remained as beloved as 2010's How to Train Your Dragon. Not only was the film a box office success, but a critical one as well, scoring 2 Academy Award nominations, and becoming the go-to comfort movie for children and adults alike from around the globe. Fifteen years after its release, Dreamworks followed in Disney's footsteps and turned one of their most cherished films into a live-action remake. A near shot-for-shot remake, 2025's How to Train Your Dragon predictably does everything the original did, but astronomically worse.

The original How to Train Your Dragon is a film I hold very close to my heart. It's one of the first movies I can remember seeing in theaters, not only helping me fall in love with animation, but film in general. I'm sure my reaction was the same as everyone's when I found out they were adapting it into live-action, a resounding eye roll. For the past decade, it has been a trend to adapt beloved animated films into live-action in a soulless attempt to make more money. Despite the gargantuan budgets these remakes receive, we have yet to see one that improves on the original or even measures up in terms of quality. When rumors started going around that the 2025 film would be a shot for shot remake of the original I had very conflicting emotions. On one hand, the original is fantastic, on the other hand, what's the point? I ended up seeing the movie out of morbid curiosity more than anything and was genuinely surprised by a lot of aspects, but not in a good way.

It is abundantly clear which scenes were shot practically and which were in front of a green screen. For the most part, these practical sets are impressive but they're clearly the minority. When you make a film that relies this heavily on computer generated sets the result is at risk of looking cheap, and unfortunately that's exactly what happened here. The whole movie reads more as a regional theater production instead of a blockbuster feature film.

The design of Toothless in live-action is pretty much identical to the animated version. But How to Train Your Dragon runs into the same exact problem as the live-action Lion King which is that unfortunately, animated creatures will always be more expressive and fun to watch. The original design of Toothless is so ingenious because he has the ability to come off as both intimidating as well as puppy-dog cute. In the remake however, he's exclusively cute. No doubt a move by Dreamworks to sell as many toys as possible. This is actually an issue with all of the new dragon redesigns because all of these creatures had the ability, when animated, to be endearing or terrifying based on the context. In live-action, they are just one note. But the overall cheap look of this film is far from the only issue...

Let me not mince words here, there is not a single good acting performance in How to Train Your Dragon. Performances range from forgettable to downright hard to watch. The closest thing to a decent performance is Gerard Butler as Stoic the Vast, but he's essentially just reprising his animated role to a T. By far the most stiff acting in the film comes from Nico Parker as Astrid, daughter of Thandiwe Newton. Every line is delivered with a blank stare and practically no emotion, there are bound to be talks of nepotism on the internet as soon as more people see the film. Mason Thames, known for his lead role in 2021's The Black Phone plays Hiccup with absolutely zero charisma. Perhaps the two most grating characters are twins, Roughnut and Toughnut played by Bronwyn James and Harry Trevaldwyn. And as disheartened as I am to say it, Nick Frost is incredibly underwhelming as Gobber, my inner Cornetto Trilogy fan was sobbing.

Not only is the acting underwhelming, but there are so many great jokes from the original film that are absolutely ruined by butchered delivery. Multiple times throughout the runtime I found myself thinking "that's the take they used?" It's truly bizarre to see a film this high profile and well-funded look so...amateur. On top of all that, the remake is so much less efficient with its time, adding a full thirty minutes to the runtime for pointless extra scenes and meandering dialogue.

But at least the film has the same score by John Powell right? Well, yes and no, for some reason Dreamworks decided to re-record all of the music from the original. For some unspeakable reason, even the music is of noticeably worse quality. Iconic tracks like "Test Drive" are so much less impactful, it's actually baffling how they managed to screw up something as simple as the music.

Overall, I'm disappointed but not surprised that Dreamworks has followed in Disney's footsteps of remaking their previous films rather than creating original ones. But tedious wastes of time like these are inevitable when there are boatloads of money to be made. The only good thing I can really say about 2025's How to Train Your Dragon is that it made me want to immediately go home and watch the original. Do yourself a favor, save yourself twenty dollars and rent the original at home.