Movie review: the new ‘How to Train Your Dragon' is a rare remake that earns its wings
What does it mean to remake a story that already works? In a film scene awash with cinematic recycling, the live-action adaptation of How to Train Your Dragon is both a burden and a blessing. Burden, because audiences know it by heart; blessing, because it was a story worth remembering in the first place. This new version rises not through spectacle alone or strict loyalty, but through its re-learning of the story's emotional grain: fear, kinship and the clumsy, courageous process of becoming.
DreamWorks has not historically been a purveyor of live-action nostalgia. That ground has long been trodden by Disney, whose recent photorealistic remakes ( The Lion King, Lilo & Stitch ) have sometimes mistaken sheen for soul. But here, with How to Train Your Dragon , the studio shows a rare thing in the world of legacy IP: restraint. And that's largely thanks to the return of Dean DeBlois, whose hand ensures the remake moves not by corporate momentum, but by a genuine return to form.
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Above Mason Thames as Hiccup and Gerard Butler as Stoick in 'How to Train Your Dragon' (2025) (Photo: DreamWorks)
We are, broadly, in familiar territory. Berk remains a fog-draped island of dragon-fearing Vikings; Hiccup is still the awkward heir with a misfit heart; and Toothless, the wounded Night Fury, is once again both terrifying and tender. But there is a difference in texture.
Mason Thames plays Hiccup with less ironic distance than Jay Baruchel's original voice turn, leaning instead into earnestness (sometimes wide-eyed, sometimes bone-tired). Gerard Butler, reprising his role as Stoick the Vast, gives a performance that is physically imposing as it is emotionally weathered, a father trying and often failing to understand a son he's afraid to lose.
Above Mason Thames as Hiccup with Toothless during their first flight (Photo: DreamWorks)
This remake is not interested in subverting its own legend. It recreates many of the original's most iconic scenes: the fish-sharing moment, the wordless bonding sequences, the soaring flight through the clouds—but filters them through a more human lens. Visually, it is sumptuous. Cinematographer Bill Pope captures Berk not as a cartoon world inflated to IMAX size, but as a harsh, wind-carved land dotted with firelight and fog. When Hiccup and Toothless finally take flight, the result is nothing but awe, a physical and emotional lightness that is earned.
Above Toothless in the 2025 live remake of 'How to Train Your Dragon' (Photo: DreamWorks)
Crucially, the dragons still feel like dragons. Unlike the CGI dead eyes of The Lion King , these creatures straddle the line between believability and myth. Toothless, in particular, retains just enough of his animated expressiveness to remain emotionally legible; a marvel, somewhere between a panther, a cat and a curious child.
Not everything translates cleanly. The slapstick humour that worked in the animated version sometimes lands with an awkward thud in live-action form. There's a stiffness to some of the early scenes, as if the film is still adjusting to its own new skin. And viewers who grew up with the 2010 version may find themselves caught in a kind of vertigo: this is both the film they know and not, and its closeness can be mildly disconcerting.
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Above Mason Thames as Hiccup and Nico Parker as Astrid in 'How to Train Your Dragon' (2025) (Photo: DreamWorks)
But as it settles in, the film begins to do something rather beautiful. Astrid, portrayed by Nico Parker, goes beyond being a romantic interest; this time, she is more natural, a co-conspirator. The dynamic between Hiccup and Stoick, always the emotional axis of the story, feels more bruised and lived-in now. There's real friction, and real grace, in their reconciliation.
And that's the win of this remake: it doesn't chase reinvention for its own sake. Instead, it treats the original story as a myth worth retelling. What the live-action of How to Train Your Dragon offers is novelty and clarity. It reminds us why we were drawn to this world in the first place.
Above Mason Thames as Hiccup with Toothless (Photo: DreamWorks)
Above Toothless in the 2025 live remake of 'How to Train Your Dragon' (Photo: DreamWorks)
By the final act, when dragons and Vikings fight not against each other but for each other, the film achieves that rare thing in blockbuster cinema: sincerity without sentimentality. It's no surprise a sequel is already in the works. If future instalments follow this same compass (careful craft, emotional precision and a bit of wind under the wings), they might just chart a new course through old skies.
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Tatler Asia
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- Tatler Asia
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Tatler Asia
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