Review Detail

The 2025 How to Train Your Dragon remake feels like flying on autopilot. It’s breathtaking at first glance, but strangely hollow once the wind dies down. Directed by Dean DeBlois, the same filmmaker who made the original animated classic soar, this live-action version is a triumph of technology and a failure of imagination.

On paper, it should’ve worked. The story of Hiccup, the awkward Viking boy who befriends a wounded dragon and bridges the divide between two worlds, is timeless. But in trying to recreate that magic beat for beat, this film forgets what made the original special: heart, humour, and vulnerability. What we get instead is a technically flawless but emotionally muted retelling

Let’s start with the visuals. There’s no denying the craft. The dragons are magnificent, sleek, expressive, and alive. The flight sequences are immersive, the kind of high-definition spectacle that makes your stomach drop in the best way. The village of Berk looks tangible, weathered, lived-in. Everything is grander, louder, more cinematic. And yet, for all that realism, it feels less real.

Mason Thames, stepping into Hiccup’s shoes, gives an earnest performance. You can see the effort, but not always the spark. His Hiccup is more brooding than awkward, more heroic than human. It’s a subtle but fatal shift: the original Hiccup’s strength lay in his clumsiness, his oddness, his vulnerability. His chemistry with Toothless feels strangely mechanical. You never quite buy their bond.

Gerard Butler returns as Stoick the Vast, lending some welcome weight, but even he can’t escape the film’s stiffness. The dialogue feels over-rehearsed, the relationships undercooked. Every emotional beat lands exactly where it’s supposed to, but never with the impact it should.

The bigger issue is tone. The 2010 film balanced danger, wonder, and humour with ease. This one never quite finds its rhythm. The danger feels sanitized, the wonder feels choreographed, and the humour barely exists. The story follows the same structure, the same shots, even the same emotional cues, but it feels preserved rather than reborn.

There are moments, brief, fleeting flashes, when the film remembers what it’s supposed to be. The first flight scene, for instance, still stirs something. The camera glides through clouds, the score swells, and for a second, it feels like you’re back in that world of discovery and innocence. But then the film cuts back to dialogue, exposition, and visual noise. It’s as if it’s afraid to sit in silence and let the wonder breathe.

John Powell’s music, as always, is exquisite, the one truly consistent throughline between past and present. It elevates moments that the screenplay can’t carry. But even the score can’t disguise how risk-averse the storytelling feels. 

That’s the tragedy of this remake. It’s not bad, it’s competent, respectful, and expensive. But it’s not alive. The original film was about connection, between species, between father and son, between fear and understanding. This one is about replication.