How to Train Your Dragon review: Nobody needed this remake. But it's sleek, charming and funny all the same
Director
:
Dean DeBlois
Cert
:
PG
Starring
:
Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Nick Frost, Gerard Butler, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Peter Serafinowicz
Running Time
:
2 hrs 5 mins
What is the point of these 'live action' remakes? Why not leave the animated original in peace? The cynic might respond with a Gif of Scrooge McDuck diving enthusiastically into an enormous pile of gold coins.
Crowds have, this summer, already flocked to one retake on a hit Dean DeBlois feature: Lilo & Stitch is, right now, the third-highest-grossing film of 2025. Mind you, the original of that Disney film is 23 years old. DeBlois's excellent How to Train Your Dragon emerged in 2010, and the
second sequel
, also a DeBlois flick, was with us as recently as 2019. Can he justify returning to the origin story so soon?
So many questions. So few ways of saying 'this is how the business now functions'. In times past a new version would feel some compunction to remake and remodel. But, as the fury around the recent
Snow White
confirmed, audiences now seek comforting walkthroughs of material already long-ago absorbed. If you think the Harry Potter TV series will be taking any narrative liberties, I have a used broomstick to sell you.
With all that in mind, it is hardly worth complaining that the current How to Train Your Dragon, though close to half an hour longer than the first film, sticks closely to the story we all know.
READ MORE
The charming
Mason Thames
now stars as Hiccup, son of a fierce Viking chief (unusually,
Gerard Butler
reprises the role he has voiced since 2010), who befriends one of the dragons his friends and family feel threaten their windy community. The usual movie-dad issues play out as we move towards a deeper understanding.
[
How to Train Your Dragon star Mason Thames: 'My driver, Niall, would tell me the craziest stories about growing up in Belfast'
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]
As before, the script, adapted from Cressida Cowell's hit novel series, imposes a 21st-century order on the supposedly gruff Nordic society. One student trots out endless statistics about the different classes of dragon. Formal competitions decide who will take on which task. Little here moves us too far from the values of contemporary suburbia. Stick to your studies and make your family proud.
There are only a few tweaks to the original scenario. The island, rather than teaming with random Northmen, is now inhabited by a dragon-killing elite that the longboats have gathered from all corners of the planet. This allows for an admirable, and hitherto unattainable, blending of the races (the sort of thing those anti-Snow White paranoiacs would deride as 'woke').
[
How to Train Your Dragon star Mason Thames: 'My driver, Niall, would tell me the craziest stories about growing up in Belfast'
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]
All well and good, but you won't be surprised to hear the young protagonist still speaks with an American accent. We don't wish to overly alarm the tweenagers of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
One could bang on all day about how familiar so much of this seems. But it is only fair to acknowledge that, judged as an independent entity (if such an assessment is possible), the current How to Train Your Dragon works as sleek, charming, funny entertainment.
Which year did Marty not visit?
1885
1955
2015
2055
What was Clint Eastwood's first film as director?
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Play Misty for Me
Firefox
Bird
Who is not a sibling?
Macaulay
Kieran
Rory
Benji
The actor playing the title character of which film was actually born in the US?
Klute (1971)
The Mask (1994)
Dudley Do-Right (1999)
Green Lantern (2011)
What is the last Pixar film to win the best animated feature Oscar?
Soul
Onward
Coco
Inside Out
Which is the odd period out?
Ms Weld
Dan Aykroyd in Dragnet
Ms Squibb
Christina Ricci in The Addams Family
Who was not portrayed by Steph?
Ally
Lee
Patrizia
Breathless
Which is the odd one out?
Harrison Ford's other profession
2024 Palme d'Or winner
Todd Haynes's notorious early short
Halloween and Escape from New York
Who is about to succeed, among many, many others, James Whale, Terence Fisher and Kenneth Branagh?
Guillermo del Toro
Ari Aster
David Lowery
Robert Eggers
Whose daughter fought the Triffids?
Alison Steadman
Thora Hird
Patricia Routledge
Margaret Rutherford
Much of that is down to the cast. Thames, hitherto best known as the star of the horror hit
The Black Phone
, doesn't let his fragile ingenuousness get in the way of moral determination. Nico Parker, as his plucky best friend Astrid, is fiery and smart enough for us to confidently conclude that critics will soon not feel the need to point out that she is
Thandiwe Newton
's daughter. Nobody is better suited to shouting in a horned hat than Gerard Butler. Nick Frost does Nick Frost.
Praise must also go the way of all the Irish talent that facilitated the shoot in Belfast and on north Co Antrim's windy coast. As ever, much postproduction fine-tuning has taken place, but the blasted seascape still remains handsomely itself in the role of Scandinavia's crueller archipelagos. If we must have such retreads then let them at least be carried off with this degree of amusing gusto.
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