How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

A rant review

As I’m sure some of you know, I’ve been How to Train Your Dragon’s #1 fan since I was very, very small, so naturally, when I saw they were making a live-action of the movie, I fell to my knees and wept in agony.

I went to see the adaptation with my sister on the 23rd of June, ten days after its release. I wasn’t expecting much! While I was initially pleased that they at the very least hadn’t made many changes and that I’d gotten to see it in a theatre, the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was a stupid movie, and as a professional crazyhead about the duology (I think they wanted to make a third movie but I guess not…), I feel it is my moral obligation to complain about it on my website. At length. Buckle in!

What I liked

The Score!

Obviously. John Powell came back to create what is essentially the exact same soundtrack with a few bits cut out and a few bits added in. (It was a bit scary because I could hear every single change made which is, if nothing else, a testament to how much I adore the music.) This is actually the ideal situation because I could not be held responsible for my actions if they were to create an entirely different soundtrack or if, God forbid, Powell didn’t score it.

(Some of) the actors!

Elephant addressed: I don’t think Mason Thames had even a fraction of the same presence as Jay Baruchel’s Hiccup. It took me a second to get over this. (See: most of the movie.)

If you seperate him from his animated counterpart, though, he was charming! I was fond of him in The Black Phone and he did an alright job here.

Moving away from Hiccup, Nico Parker’s Astrid was great — she was cute and nailed the delivery, and I was fond of Harry Trevaldwyn’s Tuffnut. Speaking frankly, his was the best casting choice made out of every character in the whole movie. He’s literally Tuffnut. I don’t know what to say.

(Most of) the dragons!

This one was a bit shocking to me, too, because I complained a lot about the dragon designs seen in the trailer. I still don’t think the dragons had even a hair on the originals, but again, if you divorce them from the animated movie, they were well done! The Monstrous Nightmare was very ‘classic dragon’ in a way that I liked, and I thought it was cool how they translated the Nadders and the Red Death’s cartoony builds to more realistic designs.

What I didn’t like

The cut scenes

This is very pedantic, but I don’t care! I was born to be pedantic about HTTYD.

Four major scenes were cut in total: the Terrible Terrors post-Test Drive, Hiccup and Toothless sneaking around Berk after dark, Hiccup’s “Excuse me, barmaid!” spiel, and part of Stoick and Gobber’s conversation in the Great Hall. (The latter two were more like half-scenes, but who cares.) (Relatedly, they also got rid of the camera pan to the back of Hiccup’s house in the former, which pissed me off!)

The after-dark scene is one of my favourites in the original movie. I think it’s a cute glimpse into Hiccup and Toothless’ relationship, and I will admit: it made me sad to see it cut.

While that scene’s more character-driven, I found no reason for them to cut the “not so fireproof on the inside” scene. It establishes an important plot point the viewer needs for the final battle with the Red Death, without which you’re left to jump to a conclusion as to what happened rather than knowing. Also, it’s cute and it annoyed me to see it gone.

Stoick and Gobber

I had a lot of problems with these two in the live-action. I’d say Stoick's only saving grace was that Gerard Butler got to reprise the role, though that’s mostly for the voice since Butler doesn’t exactly have the right… physique? This issue was exacerbated by the fact that costuming had clearly tried to make him seem bigger than he really is, what with the hair and clothing, and it didn’t work. At all. He actually seems somehow slighter than he really is under all of it. Gobber was alright (except for the fact that he was British…), but my problem comes mostly from how the two were written.

Gobber and Stoick felt much meaner in this film, and their relationships to each other and to Hiccup lacked the warmth that made them so memorable in the original. Part of this was definitely the two cut scenes including them that I mentioned in the above section, both of which established that these three characters have really deep connections to each other through the comfortable banter and slower pacing. Taking them out made them feel much more distant — Gobber doesn’t seem like a close friend of Stoick’s; rather, he feels like just some guy who hangs around him sometimes, and that made their interactons during the Red Death battle feel out of the blue and insincere. Similarly, I don’t feel this version of Gobber and Hiccup knew each other well at all. What teasing/joking was left after the cuts felt shallow and weird.

Finally, despite the fact that Stoick’s voice was the same, his delivery was vastly (ha ha, get it) changed. The original Stoick feels stern, of course, but ultimately well-meaning, whereas this Stoick feels like he genuinely could not care less if Hiccup were to live or die. One scene that’s always stuck out to me is when, after their argument in the Great Hall, Stoick leaves the building and staggers back for a moment, blinking away tears as he grapples with the weight of what’s just happened. The way it was done in the live-action was lacklustre at best, and was the final nail in the coffin for their relationship to me. This Stoick has none of the presence, none of the weight, and none of the warmth.

SNOTLOUT???, Fishlegs, and Ruffnut (i.e. the majority of the teens)

I’m going to start on a positive note: I liked the bit they added during Hiccup’s dragon trainer montage where all the teens abandon Astrid to go sit with him because they made Snotlout, like, launch himself across the table to sit next to him and I thought that was pretty funny.

Anyway, Snotlout is the greatest offender on this part of the list because they tried to give him depth and it came off as patently ridiculous. Before anyone tries to shoot me in the brain for this, yes I have seen every single episode of both TV shows and I know Snotlout’s deal, but you have to admit, shoehorning his daddy issues into a two-hour movie not meant to accommodate them was a deeply funny choice to make, and they didn’t even do it well! He doesn’t get any resolution, you just see Spitelout put his hand on his shoulder at the end and have to assume all’s well now. It was dumb and pointless and, in conjunction with the fact that the costuming, casting, and hair & makeup departments were all out to get him, I was not endeared to him in the slightest. Original Snoutlout is funny and ridiculous and charming and cute because of his braggadocio, and this sicko imposter is nothing and no one. Who are you and where is the real Snotlout...

The twins as a duo had none of their silly chemistry in this movie and the biggest contributing factor to that is that they cut the twins in half, giving Tuffnut all the funny lines and more screen time and relegating Ruffnut to unfunny one-liners and unmemorable camera shots, giving the impression that they truly kind of despise each other. Free my girl!

I feel she got the short end of the stick in a lot of different ways. Casting-wise I think they wanted to make the twins distinct, so they made her fat and Tuffnut skinny. My problem isn’t that she’s fat at all — it’s that the whole point is they’re identical, and I think they should’ve stayed that way! On top of that, they cut out every funny line she has (most notably the “oops, now this [shield] has blood on it” and (I think!) the bit about Tuffnut’s tattoo) and gave her a few really weird and frankly kind of desperate ‘girl power’ lines instead. I think they were meant to indicate that she’s excluded and wants to be friends with Astrid because they’re both girls, but it was stupid and cringey.

Finally, Fishlegs was pretty forgettable, though I suppose it could be argued that’s true of his animated (movie) version as well. They did make a fat joke at his expense which pissed me off to no end because, hey, almost everyone on Berk is fat…?

Toothless.

Here it is. The big one. What to say about Toothless? The CGI was alright from some angles and stupidly goofy from others, making his onscreen presence very iffy and non-immersive. They do this weird thing where sometimes each individual scale is hyper-rendered and sometimes his whole boddy is very glossy, so he oscillates between looking like a lizard abomination and a gloriously sandpapered flesh-tube for the entire runtime.

On top of that, they made him way stiffer by taking away much of his personality — this is, again, the same issue with Stoick and Gobber in that certain moments which, for lack of better term, anthropomorphize him, were cut out or redone in strange ways. The biggest example I can think of is that after Astrid sees him for the first time, Hiccup says “Duh-duh-dah, we’re dead” (which he doesn’t say in the live-action, just in case you were wondering) and Toothless does this shrug/shimmy in response. Cutting that out made him behave more like an animal, sure, but at the expense of his character. I think the following movie stills will speak more than my words could regarding why I disliked this iteration of Toothless so much. Not even Hidden World’s design situation was this dire. He just looks yucky!

The cove, the village, and Berk itself

The locations in How to Train Your Dragon are vital since they go so far to set the tone and time of the film. Berk in this movie felt so stupidly small that it was actually a bit depressing to see. It was less a village and more a small scattering of houses on a cold, wet rock somewhere. They even got rid of the giant spire! This makes sense because it’d be hard to find a way to portray it realistically, but the sloping mountain they put in its place lent none of the same atmosphere.

As for the interiors, they all felt sloppy and lacking. The original Great Hall is, true to its name, a great hall. It has a massive, cavernous interior, a ceiling taller than the tallest tree, a roaring fireplace, ornate carvings, the whole nine yards. It feels weighty and important. It’s honestly disingenuous to call its live-action counterpart a Great Hall at all. It’s small and cramped and gloomy. It looks more like a place that could feasibly exist in the real world but, again, at the expense of all of its personality and charm.

The cove suffered from the same issue: it’s more realistic, but its sheer walls and cold lighting make it feel less like the safe haven its meant to be and more like just a place that exists and can be seen. I remember reading in the original art book that they tried really hard to round out the cove’s edges by padding it in greenery and paying close attention to the colour scheme, going so far as to literally make sure none of the rocks were especially jagged-looking. This is not apparent in the live-action; I don't even think it was considered. The land has no personality; Berk has no personality.

Miscelaneous odds and ends

The lighting in this movie was atrocious. I was squinting to see what was going on in every scene taking place in the dark, and I was in a movie theatre. You’d think this dedication to the apparent realism of nighttime lighting would transfer over into the day, but every scene set in the daytime is lit absolutely bizzarely — weird colours, harsh brights, the works — and the greatest offender of the lot is one of the most important — that being the scene where Hiccup puts his hand on Toothless, you know the one, everyone knows the one. Just look at it:

Valka is mentioned a few times, by name. I adore Valka, but there was a reason she wasn’t brought up in the original: there simply is no space for her, and her inclusion opens up the story from the insular world of Berk to something bigger. This happens subconsciously, maybe, but it happens nonetheless, and serves as a massive distraction from what’s happening on screen.

Stoick has a sword instead of his hammer! What do I even say about that! What was the point!

The Red Death definitely felt somehow more massive than her animated version, but the battle also felt lamer, and less hard-won. She may be more impressive in visuals, but she doesn’t have the same gravity.

Verdict: "This movie sure was... Toothless..."

This movie was disappointing in practically every respect. The acting lacked presence, the locations felt empty and void, the CGI was terrible on key characters and at key points, and the writing decisions robbed the script of all of its original charm. This movie did not need to exist. The original film is a gorgeous, beautiful masterpiece that takes my breath away each time, and the remake is a cheap plastic copy. I’m going to finish this rant with a tweet I saw when the trailer first dropped which holds up perfectly: “what if a beautiful animated movie looked like a Capital One commercial”.