How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
Directed by Dean DeBlois
On the rugged isle of Berk, where Vikings and dragons have been bitter enemies for generations, Hiccup stands apart, defying centuries of tradition when he befriends Toothless, a feared Night Fury dragon. Their unlikely bond reveals the true nature of dragons, challenging the very foundations of Viking society.
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16 films that influenced How to Train Your Dragon
What critics say influenced How to Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon (2025) tries to breathe fire—and manages only a mild spark.
The extra 27 minutes brings with it some impressive look-at-me moments—particularly in the final battle scene—but I found it less charming than it animated counterpart.
Few modern animated films have achieved the emotional clarity, visual majesty, and thematic resonance of 2010’s How to Train Your Dragon and its two sequels.
The film is a live-action remake of the 2010 animated feature of the same name, directed by DeBlois and Chris Sanders for Dreamworks Animation.
It is hard to dissuade people from seeing this, especially if the 2010 animated film, or How to Train Your Dragon animated franchise has meant anything at all to you.
More than a decade after Toothless first charmed audiences, Universal Pictures has breathed new fire into "How to Train Your Dragon" with a live-action adaptation that manages to capture the magic of the original while offering a fresh cinematic experience.
It’s stange to have two beloved animated films in theaters once again, but to have them presented in a way that so much of what made them loved is missing. Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon have something in common aside from their live-action remakes sharing theater space.
…followed it with a more recent, but adored, property, LILO & STITCH…
The new How to Train Your Dragon is somewhat easier to rationalize than Lilo & Stitch: while the latter’s animation style has ensured a timeless aesthetic, the former has begun to show its age, if only slightly.
The film is a big hit, even if it’s not going to do Lilo & Stitch or A Minecraft Movie numbers in the family-friendly space.
…as the latest Lilo & Stitch movie will soon enter the billion-dollar club.
This results in a less interesting film than, say, the new Lilo & Stitch (another recent live-action remake of a DeBlois and Sanders team-up, coincidentally), albeit one that still works as a touching spin on the story we already know.
This is no longer a kids’ adventure from Dreamworks—this is adolescent Game of Thrones.
Imagine “Game of Thrones” for kids — the aerial sequences alone, paired with a thunderous score, elevate the experience beyond what the animation could achieve.
Here, they’re every bit as believable as the beasts that Daenerys Targaryen rode on Game of Thrones.
…you’re certainly not letting your kids watch Game of Thrones, right…
…perhaps capturing some of the magic of on-camera flight from other such timeless sequences in films like 1978’s Superman, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Avatar…
It hit theaters just a few months after James Cameron’s epochal blockbuster Avatar, and it tapped into a similar yearning to disappear into a universe where one could tame and ride fearsome, colorful mythical beasts. The two films had been produced concurrently and independently, and both adventures hit familiar sweeping, rousing beats.
(There’s even a bit of How to Train Your Dragon in Cameron’s sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. All these outcast-tames-a-mythical-creature fantasies swim in the same wish-fulfilment currents.)
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…is the third best opening ever for Dreamworks Animation behind a pair of Shrek movies.
…perhaps capturing some of the magic of on-camera flight from other such timeless sequences in films like 1978’s Superman, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Avatar…
The approach recalls Jurassic Park in its awe and scale; seeing these creatures soar on a giant screen is worth the ticket.
…have a more realistic tone resembling the recent Godzilla reboots…
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They spoke to him in the same way the creature effects in, say, the last few Jurassic World films really made him believe in their interpretation of dinosaurs.
Unlike a film like “The Jungle Book” or “Pinocchio,” which have aged for decades…