How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

This year's live-action-plus-CGI remake of 2010's How to Train Your Dragon understandably bears a notable resemblance to the earlier film, though neither is particularly similar to the children's book by Cressida Cowell on which they are vaguely based. Both movies have the same producer-writer-director, Dean DeBlois; the same composer, John Powell; and even the same actor playing Stoick the Vast, Gerard Butler. As far as recollection serves, the new film is practically a beat-by-beat copy of the old, only with live actors inserted into the more photorealistic animation.

Hiccup, the forward-thinking Viking who's a great disappointment to his Stoick, Vast father and all the hardy folk of the island of Berk, is played by Mason Thomas, who headlined the terrific movie The Black Phone. As a not very Nordic-looking Astrid, his fierce love interest, we have Nico Parker of Dumbo. Alert viewers might also recognize Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead) as the local blacksmith and dragon-slaying instructor and Peter Serafinowicz (a.k.a. Darth Maul in the Star Wars prequel trilogy) as the inattentive father of overcompensating Viking brat Snotlout.

I'll make this brief, because I have to. This is how you do a live-action remake of a beloved animated feature. Save this reference for later and, cough Disney cough, refer to it. It should bother no one that the ethnicity of the Vikings of Berk has been broadened to include people groups from all over the world, wherever dragons have been making a pest of themselves. Meanwhile, the live-action version hits the heart in all the same ways as the original, with laughs, thrills, chills and lumps in one's throat.

I liked this movie well enough to go see it twice in one day, and it didn't suffer from a second viewing. Even on the repeat, I got the same lump in my throat and the same urge to shout something (I don't know what) at one or two points. It was painful to hold it back. There is a limit to how young a child should be dragged into the theater to see this movie, as the audience at my second viewing demonstrated. It isn't for tiny little ones. But it's beautiful to look at and, with the previous point understood, solid, family-friendly fun.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The awkward, father-son bonding moment when Stoick gives Hiccup his mother's "breast hat." (2) Astrid's first ride on Toothless, a turning point for her character. (3) The moment Stoick realizes he's been mistaken about his son. Yes, for all the flying-on-dragonback thrills and boss-battle badassery, the movie at bottom is a very small, family drama, but totally sells it. While I don't think it will ever fully eclipse the animated original, I think it will stand beside it and become a classic that people will go back to over and over.