How to Train Your Dragon: Live Action Reignites a Series That Was Starting to Drag(on)

By Thom Ernst

Rating: A-minus

I have never considered the title How to Train Your Dragon as a metaphor for the human condition. And yet, here we are. Against expectations, the live-action adaptation of this animated, fire-breathing family favourite altered my perception of a film I’d previously regarded as a mildly entertaining diversion. While neither version of How to Train Your Dragon provides profound insights, there is more to the movie than I’d allowed myself to believe.

All it took was bringing those animated figures to life—except for the dragons. That would have been far too dangerous.

This new incarnation of the 2010 animated hit is part of a recent trend leveraging technology to achieve in live-action what was previously only possible through animation. It’s usually an entirely unnecessary experiment that, at best, sparks some mild curiosity.

My expectations for this latest HTTYD were low. My motivation to see it was even lower. Were it not for my loyalty to my Original-Cin editors, I would have opted to stay home, catching up on episodes of Better Call Saul. My thinking: Even if the film turns out well—and what are the odds of that?—it’s merely a rehash of something that was already effective.

The film begins with predictable familiarity, showcasing a scenic vista of a cliffside Viking village—a charming, fantastical array of thatched-roof homes and log buildings, precariously perched on rocks. A voice-over narration from the film’s lead character, the young, well-intentioned and keenly innovative Hiccup (Mason Thames), leads us into the story, providing the whys, the hows, and the wheres just moments before the screen erupts in a fiery attack by a multi-species army of dragons.

The scene is loud, cluttered, bombastic, and—begrudgingly—impressive. But it’s impossible to see the live action for the dragons.

So far, still grumpy.

Then something happens. The dust settles, and the characters—no longer overshadowed by an assault of AI dragons and CGI explosions—step into their flesh-and-blood roles: effectively, accurately, completely. Gerard Butler, the only actor to reprise his role from the original, returns as Stoick, the fearless Viking leader with loving but limited expectations for his son, Hiccup.

Nick Frost as Gobber, the local blacksmith, is in fine comic form, utilizing his interchangeable limbs as an effective sight gag. Other characters, familiar to Dragon fans, share a striking resemblance to their animated counterparts: Fishlegs (Julian Dennison), the twins Ruffnut (Bronwyn James) and Tuffnut (Harry Trevaldwyn), loveable lout Snotlout (Gabriel Howell), and Astrid (Nico Parker), the much sought-after Viking girl, voted most likely to slay a dragon.

And then there is Hiccup, whose voice was once synonymous with Jay Baruchel, now belonging to Thames. Much of the film’s success is thanks to Thames’s performance. Thames—who so aptly dealt with Ethan Hawke’s freaky, pedophilic serial killer in The Black Phone—proves himself adept, not just as an action hero, but as an actor with solid comedic chops.

He has the relatable clumsiness of a young Dustin Hoffman, or Paul Rudd, for those whose references fall within the last decade. Scenes between Thames’s Hiccup and Butler’s Stoick, whether comedic or heartfelt, elicit a charm that can only be captured through human interaction.

Dean DeBlois, the Canadian writer/director associated with the Train Your Dragon franchise from day one, directs this latest version. DeBlois could have settled for accurately recreating the original—which, in part, he does—but whether intentional or as a by-product of the exercise, his direction transcends the source material, sparking a seamless evolution of ideas and performances.

DeBlois elevates a beloved cinema memory and creates a spectacle, a mythical fairy tale—Game of Thrones lite—with enough DreamWorks Animation magic to warrant its own theme park ride. There are scenes in How to Train Your Dragon that reinforce just how disappointing Gladiator II is.

How to Train Your Dragon is a heartwarming, commercial bit of cinema about friendship, fatherhood, inclusion, and rites of passage, with an underlying theme of feminism and racial tolerance. But ultimately, How to Train Your Dragon is a family adventure film.

It’s a movie where centuries-old assumptions are challenged, and dragons of all kinds are tamed.

It appears that the dragon requiring training was my own.

How to Train Your Dragon is directed by Dean DeBlois and stars Gerard Butler, Mason Thames, Nick Frost, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Gabriel Howell, and Nico Parker. How to Train Your Dragon opens in theatres Friday, June 13, 2025.