By Aliza Billet, Senior Arts & Culture Editor
One of my most anticipated movies of summer 2025 was the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon. As a fan of the original 2009 film and its subsequent sequels, and a general dragon-lover to boot, I couldn’t wait to spend a few hours with live-action Hiccup and friends. So on June 26, I packed my three little brothers — ages 10, 8 and 4 — into the car and took us to the movies. Excited to share with them the story I love so much, I bought them popcorn and soda and we settled down into the plush movie theater seats. It was a film I was basically destined to love, and I was ready to come out of the theater with fodder for my newest YU Observer article, a piece on live-action remakes.
The thing is, that article never got written, because the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon left me severely underwhelmed.
How to Train Your Dragon (2025) follows Hiccup, a 15-year-old viking who grapples with the expectations his dragon-fighting community has for him — he struggles with the idea of having to kill a dragon. When Hiccup accidentally shoots down and injures a dragon he names Toothless, he slowly learns that dragons aren’t actually as dangerous as his people think they are. For the rest of the movie, Hiccup befriends the injured Toothless and works to convince the people of Berk to accept the dragons, too.
The 2025 remake of How to Train Your Dragon had its charm. I appreciated the landscape shots and the way the world of How to Train Your Dragon came to life by being filmed rather than animated. I thought the CGI of a real-looking Toothless was actually done really well. The music was good overall.
But as for the rest of the movie … something was missing. For example, with the exceptions of Nick Frost as Gobber and Gerard Butler as Stoick, the costuming and presentation of the rest of the characters fell flat. They lacked, well, the animation of their animated counterparts. Part of the charm of Hiccup comes from the texture voice actor Jay Baruchel brings to the role, and 2025’s Mason Thames just didn’t deliver in the same way. I’m not saying he should have mimicked Baruchel’s voice, but he could have done something to bring the character to life.
As was expected, the live-action How to Train Your Dragon was basically a shot-for-shot remake of the animated original, with a few minor changes of the 2025 variety. For example, as is common in remakes today, the characters are more racially diverse than they were in the original. The characters in the 2009 film, while not all voiced by white actors, are Scottish-adjacent and therefore animated as white. The 2025 remake opted for a more diverse cast, and felt the need to justify that choice by inserting a scene in which Chief Stoick the Vast explains that the vikings’ ancestors came together from all over the world in order to fight dragons. The only problem is that this diversity was mostly seen in the background characters rather than in the main cast itself, so the scene felt shoehorned in, as opposed to a conscious decision meant to improve the overall quality of the film. In fact, by having diverse background actors while keeping the main cast mostly white or white-passing, it seemed like the filmmakers wanted brownie points for diversity without telling a diverse story.
But I’m out of steam just writing these points, because the thing is, who cares? The movie was just okay. I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it. I would have been okay not having seen it. And I didn’t need to talk about it anymore.
But then one of my brothers mentioned that he had never seen the original, and I was shocked. Who raised these kids to be so culturally stunted? I thought my family appreciated art! I had to rectify the situation.
In the last week of September, I sat my three little brothers down and we watched the original version of How to Train Your Dragon. We didn’t watch it on a big screen at a movie theater — we watched it on my laptop, squeezed next to each other on the couch — but it was an infinitely better experience. So now I am going to tell you why you should watch How to Train Your Dragon (2009).
How to Train Your Dragon (2009), too, follows Hiccup, a 15-year-old viking who grapples with the expectations his dragon-fighting community has for him. He eventually befriends a dragon he names Toothless, and shows his people that dragons are not the bloodthirsty creatures they thought them to be, etc.
The difference between How to Train Your Dragon (2009) and its remake is that the original practically glows with personality, humor and charm. The writing is sharp, with jokes that land excellently. The characters are so engaging that you want to spend time with them. You laugh at the silly ones, feel for the sweet ones and are generally invested in what is happening to and with them.
And then there’s the orchestration. John Powell’s score is exquisite. The epic orchestral music carries so much emotion and feeling as it flies you through the movie; you almost feel like you yourself are astride a dragon, or ready to go to battle or move to the viking island of Berk. Multiple times throughout the movie, I found myself gasping at the predicament the characters found themselves in, because Powell’s score makes the viewer invested in a way a music-less scene wouldn’t have. For example, the tension and subsequent triumph conveyed during the track “Test Drive,” when Hiccup rides Toothless for the first time and the two of them almost fall to their deaths before learning to trust each other, is almost palpable. You find yourself holding your breath as they plummet through the air — even though you know they’re going to be okay — and only relaxing after they have regained control of their flight, all thanks to Powell’s instrumentation.
I will admit, it’s not a perfect film. The movie was made in 2009, and animation has come a long way since then. There are some shots in the film in which this is very notable, but the movie as a whole is so good that this just doesn’t matter.
Another great thing about How to Train Your Dragon is that it was followed by two excellent sequels. It lays the groundwork for a world audiences love to return to, and How to Train Your Dragon 2 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World do not disappoint with the expansion they bring to that world and its characters. My little brothers are already planning sequel movie nights, and I am more than happy to oblige because I know good things are coming. I will return to those movies again and again.
However, if someone asked me to rewatch the live-action How to Train Your Dragon film, I would genuinely hesitate, and then say no. I don’t need to watch a remake when an excellent original is right there, readily accessible to me. Remakes thrive when they bring something new to the table, when they expand on the original’s world in a way that makes it better (the Legally Blonde musical is the perfect example of this, but that’s a subject for another article). How to Train Your Dragon (2025) attempted this, but didn’t follow through. It sowed the seeds for expansion, but did not cultivate those seeds to bear fruit.
How to Train Your Dragon (2009), on the other hand, is not only a luscious tree on its own, but it contains the roots to a greater franchise. So treat yourself. Watch How to Train Your Dragon. The original.
Photo Credit: Unsplash