Film REVIEW: How to Train Your Dragon (2025) - ★★★★★

Mix Up Theatre (Stewart)
Jul 2
5 min read

DreamWorks’ debut live action movie drops is the only place to saddle up your Night Fury. Including trailer, cast, plot, age rating and How To Train Your Dragon live action release date, check out our quickfire guide.

Director: Dean DeBlois

Writer: Dean DeBlois

based on How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

Stars: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Peter Serafinowicz, Nick Frost, Gerard Butler.

Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Action

Themes: Dragon, Viking, Teen Fantasy.

As an ancient threat endangers both Vikings and dragons alike on the isle of Berk, the friendship between Hiccup, an inventive Viking, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, becomes the key to both species forging a new future together.

The film is a live-action remake of the 2010 animated film.

The film received generally positive reviews from critics.

A sequel based on the second film in the trilogy is scheduled to be released on June 11, 2027.

MIX UP REVIEWS:

Stewart - ★★★★★

"A brilliant live action remake, the whole thing looks fantastic and fully grasps the feel of the original whilst giving a little grittier edge by being live action. The cast are excellent lead by Mason Thames fantastic as Hiccup. This beats probably every Disney live action."

Mix Up Junior (Age 6) - ★★★★★

"I give it all the stars! The best bit is when the vikings tie up Toothless and go to take him away but Hiccup comes and saves him. Swoosh!"

Have you seen it?

How to Train Your Dragon live action buzz - Why is everyone talking about How to Train Your Dragon 2025?

What if cartoon characters stepped off the drawing board and walked amongst us? It’s one of the best ideas Hollywood ever had (and we’re not just saying that because we always wanted to ask Jessica Rabbit out on a date). And after the slam-dunks of Disney’s live action campaign – which continues with this month’s Snow White – it seems you lot agree.

For decades, the Mouse House had a virtual monopoly on the format. But now, other big-dog animation studios are getting in on the (live) action – and nobody has more IP up its sleeve than DreamWorks (home of Shrek, Puss In Boots, Madagascar, Trolls and Kung Fu Panda).

Where to start? Well, how about 2010’s How To Train Your Dragon: the sweet, funny, thoughtful, thrilling tale of a young Viking’s forbidden friendship, saluted by Variety as “quite probably the best dragon movie ever made”...?

Dean DeBlois co-directed that original movie (with Chris Sanders - The Croods) and told The AU Review he’s back to top it with How To Train Your Dragon 2025. “We’ve kept the best of the story, but we’ve enriched the characters and deepened the relationships and just added mythology. Making it more immersive and kinetic and visceral.”

How to Train Your Dragon movie plot - What happens in How to Train Your Dragon 2025?

While Disney has tweaked 1937’s Snow White for modern audiences, DreamWorks already had a cracking plot in 2010’s How To Train Your Dragon – and writer-director Dean DeBlois hasn’t messed with it. “I think it's because we knew we were building upon a movie that worked,” he explained at a press event. “So long as we weren't veering too far away from that narrative, the pieces were sort of just designed to slot in.”

In case you’re new to all this, here’s the recap. On the craggy island of Berk, Chief Stoick The Vast’s Viking tribe is locked in a centuries-old war against the swarm of dragons that steal the village’s livestock. But when Stoick’s soft-hearted son, Hiccup, befriends a fallen Night Fury, he discovers the beasts’ rep is undeserved. Spoiler alert: their cattle-rustling raids were all carried out against their will to feed a monstrous dragon called the Red Death.

How to Train Your Dragon live action cast - Who stars in the new How to Train Your Dragon movie?

Last time we saw Mason Thames (Monster Summer), he wasn’t training dragons but fighting serial killers. “I was really taken with his performance in The Black Phone,” Dean DeBlois told Empire, “and wondered if he had any comedic chops or if he could play whimsy. Immediately he embodied this kind of awkward, self-deprecating, vulnerable character that brought Hiccup to life.”

As Hiccup’s rival student and love interest, the character of Astrid is the biggest departure from 2010. “It felt like she was pretty thin, but she potentially had more depth," said DeBlois at a recent press conference. “This was a chance to just get in there and better understand why she's got such an acrimonious relationship with Hiccup in the beginning. She's worked really hard for the attention that she gets. [Whereas] Hiccup has the benefit of privilege. He's the son of the chief, and so he coasts by.”

As for the elders, listen out for Gerard Butler as Stoick (he also voiced the chief in the animation), alongside Nick Frost (Snow White and the Huntsman, The Adventures of Tintin) as the village’s blacksmith and dragon combat tutor, Gobber The Belch. “When a dragon is breathing fire over a bunch of actual Viking men and women running, it feels a lot more scary than when it was animated,” said Butler in an interview with The Direct. “This feels much more involved and immersive.”

How to Train Your Dragon dragons - Which scaly beasts feature in How to Train Your Dragon 2025?

With its soulful saucer eyes, Toothless is too adorable to redesign. “But how do you take those cartoony proportions,” director Dean DeBlois pondered in an interview with The Wrap, “and render them into a creature that feels like it could walk through the jungle in Jurassic Park and look like it belongs?”

When it came to the other scalies, DeBlois told Empire that his team got creative. “It's been a very iterative process, almost working backward, if we treat the animated movie as though it came after the live-action one. We could delve further into the animal references that we had assigned to each dragon. One’s a serpentine crocodile, one's a curious tropical bird, one is a fussy walrus, one is a black panther…”

How to Train Your Dragon age rating - Who can watch the How to Train Your Dragon live action movie?

DreamWorks wants to thrill your whole family – not leave your youngest traumatised and sobbing in the foyer. So just like the animated original, yes, there are teeth, claws and wings. But the How to Train Your Dragon 'PG' age rating tells you there won’t be bitten-off heads, shrieking villagers engulfed in flames or tattered flesh between fangs.

How To Train Your Dragon is in cinemas now – and you haven’t lived until you’ve divebombed on a Night Fury.

“I’m not trying to replace the animated movie but to bring a different experience,” Dean DeBlois explained to The AU Review. “And also intensify the action for an audience that may not have seen it before, or for an audience that has grown up with the original movies – but they now perhaps have families of their own.”

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