HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025)

Name: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025)
Item: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025)
Author: Review

"Animation Worked Better"

Family Content: -1 Caution advised for older children, including teenagers, and sensitive adults.

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is a live action remake about a scrawny but brainy Viking teenager named Hiccup. Young Hiccup wants to be a powerful dragon slayer like his father, Stoick, but Stoick fears for his scrawny, klutzy son. Stoick leaves with the other Vikings to find the dragons’ lair once and for all but lets Hiccup train with the blacksmith who teaches the children how to fight dragons. Meanwhile, Hiccup befriends a new dragon he injured. He also discovers the dragons aren’t what they seem, but how can he tell his father and the rest of the Vikings?

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is too focused on turning the wonderful animated movie into a live action spectacle. In the process, there’s more focus on frenetic violence, which omits some emotional connections. There’s also an expanded role for the pagan witch-like priestess. Some of the supporting acting is mediocre. Some of the fights are silly. Finally, the last battle in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is too frenetic. The movie is still fun and entertaining, but MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children.

Content:

(PaPa, B, PC, VV, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Pagan worldview with witchlike pagan princess consulting bones and magic as well as references to Odin and Thor, but also with some moral content, including father-so reconciliation and kindness triumphs over killing, plus there’s some politically correct diversity added to the story;

Foul Language:

Invocations and complaints to Norse gods;

Violence:

Lots of action violence with practically no blood with dragons attacking humans, humans killing dragons and other violent outbreaks;

Sex:

No sexual immorality or lewd content, but there are two light kisses;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Lying, bullying, mockery, a light joke made about possible gender confusion.

More Detail:

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is a live action remake of the 2010 animated movie about the scrawny, brainy son of a Viking chieftain who helps the community end a 300-year feud with fire-breathing dragons.

Young Hiccup wants to be a powerful dragon slayer like his father, Stoick, but Stoick fears for his scrawny, klutzy son. Stoick leaves with the other Vikings to find the dragons’ lair once and for all. However, he agrees to let Hiccup start training with Gobber, the blacksmith who teaches all the children how to fight the various kinds of dragons.

Meanwhile, Hiccup follows the trail of one of the dragons who attacked the village one night. No one believes him, but Hiccup thinks he hit the dragon with one of his inventions, a special sling.

Hiccup finds out the dragon has lost part of its tail and can’t fly out of the quarry or gully in which it’s trapped. Through a series of trials and errors, Hiccup discovers some of the dragon’s weaknesses, such as how to put it to sleep. This helps Hiccup succeed in the dragon training with the other Viking boys and girls.

Hiccup builds a flap to fix the injured dragon’s tail. Also, he makes a saddle and some reins to try riding the dragon. Soon, Hiccup and the dragon, who Hiccup names Toothless, become fast friends.

Eventually, Hiccup, with help from Astrid, the girl he likes, finds the real reason why the dragons are raiding the town and taking its sheep. He figures out a way to end the feud with the dragons once and for all. The solution, however, just might kill both Hiccup and his father.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is an all-too earnest effort to turn the wonderful, joyful 2010 animated movie into a live action spectacle. In the process, there’s more focus on frenetic violence and some emotional omissions from the first animated move. For example, there are more references to the mother who supposedly died fighting dragons and some other backstory information, which is important. There’s also the addition of an expanded role for the pagan witch-like priestess who finally has to choose the dragonslayer and who predicts the future by tossing bones. The movie moves into more diversity and identity politics. It explains the diversity by saying warriors form all over the world, from south of the Sudan and the Far East, have come to Berk to fight dragons. The explanation does not make sense.

In addition, some of the kindness expressed by Toothless and the romance between Hiccup and Astrid is muted in this version. Some of the supporting acting is mediocre. Some of the fights are silly. Finally, the last battle is very frenetic with a moving camera that actually caused one MOVIEGUIDE® reviewer to get sick.

Finally, the reconciliation scenes at the end don’t flow from the story as they did in the original animated movie, but are more jumping conflict. That’s unfortunate.

All that said, the movie is still fun and entertaining. If you’ve seen the original movie, this HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON would probably make more sense. Gerard Butler is very good as the father, and the boy who plays Hiccup, Mason Thames is also excellent. Astrid, however, is slightly cold, and the blacksmith isn’t as much fun as he is in the original movie. MOIEHGUIDE® advises caution for older children from the movie’s increased paganism and the increased, more frenetic violence replacing character arcs.