Review: Live-Action How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

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Review:  🎬 Live-Action How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

How to Train Your Dragon (2025) - "A return to Berk, but it's true, you can never really go home again"

 2 out of 5 stars


Watching How to Train Your Dragon once more feels like greeting an old friend—until you realize the friend barely remembers who you are. Dean DeBlois returns to Berk with a live-action spectacle that dazzles the senses but leaves the spirit untouched. The film’s visual grandeur and state-of-the-art CGI invite us to glide alongside dragons in ways we’ve never seen, yet the emotional core feels strangely hollow.

Cinematographer Bill Pope captures Berk’s rugged cliffs and storm-lashed shores with painterly precision. Every scale on Toothless gleams under moonlight, every fireball lights up the sky with visceral intensity. The CGI is nothing short of fantastic—dragons swoop, roar, and emote with uncanny realism, making it easy to forget you’re watching pixels rather than flesh and bone.

Amid this digital wizardry, Gerard Butler stands out as the film’s emotional anchor. His Stoick is weathered by grief and cracks with paternal warmth, delivering every line with a gravitas that underscores the stakes of father-son conflict. In contrast, much of the younger cast feels a beat behind. Mason Thames’s Hiccup and Nico Parker’s Astrid show flashes of the original characters’ charm, but their inexperience makes many crucial moments ring hollow rather than heartfelt.

For those craving an authentic journey into Viking and dragon lore, the 2010 animated version remains unsurpassed. That film breathed life into a daring boy and his Night Fury through hand-drawn warmth and narrative depth. Here, in sharp realism, some of the story’s magic slips through the cracks—set pieces replace emotional development, and nostalgia props up scenes that once soared on genuine surprise.

Ultimately, this live-action take is a pale comparison to its predecessor. It showcases technical brilliance but falls short of capturing the beating heart that made the original so enduring. Fans may marvel at the spectacle, but they’ll leave craving the soul that only animation could conjure.


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