How To Train Your Dragon (2025 Live Action)

I just want to start out by saying I was surprised at how well the movie did follow the cartoon. If you are familiar with the plot of the cartoon then you know what happens in this movie for the most part. If not basically Vikings and dragons have been battling each other and this changes when the chief's son makes friends with a dragon.

The casting for this was good for the most part. The stand out actor though was Gerard Butler. This can happen when you have a young cast going up against very experienced actors. The actors playing the kids did well, but just didn't stand out as much. Even Nick Frost as Gobber was a great call. He made the character funny and relatable. The one casting that I was not a fan of was Snotlout. I know that trying to match body size of a cartoon character to a real person can be difficult, but the actor they cast, Gabriel Howell, was just too small to have the same presence on the screen as the cartoon character held. I did like though how they showed the relationship between Snotlout and his father more which showed an overall disappointment of parents with their children in this Viking society. Even though he was not as big as a mess up as Hiccup, he still could not get his father's attention until the big battle. 

One of the things that I really liked about the film is that it showed diversity in the Vikings. Even though the movie tried to play it off more as the greatest fighters of all countries coming together to fight the dragon menace, it would have worked even without that kind of forced explanation. People think of Vikings as just a group of white people, but they forget that historically the Vikings covered a massive distance kidnapping women and kids from all over the place and they and their descendants were mixed into the Viking people. Viking was not really a specific race or culturally exclusive people because of their very lifestyle forced a blending of peoples and cultures. There were also Vikings that did not breed into the overall population, but had been adopted into the culture. The areas the Vikings raided had their own diversity from both trade and slaves (yes slavery is much older then just the pacific slave trade that most people focus on. Just look up where the term slave/slavery comes from) which meant that anyone had a chance of being sucked up into the Viking population. There are some articles that look into this and I will include them at the bottom of this post. 

This is why people also hating on Nico Parker playing Astrid. Yes, she didn't have the blond hair of the cartoon character but the overall physical presence on the screen matched Astrid unlike Gabriel Howell as Snotlout. For Astrid the key part of the character is the physical abilities that the character displayed in comparison to the other teens. Parker was able to bring that physicality to the character which was way more important then what was done to her hair. This reminds me of the arguments around the casting of Jennifer Lawrence for the Hunger Games. They said that she wasn't skinny enough to represent the character. I could not think of any other actress who could have done that part as well as she did. A characters presence on the screen matching the overall character is more important then the little details. People also have issues with the casting of the twins. I will say that this did annoy me a little because the twins looking alike was a key part of their screen presence in the cartoon. There are a lot of mixed gender twins out there where their physical appearance are closely matched and the casting director could have done better in that respect. At the same time the actors, Bronwyn James and Harry Trevaldwyn, that were cast did ok with it, but it felt more like siblings vs. twins. If you have ever had twins in your life you would also know that their interactions are more complex. Sinners did a much better job with the twin situation and at least they consulted twins to gain a better understanding of the complexities around twins. How to Train Your Dragons didn't even get siblings to play the twins, so that was a disappointment that they missed out on even a family relationship. 

The special effects were great. I like how they handled the training arena scenes with the dragons. Sometimes when CGI animals are in films there is a slight disconnect between the actors and the animals they are supposed to be interacting. (A recent film that suffered from this was Stitch where near the end Nani was supposed to be petting Stitch, but her hand did not line up with the CGI). This film did not suffer from that. Even the underwater scene was handled well with the human/CGI lining up well. 

SPOILERS AHEAD: Skip to the end if you don't want spoilers. Some people are saying an important scene was left out, but they actually changed things a little. In the original cartoon there is a scene where a little dragon is challenging Toothless and Toothless breaths fire into it. Hiccup makes a comment about dragons not being fireproof on the inside. Then in the big battle Hiccup uses that tactic to bring the big dragon down. In the movie though there is much more of a focus on Toothless shooting fire balls through the wings of the larger dragon to weaken the wings and then as the dragon is in a dive it can not stop the fall and it crashes into the mountain. Yes Toothless still shoots fire into its mouth, but that is not the main focus of the defeat. It is the dragon not being able to pull up from the dive with injured wings. 

Overall the movie was really good and still had the same feel as the cartoon. 4 stars out of 5 or a A-.

Diversity of Viking Articles:

"Short, dark and southern -many Vikings aren't who you thought they were"- https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/sep-19-woodpeckers-fight-violent-wars-understanding-hibernating-squid-and-more-1.5729266/short-dark-and-southern-many-vikings-aren-t-who-you-thought-they-were-1.5729268

"Sweeping DNA Survey Highlights Vikings Surprising Genetic Diversity"- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dna-analysis-reveals-vikings-surprising-genetic-diversity-180975865/

"What Ethnicity Were Vikings"- This article talks about how even northern African peoples were incorporated into the Vikings. https://viking.style/what-ethnicity-were-vikings/

These you can find on Google Scholar, but you may need special access (like through a college) to view the full text.

"Thraldom: A History of Slavery in the Viking Age"- https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wHs_EAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Vikings+slaves&ots=bq37FsOfNQ&sig=iiaJto2JC2bwUBcwG724RsxXIs8#v=onepage&q=Vikings%20slaves&f=false

"The slave markets of the Viking world: comparative perspectives on an 'invisible archaeology'"- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/0144039X.2019.1592976?needAccess=true

"Concubinage and Slavery in the Viking Age"- https://www.jstor.org/stable/40919117

Picture 1 From: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26743210/

Picture 2 From: https://www.picturehouses.com/movie-details/000/HO00016250/how-to-train-your-dragon-2025/0000000100?filter=

Picture 3 From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgPvQGa2iac

Picture 4 From: https://www.tribecafilm.com/films/how-to-train-your-dragon-2025

Picture 5 From: https://www.reddit.com/r/cartoons/comments/1jl6os3/how_to_train_your_dragon_2025_official_character/

Picture 6 From: https://toonado.com/dreamworks/the-menacing-red-death-hunts-toothless-in-new-how-to-train-your-dragon-poster-a9814

Picture 7 From: https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/how-to-train-your-dragon-live-action-differences

Picture 8 From: https://www.reddit.com/r/cartoons/comments/1jl6os3/how_to_train_your_dragon_2025_official_character/#lightbox