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It might seem a little soon for a live-action remake of the much-loved 2010 DreamWorks animation How to Train Your Dragon. Based on Cressida Cowell’s book, that film generated two sequels (the most recent in 2019), several shorts, a TV series and multitudes of toys. But Dean DeBlois, who directed the sequels and co-directed the original (with Chris Sanders), clearly has the relevant files still open on his laptop, and has gone straight into this new version.
The 2025 version is a faithful recrafting, as opposed to reimagining. Indeed, it rather feels as if DeBlois is simply rerunning the same software — this time furiously accelerated, and yet somehow more laborious (the original was 98 minutes, this runs to 125).
Hiccup, played here by Mason Thames, is the misunderstood youth growing up on an island where his Viking community is permanently at war with the local scaly fauna. Befriending an elusive Night Fury dragon, he eventually wins the respect of his chieftain dad (played again by Gerard Butler, returning in the flesh as an Everest of blustering bearskin).
At the very least, DeBlois is thorough. The dragons, in all their baroque eccentricity, take on more detailed tangibility than in the animations, Hiccup’s cat-faced familiar Toothless acquiring even silkier vinyl-like textures. And production designer Dominic Watkins gives the Viking village an atmospheric heft of wood, iron and soot.
But it’s all oddly murky, with dense palls of darkness; the dialogue often gets lost amid all the roaring, clanging and heroic musical fanfares; and the editing can be dizzyingly manic. What you miss is the streamlined clarity that made the original such a pleasure. Here, Thames’s personably restrained lead carries the human interest: for all the fury and billowing flame, it’s his expressively quivering nostrils that bring a welcome point of calm focus.
★★☆☆☆
In cinemas now
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