Sure, “How to Train Your Dragon,” in theaters now, is a live-action adaptation of a beloved animated original, the latest in a whole host of features that try to recapture the magic of a classic, only this time in a different medium. But it’s by far the greatest live-action adaptation of a beloved animated original yet – something that doesn’t, as critic Bilge Ebiri said in his review for New York Magazine, “feel totally pointless.”
DreamWorks Animation’s original “How to Train Your Dragon” was an Oscar-nominated 2010 hit, based on a series of books by British author Cressida Cowell, and concerned the Viking nation of Berk, which is constantly at war with dragons. A young man named Hiccup (Mason Thames in the new movie), desperate for his father’s approval, attempts to take down a dragon (who he eventually names Toothless), but ends up befriending it. And their relationship ends up changing the entire Viking society.
And perhaps the biggest thing that sets 2025’s “How to Train Your Dragon” apart from other films in the format is that Universal recruited Dean DeBlois, who directed the animated original (with Chris Sanders), to direct the new movie. It was something of a natural progression for DeBlois, and something that he had wanted to do for a while – ever since he made the original “Lilo and Stitch” at Disney back in 2002.
“I had a deals right after ‘Lilo and Stitch’ where I set up two projects at Disney and one at Universal and got nearly going on one of them. But when you dream up worlds that are big and expensive, there are so many obstacles that can prevent it from happening on a whim,” DeBlois said. He had spent four years, since 2019’s animated “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” pitching movies and writing scripts for new movies, when he got a phone call from Universal.
“They said, ‘Hey, so we’re kicking the tires on this idea of doing a live-acction ‘How to Train Your Dragon.’ And for me it was an interesting moment, because I thought, Oh God, I don’t want to watch somebody else’s version of this. And yet, I don’t like this trend of live-action movies being made out of animation classics. It just feels like missed opportunity and almost too easy.” But then DeBlois had another thought – I’m too protective of the world and the characters and where the heart is. He “volunteered” immediately and, he said, “started to see all of the promise and potential of what a live-action version of this story could be.”
Part of what he immediately did was recruit some of his collaborators from the original film, including composer John Powell and cinematographer Roger Deakins. Powell agreed but Deakins demurred, instead suggesting legendary cinematographer Bill Pope, who signed on. DeBlois also got a key cast member to return – Gerard Butler as Hiccup’s gung-ho father Stoick the Vast. Butler ultimately came back but it was touch-and-go there for a little while.
“I had heard murmurings from Dean a year earlier, saying, ‘Oh, we’re going to do the live-action, but you’re not available.’ And I remember thinking at the time, I get it. He wants to go with somebody different,” Butler said. A year later he got a text from DeBlois saying that they had tried again but that Butler was working on something else. DeBlois said he was extremely disappointed, because he was excited to work with Butler on the new version. “Now, two hours earlier, it was another movie I was about to make, and we had just had a meeting and said, ‘Let’s push the movie a couple of months.’ Two hours later, I get that text from Dean,” Butler said. Butler went from the movie he was working on right into “How to Train Your Dragon” and he couldn’t have been more thrilled about it.
As for what Stoick means to him, Butler said, “I’ve spent more than half my career with Stoick and we’ve had great success with this franchise. I cherish him, I think a lot of people do. And I cherish Hiccup and Toothless and seeing how that resonates with people.” When Butler was then a part of the live-action film, he said he started asking questions like, “Can we really take it to another level? Can we mesmerize? Can we make the emotional journey deeper?” The resulting film, he said, “feels a little more mature, a little edgier, maybe a little darker and definitely with much more emotional weight.”
DeBlois remembered making the original movie; he and Sanders had replaced a different team of filmmakers and had a very short amount of time to make the movie, putting it together in just 15 months. “We had to speed along through certain elements of the story and keep the scale in check,” DeBlois said. The live-action remake gave them the opportunity to go back in and make it the movie he always envisioned the first time around. “In terms of grandeur and wish fulfillment, I thought we could lean in to the immersive quality of what live action could bring. But, I think more importantly, they were just characters that felt shortchanged to me as well, and it was an opportunity to lend more nuance to those relationships and those backstories and the backstory of this tribe as a whole,” DeBlois said.
In the film Astrid (played by Nico Parker) gets a much more detailed backstory and you just understand the mechanics of the Berk culture much more, including why Stoick is leaving the island to search for dragons, beyond the narrative convenience of Hiccup getting to have his entire arc away from the prying eyes of his father.
But in terms of what he decided to faithfully recreate, DeBlois said that there were moments when he was working on the script and looking at the original and thinking, I don’t know that I can really do better than this. “I was more interested in seeing what would happen when put in the hands of Gerard Butler and Mason Thames, and allowed the opportunity to find their own cadence, to maybe omit things and add things,” DeBlois said. “There are scenes that are almost verbatim to the animated movie, but they have a different feeling because the actors are coming in with a greater sense of authority of who they are and using everything they have at their disposal, physically and otherwise, to craft a relationship that that takes a journey.”
Butler said there was “a very steep learning curve” in terms of transitioning his animated character into live-action. He remembers telling DeBlois that he wanted to have moments “where I can enjoy the size that he is and that expression and that power,” without ever tipping into caricature. “That was the risk – to enjoy it but still keep it with all the different shades and colors that you could have, so within even a big speech, give it all these different levels,” Butler said. “But more than that, the ability to know your size and then come down and have the quieter moments.” His Stoick definitely feels even more complicated than the version in the animated original. And it’s because both Butler and DeBlois were committed to letting that happen.
And if there were any learning curves with DeBlois making his live-action debut, Butler said they got over them pretty quickly, with the actor and filmmaker working hand-in-hand to make “How to Train Your Dragon” such a special movie. “I always felt like I was in more than capable hands with really a visionary genius. And then when you watch the movie, I’m like, Damn, look what he did,” Butler said.
It’s a sentiment that Universal certainly agrees with. Even before the first movie had been released, Universal announced a release date for a second live-action “How to Train Your Dragon,” with this one debuting on June 11, 2027. DeBlois will return to write and direct, with the cast expected to join him.
DeBlois said that his goal is to get Cate Blanchett to reprise her role as Hiccup’s mother, alongside Butler, for the sequel (“It’s hers to turn down, let’s put it that way”) and that he’s going to take in the audience response from the first remake, which will dictate how he approaches the next film.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment to see how general audiences respond to how faithful we were, because some people seem to think it was a good thing. Others will say you should have changed it. I understand all of the arguments, but if the needle favors a faithful retelling with embellishments, then I think that informs the track I should go down,” DeBlois said. “There are flaws in the second story that I want to address regardless and I think there’s opportunity to delve deeper into aspects of the story. I’m proud of the second movie. It does fulfill my ambition of making it feel like ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ of this universe. But it could be improved upon. And so I would love to do that.”
