How to Train Your Dragon Reviews Praise Live-Action Remake’s Visuals but Call It Unoriginal

Having first inspired audiences back in 2010, the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon is closing in on its theatrical release date and has already garnered its first reviews. The 2025 flick is an exact retelling of Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois’ 2010 classic, this time featuring real-life versions of its animated counterparts. However, early reactions to the remake suggest that while the film manages to recapture the original’s essence, it fails to add anything new to the beloved franchise.

How to Train Your Dragon’s live-action remake draws mixed reviews from critics

Featuring the likes of Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Nick Frost, Julian Dennison, and Gerard Butler in leading roles, How to Train Your Dragon centers around the unlikely friendship between Hiccup, a young Viking, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon. As things unfold, the duo embarks on a perilous journey to save both their species from an impending doom.

In her review for 2025’s How to Train Your Dragon, Empire Magazine’s Helen O’Hara noted that despite DeBlois making the remake with “real love and care,” it showed “far too much deference to its progenitor.” She added, “Even in a remake, we need more originality and less playing the hits.”

Meanwhile, Hannah Flint of Time Out echoed O’Hara’s sentiments in her review. She stated, “How to Train Your Dragon delivers the bare minimum to warrant its recreation.” Meanwhile, Variety’s Peter Debruge had a more positive outlook on the live-action remake. He admitted that “the leap from computer animation to live-action is safer than the trial-and-error update strategy.”

Despite calling it an “unnecessary addition to the animated film,” Next Best Picture’s Daniel Howat levied heavy praise on the “breathtaking visuals, lovable dragons, and a perfectly cast Mason Thames” in his review, going as far as to say that the How to Train Your Dragon remake justly “captures the heart and soul of the original.”

Despite the mixed reviews from critics, further reactions to the How to Train Your Dragon live-action remake should arrive in the coming days when it hits theaters on June 13, 2025.

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