How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

The written companion

How to Train Your Dragon (2025): A Remake Skeptic Meets His Own Counterargument.

Matt has a problem with his usual argument against remakes: this time, he is the new audience they are supposed to reach. He has never seen the animated How to Train Your Dragon, and the live-action version has just given him a terrific time at the movies. Across from him, Dan knows the original and has enjoyed this version too. Their Picture This discussion starts with dragons and performances, but it keeps coming back to that difference. What feels like repetition to one viewer can be discovery to another—and Matt now has to consider that possibility from the other seat.

The story brings him to Berk, where fighting dragons is part of the community’s identity and Hiccup is poorly suited to the role expected of him. His friendship with Toothless challenges what he has been taught and puts him at odds with the traditions around him. Dan sees the familiar heart of the animated film surviving the change in form. Matt encounters it without that comparison running in his head. He gets caught up in the story early, accepts its world, and leaves wanting to see more of these characters.

His original reason for paying attention is the actor playing Hiccup. Matt had been impressed by Mason Thames in The Black Phone and was eager to see where his career would go. That enthusiasm briefly takes the conversation into Matt’s history of spotting young performers he thinks will become stars, but it also explains why this particular remake reached him. It was not simply recognition of a familiar title. A performance he already trusted brought him to a story he had missed, and the new performance rewarded that interest.

Dan’s biggest concern before watching was how the dragons would look. Toothless has an appeal in animation that could easily be lost in a different visual world. Instead, Dan finds him adorable, while the larger, more threatening creatures retain the scale and menace he wants. Matt agrees that the effects feel natural within the film’s setting. Their response is a useful reminder that believable does not have to mean ordinary. They need to accept Hiccup’s relationship with Toothless and feel the danger surrounding it; for both hosts, the visual work supports those emotions.

The human relationships matter just as much to Dan. He responds to the conflict between Hiccup and his father: the desire for a son to follow a familiar path rubbing against the need to let him become himself. Gerard Butler’s performance and Thames’s work help make that tension land for him. Dan also appreciates the way the remake gives some relationships and story details more room, including Hiccup’s connection with Astrid. He considers it close to the original without treating it as an entirely unchanged copy. What he values is that the added space still belongs to the same emotional story.

The music is another part of that continuity. Dan describes how the familiar musical material gives the action momentum and pulls him into the bigger sequences. His enthusiasm is about the elements working together: the performances, the imagery, and the score carrying a story he already likes. He does not leave asking why someone bothered to remake it. He leaves glad this version exists. Matt, who usually finds close remakes frustrating, has no earlier version competing for his attention. For once, he can enjoy the experience before having to assess the duplication.

Dan then puts an interesting complication in front of him. If Matt goes back and watches the animated films, will that make future live-action installments less exciting? Right now, he does not know where the characters’ lives go. Catching up could give him more to love, but it could also restore the familiarity that usually makes remakes feel unnecessary to him. Matt admits he has not considered that. Their exchange does not resolve the argument about remaking films; it shows how much that argument depends on what each viewer brings into the theater.

Both Dan and Matt give the film four out of five stars. Matt makes a distinction he cares about: this feels like a family movie, with something for adults as well as children, rather than a film adults merely accompany children to see. Dan’s experience with his own family supports that recommendation. Near the end, they return to the message about being yourself instead of becoming the person other people expect. It is a theme they wish they had spent more time on, and one that helps explain why the spectacle means something to them.

Does a remake earn its place by giving newcomers the experience the original gave you, even if it cannot offer you the same surprise? Matt’s enthusiasm and Dan’s familiarity make this a particularly good episode to bring that question to. Watch their Picture This discussion ↗.

This companion discusses the premise, performances, and themes without revealing the ending. The full video discusses later story developments.