“It’s time, Hiccup.” Stoick tells his son, Hiccup, in the official trailer of the live action remake of How to Train Your Dragon. If anyone is like me and loved the animated How to Train Your Dragon series and the imagination it brought, you were just as excited to hear that the rumors of the live action remake were coming true. If you have never seen the trilogy (released in 2010, 2014, 2019), I highly recommend watching it before you watch the live action. You can watch it on Netflix, Max, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. 

This was not the first time the series was adapted. It was adapted originally from a 2003 book series to the beloved animated film. Now it’s being adapted again from animation to a live action movie. The idea of a live action remake was originally announced in February 2023. However, filming could not take place until almost a year later, January 15, 2024, due to SGA strikes. It finished filming later that year on May 16th. We got our first sneak peek back on November 15, 2024, and the first trailer was released 4 days later. The official trailer was released ahead of the Super Bowl. 

Dean DeBlois is directing and producing the live action remake, who also wrote and directed the animated films. So we won’t have to worry about the remake going in a completely different direction, like how when the Percy Jackson series was first being adapted into a movie. Another thing that fans, including myself and some of my friends, seem to be really looking forward to is that the character of Stoick is being reprised by Gerard Butler. Having an actor from the animation reprising their role from the original is always a great idea because not only does the actor know the story of the movies and the character, they know how to best embody that character. Butler reprising his role of Stoick will be really great to see come to life on the big screen. 

The main characters in the movies, Hiccup and Astrid, will be played by Mason Thames and Nico Parker. Soon after the casting was released, there was some backlash about the casting of Astrid because Parker is a black actress, and historically, Vikings were white. But DeBlois countered that the series is only a story, and made up one for that, not based on history. This wasn’t the first time this kind of casting controversy occurred; we saw it for the casting of Ariel in the Disney live action remake for The Little Mermaid. I, personally, couldn’t care less about the casting as long as they embodied and did the characters justice. We should beat a point where anyone can be anyone and do anything they want, and that applies to the acting and film industry as well. The decision of who plays the role of characters for films is ultimately up to the director, and we as the audience have to trust their decisions. 

When I first saw the trailer, I recognized a lot of the lines from the original animations and a majority of the scenes are the same as the original. Quite literally shot by shot; even where the camera positions are the same. For example, the scene where Hiccup first gets to touch Toothless, it’s an eerily similar shot of how they captured that moment. Personally, I feel like that if every scene is just as similar to the original, it’s lacking that creativity in terms of expanding how the story will be told. We’ve seen how it’s told one way in the animated films, but I want to see a bit more creativity in the storytelling while still sticking to the storyline, like seeing the story unfold from a different camera perspective. 

I also just recently rewatched the original animated movies, and was just as fascinated as I was when I saw it for the first time. Then I rewatched the live action trailer. The vibe of the trailer does not have the same vibe as the original animation. I was somewhat disappointed in the trailer because it doesn’t give me the same excitement when I watched the original movies. In the original, Hiccup is seen as an outcast, but has this determination, curiosity, amazement, and grit to his character. Based on the trailer, Hiccup only has half of those characteristics, determination and grit. But I can’t feel or see the character’s curiosity or amazement, especially when it comes to learning more about dragons. Another aspect that throws me off is how Toothless is portrayed. At least early in the first movie, Toothless is ferocious on the surface, but deep down, he has this childlike personality to him. However, in the trailer, there’s nothing ferocious or scary about him. All I see is his childlike personality. But maybe that will come in handy in the future, if the movie does well and DeBlois continues to remake the other two. 

The film industry has been remaking a lot of live-action movies and shows, but we don’t know whether they are adding more creativity to the remakes or just doing remakes to make a profit off it. In my opinion with this remake, part of me feels like it’s just to make money, but the other part knows that we have the original writer and producer as well as Butler reprising the role of Stoick, so I’m sure that DeBlois has something up his sleeve and is just waiting for the right moment to tell us or reveal the creative changes when it premiers. But I’ll have to wait until it drops over the summer on June 13, 2025, 15 years after the release of the first animated How to Train Your Dragon.