On the rugged isle of Berk, where Vikings and dragons have been bitter enemies for generations, the Chief’s son defies centuries of tradition by befriending Toothless, a feared Night Fury dragon. Their unlikely bond reveals the true nature of dragons, challenging the very foundations of Viking society. A film by Dean DeBlois, starring Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Peter Serafinowicz, Ruth Codd, Naomi Wirthner, Nick Frost, Murray McArthur, Andrea Ware, Anna Leong Brophy, Marcus Onilude, Peter Selwood, Daniel-John Williams, Kate Kennedy, Selina Jones, Nick Cornwall, and Gerard Butler.

For centuries, Vikings and dragons have been locked in bitter conflict. On the remote island of Berk, the Viking village faces constant nighttime raids as dragons swoop down to steal their livestock. While many communities have abandoned their homes out of fear, chieftain Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) refuses to retreat. Instead, he leads his people in defending their animals and protecting their village from the relentless dragon attacks.

Among the many dragon species, there’s one that stands apart, the Night Fury, a legendary breed so rare that no one has ever laid eyes on it. This mysterious dragon moves with impossible speed, striking faster than the human eye can follow. Unlike other dragons that raid for livestock, the Night Fury attacks without stealing anything, making its motives a complete mystery. Even Stoick the Vast, who can take down dragons with his bare hands, fears this unseen enemy above all others. After all, how do you fight something you can’t even see?

One night, while the entire village battles an incoming dragon raid, Stoick’s awkward son Hiccup (Mason Thames) manages to bring down a Night Fury using a bolas launcher of his own design. But his moment of triumph quickly turns to disaster when his contraption misfires, setting off a chain reaction of destruction that nearly levels half the village. When Hiccup excitedly tells everyone he’s shot down the legendary Night Fury, no one believes him, not even his own father.

A bolas launcher is a device designed to shoot a bolas, a traditional tool made of weights connected by cords, so that it wraps around and entangles a target, usually by catching their legs or body. Unlike traditional bolas, which are thrown by hand, a bolas launcher uses mechanisms like springs, compressed gas, or even a blank shotgun round to fire the bolas with greater force and accuracy. This allows the weights to spread out in the air, letting the cords stretch and wrap around the target quickly, often in less than half a second and from distances of up to 10 meters.

Determined to prove himself, Hiccup ventures into the forest and discovers the black dragon tangled helplessly in his bolas. At first, he raises his knife, ready to finish what he started and claim his victory. But when the dragon stirs and their eyes lock, something unexpected happens, Hiccup finds himself frozen, unable to summon the strength or courage to strike. Instead, in a moment that surprises even himself, he cuts the dragon free.

To Hiccup’s surprise, the dragon doesn’t attack either, even when it has the perfect opportunity. It growls angrily and bares its teeth, but despite being freed by the very person who shot it down, the Night Fury only stares at him for a tense moment before vanishing into the forest

Later, Stoick decides to lead his fleet of Viking warriors on a mission to find and destroy the dragons’ nest once and for all. Before setting sail, he forces Hiccup to join dragon-fighting training with the other local teens: Snotlout (Gabriel Howell), Fishlegs (Julian Dennison), the twins Ruffnut (Bronwyn James) and Tuffnut (Harry Trevaldwyn), and Astrid (Nico Parker), who Hiccup has a major crush on.

Failing miserably in training and tired of being ridiculed by the other teens, Hiccup returns to where he found the dragon. He discovers that it’s trapped in a cove, unable to fly because Hiccup’s bolas severed half of its tail fin. Feeling guilty, Hiccup starts bringing fish to feed the dragon, and gradually the two form an unlikely friendship. He names the dragon “Toothless” after noticing its retractable teeth.

Every time Hiccup visits Toothless, he observes and learns about dragon behavior and weaknesses that aren’t found in the Viking Book of Dragons. Armed with this insider knowledge, Hiccup suddenly excels in dragon-fighting training, easily completing every challenge their teacher Gobber (Nick Frost) throws at them. His dramatic turnaround makes Hiccup instantly popular. Everyone wants to know his secret and get close to the awkward misfit who can now handle dragons with surprising ease.

Meanwhile, Hiccup crafts a prosthetic fin for Toothless, but the dragon still can’t fly since he has no way to control the artificial tail piece. Hiccup solves this by designing a harness and saddle that lets him ride on Toothless’s back, where he can manually operate the prosthetic fin and help guide their flight together.

When Hiccup learns he must kill a dragon for his final test, he decides to flee with Toothless. But Astrid, determined to uncover his secret, follows him and discovers the cove where Toothless is hiding. Panicked, she races back toward the village to sound the alarm, forcing Hiccup to take her on a flight to prove that Toothless isn’t the monster she’s been taught to fear. During their ride, Toothless is mysteriously drawn to follow other dragons, leading Hiccup and Astrid to a massive nest where they uncover the shocking truth about why dragons have been raiding their village.

Written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Dean DeBlois, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is a live-action remake of the 2010 animated film, which DeBlois also co-wrote and directed. The story is loosely based on the 2003 novel of the same name by British author Cressida Cowell.

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@pradt

How To Train Your DRAGON 🔥
The legend is real.
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A film by Dean DeBlois, starring Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Peter Serafinowicz, Ruth Codd, Naomi Wirthner, Nick Frost, Murray McArthur, Andrea Ware, Anna Leong Brophy, Marcus Onilude, Peter Selwood, Daniel-John Williams, Kate Kennedy, Selina Jones, Nick Cornwall, and Gerard Butler.

This is how a live-action adaptation of an animated film should be made! It’s exhilarating and absolutely wonderful. This film deserves to be watched on the biggest screen you can possibly find.

How To Train Your DRAGON premiered at CinemaCon on 2 April 2025. The film was theatrically released in the United States on 13 June, by Universal Pictures.

The How to Train Your Dragon Live-Action Soundtrack Includes a New Song
Movie-goers are in for a sweet surprise: John Powell introduced a brand-new track, called “You Are My Homeward,” that comes as the credits roll. The piece evokes a sense of hope and triumph that befits the movie’s ending. Even familiar songs from the animated trilogy got a subtle refresh that careful listeners may not notice.“One of the things I had to do was try to restructure things. If I’ve done my job right, people will think I haven’t done anything different at all,” Powell said in an interview he posted on Instagram. “But there are a lot of differences going on, and I try to make them feel as if they always were there.”

The ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Star Mason Thames Is Still Freaking Out
As Hiccup, the 17-year-old actor is shouldering the weight of Universal’s new live-action franchise — and living out his childhood fantasy. For Thames, beating out more than 300 other potential Hiccups to star in the live-action “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise — the first film is now in theaters, with a sequel to follow in 2027 — is the height of a fledgling career that began as a kid dancing ballet with his sister in Dallas. Ballet led to modeling, which led to acting auditions, which led to a small role in the Apple TV+ drama “For All Mankind” and larger roles in the Universal horror film “The Black Phone” and the Netflix high-school comedy “Incoming.” DeBlois, who also directed the animated “Dragon” trilogy, solicited what he deemed “completely unauthorized” input from Jay Baruchel and America Ferrera, the original Hiccup and Astrid voice actors, when choosing among the finalists for his new lead and, ultimately, Thames “rose to the top as being the most Hiccup of Hiccups.”

‘How to Train Your Dragon’ remake soars at the box office as family films dominate
Universal Pictures’ “How To Train Your Dragon” soared over the competition this weekend as family-friendly films continued their dominance at the box office. The live-action adaptation of the animated franchise from DreamWorks Animation grossed $83.7 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada, according to studio estimates. The original animated movie was released in 2010 and grossed nearly $495 million in global box office revenue. A sequel followed in 2014 and brought in more than $621 million worldwide. The most recent film in the trilogy, “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” came out in 2019 and made almost $540 million globally.

‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Director on the Big Changes Made and the Storylines He Expanded for Live-Action Remake
There’s the moment where Hiccup and Toothless are befriending one another and drawing in the sand, which leads to the first touch. And then there was also the moment where Hiccup and Toothless are flying together above the clouds and testing out the flight rig, and they become detached. Both are set to beautiful pieces of music by John Powell, and they’re considered to be iconic moments of that friendship and that entire journey. So I thought it would be a fun and challenging task to try to recreate that in the medium of live action, shot for shot as possible. That was an homage to the fan base, and to that original source material, and also that might allow us to then play around a little bit elsewhere in the movie, and maybe omit a couple moments we no longer needed from the animated movie, and delve a little deeper into others that we that we felt might be beneficial in terms of deepening characters and relationships. This version allowed us to go a little bit more nuanced with the performances. And I thought the father son relationship could benefit from knowing a little bit about a little bit more about Stoick’s plight, seeing him as sort of a very public politician, in a sense, trying to keep his dispirited group together and motivated, remotivating them one more time to follow the objective and try to find the dragon’s nest after they’d been defeated yet again in a nighttime raid.