If there’s one truth in the island village of Berk, it’s that you couldn’t pay a home insurance company to set up shop there.
You see, this Viking village has a bit of a recurring pest problem: Dragons just love stopping in to pick up a sheep or two to go. And as they do, they definitely don’t mind torching the wooden houses there, either. Sure, the Vikings put up as good a fight as any thick-bearded warriors could muster. But the usual result? The loss of yet another sheep and the gain of yet another reason for the town’s flourishing pegleg industry.
Their leader, Stoick the Vast, stands as captain of this dragon extermination team. And, like any good exterminator, he knows that to rid one’s home of a pest for good, you must first destroy its nest. That’s why he and his hearty Vikings sail off into the sea, searching for the dragons’ lair.
It’s why they often come back with fewer boats than set sail.
Contrasting Stoick the Vast is his son, Hiccup (the Pipsqueak, so long as we’re adding descriptors). Unlike his father, the clumsy teen Hiccup has never slain a dragon. His interactions with them usually end in narrow escapes and a lot of screaming—and not the bloodthirsty Viking kind. Hiccup wants to be a dragon slayer like everyone else, but he can’t seem to help but blunder everywhere he goes.
That’s why no one believes him when he shoots a net into the air and takes down a Night Fury, the most dangerous and elusive dragon of them all. Hiccup tracks the trapped beast down after it crash-lands deep in the woods. He’s prepared to slay the dragon and prove, once and for all, that he’s a full-blooded Viking, through and through.
He lifts his dagger into the air and … cuts the Night Fury free.
Ah, his village would think, another classic blunder by Hiccup.
But, for the first time ever, they’d be wrong.
Hiccup quickly befriends the Night Fury, naming the beast Toothless. As Hiccup studies Toothless, he realizes the dragon’s predicament: because of its fall in the net, Toothless can no longer fly. Hiccup spends much of the film crafting a new tail wing for the creature, which Hiccup must manually open and close. Their flight training builds an instinctive trust.
A tight bond grows between the two, and Toothless eventually comes off acting like Hiccup’s loyal dog. And just as Hiccup advocates for Toothless (and the other dragons in general), Toothless displays a fierce loyalty to Hiccup, even risking his own life when he hears Hiccup in danger.
But there’s something important to be said for Stoick, too. Though the man’s rough around the edges, it’s evident his concern for Hiccup comes from a good place. He genuinely wants his son to fit into Viking society, and he works hard to help Hiccup meet those expectations. Likewise, Stoick grew up watching those around him get killed fighting dragons, so it’s understandable that he’d instinctively want to protect his son when he sees the boy attempting to tame them instead.
As for the others around town, blacksmith (and mentor) Gobber is the closest thing Hiccup has to a human friend at the start of the film. While the man agrees with Stoick, he’s tries to help Hiccup acclimate to society in his own way. On a similar note, when others begin to see evidence that Hiccup’s training methods are effective, they begin listening to the boy.
Finally, Hiccup’s rival turned friend turned girlfriend, Astrid, exhibits loyalty and bravery as well, both encouraging and challenging Hiccup to hold fast to his unusual convictions about dragons.
Stoick throws out a couple Norse gods’ names as he talks, saying things like, “Odin, it was rough!” or “Thor almighty!” The Vikings occasionally refer to the dragons as “devils,” and, in one instance, Stoick encourages his men to “send those devils back to hell.” A book describes the Night Fury as the “unholy offspring of lightning and death itself.”
In one notable addition to the first movie, the Vikings go to Gothi, the village elder, to see if they should go forth with a voyage. In a form of pagan divination, Gothi throws a handful of bones onto a table, consults the pattern that they make and nods.
Hiccup and Astrid’s friendship gradually grows into something deeper. They eventually kiss—once on the cheek and once on the mouth. Meanwhile, the boisterous Snotlout also crushes on Astrid, though nothing comes of it. And the infamous breastplate helmet returns in this adaptation, too: Stoick gives Hiccup a Viking helmet, telling him it was reforged from his mother’s breastplate. “Part of a matching set,” Stoick says as he dings his own helmet.
This live-action adaptation closely follows its fully animated predecessor, and the violence is no different. However, those violent moments can feel a little more visceral as compared to their animated counterparts.
No combat produces blood, but we do see what appears to be a group of adult Vikings get crushed beneath a massive boulder, and more find the same deadly fate beneath the foot of a giant dragon. We’re likewise told that plenty of Vikings and dragons alike have perished in their never-ending conflict. And we hear of a variety of ways dragons kill their prey, including burying, burning and turning them inside out. Plenty of Vikings hobble around on makeshift limbs, evidencing their narrow escapes from previous dragon encounters. One Viking loses his leg offscreen.
Many Vikings narrowly avoid blasts of fire and dragon bites. And plenty of Vikings get tossed around by the beasts, too. And Hiccup and Toothless endure a few nasty crashes as they learn how to fly together.
But the Vikings fight back against the dragons with matching vigor, clobbering the reptiles with their weapons (though the dragons don’t die, usually just shaking the blunt attack off and flying away). An important element of the Viking culture is killing dragons (and it’s expected of the winner at a coming-of-warrior-age tournament celebrate the victory by killing a dragon in front of the whole village).
At one point, Stoick punches a dragon in the head multiple times. Toothless shoots flaming holes into the wings of another dragon. Perhaps the most cringe-inducing attacks come when one Viking chops at a massive dragon in the eye with his stone axe or when another uses her own weapon to chop through its sharp teeth.
Young and/or sensitive children may find certain scenes in the live-action version more frightening than the original 2010 animated version: a massive dragon devours two smaller dragons whole. Later, a dragon slams into the ground at great speed, killing it. Still another beast is narrowly saved from drowning. Dragons also snatch a couple of still-living sheep away for food. They also drop a large quantity of fish for another dragon to eat.
We hear one use of the British crudity “bloody.” Additionally, at least three exclamations of “God” or “gods” can be heard amid the chaos and din of battle.
None.
Hiccup feeds Toothless a fish, and Toothless gratefully swallows the thing whole. However, the dragon then regurgitates half of it, expectantly waiting for Hiccup to eat his fill, too. Thus follows a cringe-worthy scene wherein Hiccup sinks his teeth into, chews and swallows the raw, recently regurgitated fish.
As Snotlout excitedly attempts to connect with his father, his dad coldly responds, “Don’t talk to me in public.”
They’re going to ruin my favorite movie.
That’s the fear so many moviegoers feel when they hear studios announce revivals and remakes of beloved films. It’s a fear that isn’t entirely unfounded, unfortunately. But I don’t think it holds true with this live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon.
The original, which came out in 2010, captured plenty of hearts with its beloved tale of a boy and his dog—oops, I mean, dragon. It dove deeply into those feelings of self-doubt and isolation with which many of us (and particularly teens of Hiccup’s age) are forced to grapple. And it provided a story of father and son repairing their strained relationship to boot.
All of that is still here—well, mostly because the movie, in essence, hasn’t changed at all. That’s despite the fact that this movie is nearly 30 minutes longer than the original—chalk it all up to a few more lines of dialogue and the film spending some extra minutes on its action sequences. Yessiree, all of you who felt betrayed when the Lilo & Stitch remake changed its ending along with a couple of characters will be quite content with how little this one is changed. In fact, after watching this one, I went back home and watched the animated version, just to see if I could spot any notable additions.
As far as plot additions are concerned, we get a couple new lines of dialogue and a moment in which Hiccup uses dandelions instead of tufts of grass to control a dragon. However, the biggest addition is a certain scene in which the town’s village elder consults a bag of bones to determine the outcome of a future event. These are pre-Christian Vikings, so while the moment isn’t technically out of place, it still feels strange when that spiritual content seemed to be one of the only noticeable plot changes to the original. It’s certainly the biggest change parents will need to consider.
This version’s other content issues are relatively similar to the original’s. However, we’ll remind parents that because this is a live-action adaptation, some of the film’s violent moments will feel more visceral than they did in animated form. A couple dragon encounters, for instance, could leave young children feeling a little scared.
But what more can we say about a movie that didn’t really change? Well, in all honesty, the realistic look of the film takes away a little of the original movie’s charm and replaces it with more grit—a change that, in my opinion, doesn’t fit the film’s overarching messages as well. But even with that grit, the movie remains, as we put it in our review of the animated original, “a fun, thrilling Viking voyage that, in the end, is a simple-yet-salient story about a dragon and his boy.”
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
