Users of the film viewing website Letterboxd will be familiar with the process of logging a new film on one’s account: searching for the film, confirming the date it was watched, and then answering the little check box question “Have you seen this film before?” When it cames to Dean DeBlois’ 2025 fantasy feature How to Train Your Dragon, I honestly wasn’t sure how to respond.

The film is a live-action remake of the 2010 animated feature of the same name, directed by DeBlois and Chris Sanders for Dreamworks Animation. Someone at Dreamworks clearly noticed the overwhelming commercial success that Disney was having adapting its own animated back catalogue into live-action remakes, and decided to cash in on the trend. DeBlois took the opportunity to make his non-animated debut with it. It is slickly presented, and tells a well-crafted and entertaining all-ages story. Of course it does: it did so 15 years ago, and it is telling the same story here. It is even telling that story in almost exactly the same way. Some moments feel like shot-for-shot replicas. In fact, given the extensive CGI used to generate the dragons and many of the backgrounds, it is often only the human actors that are not an exact remount of the same film. New CGI replaces old. The design feels almost identical.

One could condemn the film as nothing more than a mercenary exercise in generating revenue, but honestly that is an argument to be made against any commercially motivated cinema worldwide. One could criticise it for being unimaginative, but the imaginative merits of the 2010 version are replicated with such fidelity that the film is actually rather watchable – even actively enjoyable.

Scenes that benefit most from the human actors are, predictably, those which include human emotions. The climax, in particular, works very well. The cast is almost entirely new, with only Gerard Butler returning to adapt his animated character of village chief Stoick the Vast. A curious element of the original, in which all of the adults sounded Scottish and all of the teenagers sounded American, is not quite replicated but only because there is a far more cross-cultural make-up across the adult characters. Mason Thames makes for a solid lead as Hiccup, but is constantly fighting the audience’s memories of Hiccup across three preceding animated films. Nico Parker faces an identical challenge as Hiccup’s love interest Astrid, although does benefit from a revised screenplay that gives her better agency as a character.

The design of the dragons is good, as it was the first time around. John Powell’s orchestral score is rich and evocative, as it was the first time around. Ultimately it is difficult to praise this film too enthusiastically, because by replicating so much with such fidelity it fails to take any sort of creative risk. It is enjoyable to an extent. The original film remains more enjoyable. At the end of the day, that is probably all that matters.