How to Train Your Dragon (2025) - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

How To Train Your Dragon



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


​

Movie
To say we’re in the age of reboots and live-action remakes of animated films is an understatement. Disney has pretty much gone on a drunken binge to remake every single one of its animated classics into carbon-copy live-action reboots, and other studios have followed suit. And to make their first live-action remake, Dreamworks Pictures has started with the film that elevated them to Pixar/Disney level quality back in 2014. Yes, that means we get Hiccup and Toothless on the big screen once more, and this time with a bigger budget and modern CGI that actually works well enough to make this whole thing seem feasible.

2010’s How to Train Your Dragon was one of those films that really surprised me. Up until that point, Dreamworks' biggest success was the Shrek franchise, and an oddball smattering of cult films like The Prince of Egypt and Megamind. So walking into my first viewing of How To Train Your Dragon was an awe-inspiring experience to say the least. It was the first time that I had felt that I wasn’t watching a B-level Dreamworks production, but one that actually rivaled the greats of that era (which was still Disney/Pixar….oh how the mighty have fallen in today’s world). The story was fantastic. The voice acting was impeccable, and it was a larger-than-life blockbuster animated film that hit all of the right emotional notes. To this day, I still can’t help but get excited by the score or nerdily geek out over the audio mix that Dreamworks put on the disc. It was just THAT fun.

Now, I do not love all of these live-action remakes, but I’m also not opposed to them either. Sadly, most of them have been hit or miss from Disney (I think Cinderella was the only one I truly loved, and the Maleficent films were more like “animated classic adjacent” over a real remake), so I was a tad nervous about How to Train Your Dragon getting the same treatment. I mean, I loved the first two films in the franchise so much that this was walking on modern-day hallowed ground, and the last thing I wanted to happen was to come out of the viewing unhappy and leave an emotional stain on the first film. Well, like I expected, the live-action remake is not going to live up to the high expectations of fans of the original animated film, but it’s actually pretty good on its own.

The story itself is pretty much the exact same as the 15 year old animated film (wow, has it really been 15 years? That means I was back in my early…..ummm, I’m not going to go there), and is pretty much a beat for beat remake of said previous film. I’m talking scene-for-scene cloning, down to even most of the flying sequences with toothless looking EXACTLY the same. It was eerie at times knowing that I could predict the next few lines, or know exactly where a character was going to movie. It has about 20-25 minutes worth of extra runtime from its predecessor, which is mostly minor character development for Hiccup and Astrid.

All that being said, I liked the film. The CGI looks amazing, and the creators were smart in not trying to make it look uber realistic, but rather blur the lines between CGI and realism, to the point where Toothless and the other dragons looked almost real-life, and the live-action characters looked almost CGI at times. It strangely works so that your brain doesn’t see the juxtaposition of CGI and live action, making it seem fake in our minds. My only complaints stem from the fact that the live-action characters aren’t as fantastic as the voice actors from the animated films. The voices for them were spot on and filled with a huge array of vocal talent. Here we have a bunch of younger actors who are trying to ACT like the voice actors from the animated film, and thus they don’t feel as organic and natural as they could. Gerard Butler is the exception, being that he WAS the voice actor for Hiccup’s father in the original film as well as being the live-action character in this one (seriously, it was seamless, and it’s not hard to see why he was one of the best characters in both films). Mason Thames does a solid job as Hiccup, and Nico Parker is serviceable as Astrid, but the elimination of T.J. Miller and the rest of the voice actors for the other kids was SORELY missed. I will say this. Nick Frost as Gobber was rather impressive. He doesn’t have the wild dynamics of Craig Ferguson, but he makes the character his own, and it works better than I thought it would.




Rating:

Rated PG for sequences of intense action and peril.




4K Video: Video:

How To Train Your Dragon arrives on 4K UHD with a stellar presentation on both Blu-ray and 4K, with the 4K UHD disc handily outclassing the already great-looking Blu-ray. Straight from the digitally shot tap, this 2160p disc just looks perfect. I genuinely could not find a single thing wrong with the disc’s encode (and subsequent look), even if I wanted to. The film’s mix of CGI and live action set pieces looks fantastic, with a unique visual look that blurs the line between animated and live action in a way that seems strangely natural. The live-action set pieces (such as the arena where Hiccup and the rest of the kids train) look decidedly old-fashioned, just with better visual appeal, and Toothless looks eerily like its animated counterpart, yet somehow “real” as well. Black levels and shadow details are superb in the nighttime shots, and I could find no signs of banding or crush either. I DID notice one scene (inside the blacksmith’s hovel) that showed some VERY minor digital noise. But that was so fleeting and inconsequential that I almost didn’t notice it. The luscious greens of the island of Burk look amazing, as do the blue skies, while our dynamic duo are learning the ropes of flying. All in all, this is simply a perfect-looking disc that will be used as a demo disc for years to come when it comes to the video encode.





Audio:

The Dolby Atmos audio track is a solid entry, with John Powell’s amazing score back (and why not? It’s not like everything else isn’t back as well) that just MAKES the experience that much more exciting. The Atmos upgrades are nice, but strangely subdued at the same time. The surrounds get some awesome discrete activity as Toothless and Hiccup soar through the sky, and the overheads get plenty of work during the battles and flying sequences (especially near the end with the giant boss battle), but there is a strange lack of intense bass here. I thought I was just going crazy, and my system was having issues. But after comparing the original film’s 7.1 track (from the re-release, the original Blu-ray had 5.1 Dolby TrueHD), it’s pretty obvious that the LFE has been dialed back a good amount. There’s plenty of accentuating bass that supports and fills in the audio mix, but it’s not that chest-pounding, gut-wrenching LFE that I was expecting. The entire final boss battle sounds “good,” but never gets that low-end I was hoping for. What surprised me the most was finding that the most obvious usage of LFE in the entire mix was for Toothless’s “harumphs” and wing flapping. As such, I had to deduct a full star from the rating as this SHOULD have been a top-notch audio mix, and has the bare bones for it, but the lack of low-end punch was a bit frustrating. My actual rating is 4.25/5, but 4/5 is a bit too low, as the rest of the mix still sounds phenomenal, so I'm giving it a 4.5/5






Extras:

• Feature Commentary with Writer/Director Dean DeBlois
• Deleted Scenes with Introductions by Writer/Director Dean DeBlois
• Gag Reel
• Love and Legacy: Making HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON – Go behind the scenes to see how the beloved characters and intricate fantasy world were brought to the live-action medium.
• Building Berk – Walk onto the set of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON and take in the scale, detail, and heart that went into building Berk.
• Dreaming Up the Dragons – A glimpse at the technology, artistry, and imagination involved in bringing life-like dragons to the screen.
• Fit for a Viking – Witness the elaborate transformations the cast made to embody the Vikings we see in the film.
• Forbidden Friendship with Introductions by Writer/Director Dean DeBlois – Watch Mason Thames perform the full Forbidden Friendship sequence with a puppeteer in the early stages of creating one of the film's most iconic scenes.
• Test Drive with Introduction by Writer/Director Dean DeBlois – Hold on tight as we join Hiccup on his first flight with Toothless, and see the various elements that came together to construct the thrilling scene.
• Exploring the Isle of Berk at Epic Universe – Explore HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON – Isle of Berk and discover an island where Vikings and fire-breathing dragons exist together in harmony.

Final Score: ​

All in all, How to Train Your Dragon is a solid remake and was quite a bit of fun. Though personally, I feel that SOME of it was nostalgia from the original film, boosting it a bit. If this were made and the original 3 animated films had never existed, I’m not so sure it would have been as positively received. It’s good, but I feel just a tad uneven at times. Still, I had a load of fun watching the film with my family, and the younger ones seemed to have almost as much enthusiasm for watching as they did when I showed them the animated film 5 or 6 years ago, so I’m guessing Dreamworks did something right here. The 4K UHD set is crammed full of features, as well as some stunning tech specs, so fans of the movie will want the 4K set, and for those on the fence, this is worth watching at the very least. Recommended as a good watch.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerard Butler, Nick Frost, Gabriel Howell
Directed by: Dean DeBlois
Written by: Dean DeBlois
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), Spanish, French (Canada) DD+ 7.1, English DVS
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Studio: Universal
Rated: PG
Runtime: 117 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: August 12th, 2025

Recommendation: Very Good Watch

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

​

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I enjoyed the original so didn't see this one. Will look for it on streaming..