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When you set out to adapt a beloved animated movie into live-action, there is always going to be a burning question: why? Why go through the trouble and expense? In the case of the live-action How to Train Your Dragon, they didn’t make many changes to the original; instead, they doubled down on the emotional core of the animated film to show us that, even in a world filled with dragons, it can be parents who inflict the greatest pain onto their kids.

I say this knowing that the 2010 How to Train Your Dragon animated movie was about as subtle as dragon’s fire in its messaging. The key relationship is between Hiccup and his father Stoick, who have very little in common but feel a genuine desire to bridge the gap between them. A lot of the emotional weight of the movie is about these two and the live-action movie doesn’t let up on that.

Stoick spends most of the movie talking down to his son, even insulting him in public. We see the impact that this has on Hiccup; the pain of knowing he has disappointed his father his whole life. And we see the regret on Stoick’s face when he realizes that he’s made a mistake. Most of this hits a bit harder in the 2025 live-action How to Train Your Dragon simply because Gerard Butler gives a better performance on screen than behind the mic. His ability to emote while covered in wool cloaks and a giant beard, with only his forehead and eyes visible, is genuinely impressive.

However, that was all present in the original movie. The live-action adds a couple of short scenes that highlight just how important parental relationships are. The most obvious is with Snotlout. This young man is a boorish, borderline toxic try-hard who is obsessed with trying to impress everyone around him. He makes constant comments to Astrid, usually at the expense of others. He is a classic insecure bully and the live-action How to Train Your Dragon makes it pretty clear why.

See, Snotlout has a father, just like all of us. And just like all of us, he wants his father to spend time with him. Except his father, as we see him in the new movie, is the very definition of distant. To the point where he tells his son, “Don’t talk to me in public.” We, as an audience, are basically shown a direct line from that statement to Snotlout’s terrible behavior. While his father does eventually acknowledge his son after the battle against the Dragon Queen, there is no emotional reconciliation, which is why Snotlout is still a bit of a try-hard at the end of the movie. The most he gets from his father is a silent hand on the shoulder.

Compare this to Stoick, who, while flawed, is still willing to show emotion for his son. He tries (and fails) to have a heart-to-heart about Hiccup’s mother and his hopes for the boy and even weeps with sadness when he is presumed dead and joy when he is alive. Their relationship, at the end of the movie, is on the way to healing because of this.

Adding this bit of Snotlout’s backstory to the live-action How to Train Your Dragon movie doesn’t add much to the runtime and doesn’t add anything to the plot, but it does add an important foil to the key relationship in the movie. Hiccup and Stoick begin to heal their strained relationship not because Hiccup killed an unkillable dragon but because Stoick learned to recognize and celebrate the value his son brought to the village. The change needed to bridge the gap between them had to come from the parents.

Again, this was all present in the original movie, but adding just a few small interactions to the live-action How to Train Your Dragon really doubles down on the theme of parental reconciliation and it is one of the saving graces of the new film.

Learn about the big improvement the new How to Train Your Dragon movie made from the original, as well as the key differences between the original animated movie and the live-action remake. Finally, here's how to watch the How to Train Your Dragon movies and TV series in order.