How to Train Your Dragon director Dean DeBlois has revealed the big differences between the animated and live-action versions, from mythology and back-story, to mentions of trolls and Hiccup’s mom.
Dean DeBlois directed both the animated How to Train Your Dragon and the live-action remake that’s hitting screens worldwide over the next week.
When Universal announced the new version, DeBlois told them, “I don’t love this trend, but if you’re going to do it, I want to be the steward,” because of Dean’s belief that he was the best man for the job.
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Although there are times when this new iteration is a shot-for-shot and word-for-word remake, multiple changes have been made, which DeBlois talks through below. Meaning minor SPOILERS ahead if you haven’t seen the original, but no major plot points.
How to Train Your Dragon animation vs live-action
Universal Pictures
DeBlois first talked about how the new filmmaking process affected the way he approached the material as a director.
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“I think the major change for me is that there’s so much planning and preparation so you arrive on the day with a long list of shots you have to get done. But also the flexibility to pivot towards what happens in the performance. Because animation is all about control, even when it comes to the voice recording of the actors, we can cut up our favorite bits and assemble our own versions of the lines.
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“But in live-action you set it up, you go through the blocking, you talk about it with the actors, and you start to roll cameras. Then this magic happens, and it’s like alchemy – a cadence and a flow and an exchange between actors.
“If you’re nimble enough, and you’ve been prepared enough, you can start pivoting, and like ‘let’s move the track over here, let’s get the camera over here, let’s move the lights,’ because something magical is happening. And so you’re ready for that spontaneity. And that doesn’t happen in animation.”
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Building mythology and giving Astrid a back-story
Universal Pictures
We asked Dean if the remake gave him an opportunity to change or tweak anything he wasn’t happy with from the original.
“There were things, yes,” came the response. “A myriad of things. But they fall into three buckets, one of them being I wanted to present more mythology, of how this tribe came together – what the larger world was.
“If all of these cultures were beset by dragons, maybe the Vikings gathered the best of the dragon-fighting warriors into one place – like a task force to take out a major dragon’s nest – and here they are generations later and they still haven’t found the thing. So it puts more pressure and urgency on Stoick. That’s one thing I wanted to do.
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“Then there were a few characters that felt underdeveloped, and maybe underserved in the animated version, due to the time constraints we had. And so getting into Astrid; her back-story, her ambition, her acrimonious relationship with Hiccup – his sense of privilege through her eyes. And what she gives up ultimately to step onto his side of the dragon-human conflict. That felt like something that we could really dig into.
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“And the third thing was just if we were going to do live-action, we’d really lean into the idea that we’ve got a camera operator who can’t keep up with the subject, and everything is just that much more visceral and kinetic. We could add scope and breadth to it, and all the research we did flying around Iceland and the Faroe Islands and Scotland just migrated into the world.”
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Losing trolls, plus a fresh approach to Hiccup’s mom
Trolls are mentioned multiple times in the animated movies as inspiration for several unusual Viking names, and as the potential stealers of socks.
That doesn’t happen in the live-action version, with DeBlois explaining that such humor wouldn’t work in one specific dramatic scene between Stoick and Gobber.
“I didn’t want to bring over that level of whimsy,” says DuBlois. “It just felt that scene could be better served getting into the authentic emotion of a father – a chief – who very publicly is failing as a single parent. And that was about a vulnerability between Gerard [Butler]’s character and Nick Frost’s character – a surrogate parent trying to help out the Dad with this problematic son. Shoving in jokes just didn’t seem as appropriate in this version.”
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Universal PicturesHiccup’s mother Valka (left) in animated form
The live-action version also takes a different approach to conversations about Hiccup’s mother, who is missing, presumed dead. DeBlois explains that’s “because we now know from the benefit of having made the Dragon 2 and 3 animated movies that Valka becomes a character that really plays out as the trilogy expands.
“We didn’t know that when we made the first animated film, and so mentions of Valka, you know, ‘your mother – what would she have thought of you,’ and the sting of what that has left on Gerard’s character Stoick as a parent, and Hiccup, growing up without a mother, having to lean on Gobber and Stoick as his parents as it were, feeling her presence and her absence was important to me.”
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How to Train Your Dragon hits UK screens on June 9, 2025, and US screens on June 13. For more animated action, here’s why 2024 was the year of the cartoon, plus our list of best animated movies ever.
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