How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

Gorgeous, faithful and almost completely unnecessary. Dean DeBlois co-directed the animated original, and he changes so little here you could play the two side by side. Hiccup, the scrawny inventor son of chief Stoick, brings down a Night Fury with his bolas launcher, finds it hurt in the woods and can’t finish the job. Instead he names it Toothless, rigs a saddle and a prosthetic tail fin, and learns to fly while struggling through dragon-fighting class with Astrid, Snotlout, Fishlegs and the twins. Gerard Butler is back as Stoick, now in the flesh, and the cartoon’s biggest images are all here at full size. The flying scenes are the reason to buy a ticket. Critics called it a loving copy that never explains why it exists, and they’re right on both counts. It runs 125 minutes and made $636.9 million worldwide. A 7.2 because the original was great and this is still basically that. $324 says somebody in your house sketches a dragon saddle on a napkin before dessert is over.

What works: The flying sequences are thrilling, and the story of a boy and his dragon still hits as hard as it did in the cartoon.

What doesn’t: It copies the original so closely that it never gives you a single reason to pick it over the animated film.

Who it’s for: Kids meeting Toothless for the first time, and grown-ups who want to see the cartoon’s best moments at full size.