The Live-Action How To Train Your Dragon Movie Fixed The One Issue The Director Had

The great thing about being able to retell your own story is that you can fix your previous mistakes. In the case of 2025's "How to Train Your Dragon," director Dean DeBlois was able to revisit his 2010 animated classic in live-action, improving not only characters like Hiccup (who's played by Mason Thames, the star of "The Black Phone") and Toothless but also certain plot points from the original film that never made sense to begin with.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about his second go-around, DeBlois clarified how he could do damage control on a story that had remained untouched for 15 years. One particular example he brought up was a bit of a plot hole in the near-perfect original animated movie, in which the people of Berk deal with the fallout of Toothless bringing down the Red Death. As you may recall, the oversized Alpha swiftly turns the Vikings' ships to kindling after Stoick's (Gerard Butler) attack on the island housing the dragons' nest. However, the film never really clarifies how Stoick and the others make it back home after that.

"It also allowed for little moments that we could explain away, like how did all the Vikings get back to Berk at the end of the movie if the Red Death burned all of their ships?" DeBlois explained. "So, we could just address things in dialogue, and it was satisfying to check off a list of those little things, but also make room for missed opportunities." But besides the small details, there were bigger elements in DeBlois' beloved dragon tale that he was keen to tweak as well.

Besides filling plot holes, there were a host of other minor changes in the live-action "How to Train Your Dragon" that DeBlois wanted to make, including giving certain characters more attention. "One of the large ones was that I felt like we missed the boat on developing the other teenage characters, particularly Astrid," said DeBlois, referring to the young Viking played by Nico Parker in the remake and voiced by America Ferrera in the original animated film. "So, I wanted to give her a little bit more purchase in the story and a sense of backstory and why her resentment is so acute when it comes to Hiccup and his position of privilege."

This alteration to Astrid is also what leads Hiccup to choose his future love interest to take the lead in the final battle in the live-action remake. Indeed, she's the one who gives the orders to the rest of the Vikings-in-training, unlike in the animated version (where Hiccup takes the lead). The young Viking Snotlout Jorgenson (who's played by Gabriel Howell in the remake after being previously voiced by Jonah Hill in animated form) similarly gets an expanded role here in the form of a storyline involving his relationship with his father, Spitelout (Peter Serafinowicz). All things considered, then, it will be interesting to see whether DeBlois tinkers more or less with "How to Train Your Dragon 2" while adapting that film into live-action as well.