How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

image for How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

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Not suitable under 7; parental guidance to 10 (violence, scary scenes, themes)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
  • a review of How to Train Your Dragon (2025) completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 17 June 2025.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 7 Not suitable due to violence, scary scenes, and themes.
Children aged 7–10 Parental guidance recommended due to violence, scary scenes, and themes.
Children aged 11 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
Classification: PG
Consumer advice lines: Mild peril and violence, some scenes may upset young children
Length: 125 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

The Viking village of Berk is locked in a war with an endless horde of dragons. The villagers goal? To find the dragon nest and destroy it, ending the conflict permanently. Hiccup (Mason Thames), the son of village chief Stoick (Gerard Butler), is desperate to contribute to the Viking cause, despite his physical shortcomings. Consequently, he creates a contraption to shoot down the ‘Night Fury’. Using his invention, Hiccup shoots the dragon down, yet no one believes him.

Hiccup tracks down the Night Fury, but when he realises the dragon is still alive, he cannot bring himself to kill it. He instead befriends the dragon, naming it ‘Toothless’. As Hiccup continues his secret friendship with Toothless, he excels in dragon combat training, surprising fellow trainee Astrid (Nico Parker) and the rest of the village. Unfortunately, when Hiccup gets into trouble during training, Toothless rushes to his defence but is captured by the villagers. The Vikings use Toothless to track down the dragon nest, leaving Hiccup behind and disowning him for befriending ‘the enemy’.

When the Vikings arrive at the dragon nest, they are met with a terrifying dragon of unimaginable size, and they are quickly defeated. Now, it is up to Hiccup and his fellow trainees to save the Vikings from a deadly fate.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Animal cruelty; Death; Family breakdown; Family death.

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

  • Berk is attacked by dragons who burn buildings, spew fire at the Vikings and steal their sheep.
  • Hiccup shoots down a Night Fury with a ballista/crossbow-like contraption.
  • Hiccup is chased by a ‘Hookfang’ dragon. Stoick saves Hiccup and engages the dragon with his bare hands.
  • Hiccup and the other trainees must fight a variety of dragons during their dragon education.
  • While searching for the dragon nest, the adult Vikings are attacked in the fog by dragons from the air and sea. Only one ship makes it back to the village.
  • An enormous dragon eats two other dragons whole.
  • After being crowned the ‘top Viking’ in training, Hiccup must fight another Hookfang. Though Hiccup initially subdues it, the dragon begins attacking Hiccup once again after Stoick has an angry verbal outburst. Toothless comes to save Hiccup but is captured and tied up by the Vikings.
  • The Vikings break open the dragon nest and are attacked by an enormous dragon who can control the smaller species.
  • Toothless almost drowns after the ship he is tied up on sinks, but he is rescued.
  • During the fight with the massive dragon, Hiccup and Toothless are hit by its tail and tumble to the ground. Hiccup is assumed to be dead by the other Vikings but is revealed to have survived. However, Hiccup does lose half of one leg from the incident.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

  • The large and cruel appearance of the dragons may scare and intimidate young viewers.
  • Toothless swallows a fish whole, before spitting out the fish head, which he then makes Hiccup consume. This scene may disturb and disgust viewers.

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

  • The audience is informed of the death of Hiccup’s mother, which may trigger children who have dealt with the loss of a loved one.

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged eight to thirteen, including the following:

  • Hiccup and Toothless fly to very high altitudes, which could trigger children with a fear of heights. Additionally, there are multiple instances where Hiccup falls off Toothless, potentially reinforcing any psychological worry of falling related to a fear of heights.

Thirteen and overinfo

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

  • Nothing further noted.

Product placement

  • None noted.

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

  • Stoick gifts Hiccup a helmet and informs him that it was made from his mother’s breastplate.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

  • Astrid kisses Hiccup’s cheek.
  • Astrid and Hiccup kiss.

Use of substances

  • None noted.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • Bloody.

In a nutshell

How to Train Your Dragon (2025) is a live-action remake of the 2010 animated film, itself based off the book series of the same name by Cressida Cowell. The film is comedic and heart-warming, but contains many violent, scary scenes and themes of death and family conflict. Additionally, while the content of the movie is very similar to the animated version, the realistic appearance may be more frightening to young viewers. As such, the film is unsuitable for viewers under 7, and warrants parental guidance to 10.

The main messages from this movie are to embrace what makes you unique. Though Hiccup desperately wants to become a Viking warrior, he begins to thrive when he relinquishes his need to conform. The movie also urges audiences to challenge preconceived societal ideas and stereotypes by showing the divide between perceptions of dragons and their true nature.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • Compassion
  • Creativity
  • Uniqueness and personal identity
  • Teamwork
  • Bravery.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

  • The problems with accepting negative stereotypes of people of different cultures, societies, genders, sexualities, etc.