Editor’s note: In this review, I will refer to the live-action film as How to Train Your Dragon (2025), and I will keep the original title How to Train Your Dragon (without a year) for the original animation from 2010. If you are curious about my review of that score, you can find it here.
For the first time in my life, I have been anxious to watch a movie and to listen to its score. I have postponed listening to it until the day I could finally see the film in the theater. The movie I am talking about is How to Train Your Dragon (2025), and the reason for my anxiety is the existence of How to Train Your Dragon, which I think is an outstanding animation, and the music John Powell wrote for it is a masterpiece. With such an excellent animated film and a score that I consider one of the best soundtracks ever written, I did not like the fact that a live-action version of this film was announced. With Hollywood still trying to make movies based on nostalgia, many of which have been quite disappointing, including their music, I was concerned about this new live-action adaptation and its music. Fortunately, director Dean DeBlois, who directed the animation, also directed the new movie, and John Powell was asked to write the music again, giving me some confidence that the new film would be good.
When I watched the film, I came to a simple conclusion: While the majority of the movie is quite familiar with the same incredible story and characters, it is also different from the original. The story follows the original quite closely, and many key moments are almost identical, but several scenes play out differently, and additional scenes have also been included. This concept of being familiar yet different is perfectly reflected in Powell’s approach to his new score, which keeps the foundation of the music intact by using the same themes and orchestrations. In this review, I will not do a deep dive into the themes, as they are the same as the originals. If you conduct a quick internet search, you can find a lot of detailed information about them with Film Score and More as a great example. Instead, I will focus more on the difference between the music from this live-action version and its animated original.
In the majority of the tracks, you can hear familiar music that matches the same scene from the animation, but then with live actors. That is why there are several tracks on the How to Train Your Dragon (2025) album that bear a resemblance to a track on the original How to Train Your Dragon. Specific iconic sequences from the animation were recreated in the new live-action film with minimal changes, resulting in the music being almost identical in those instances. “A Romantic Flight,” for example, is basically the same as the version from the original. The same almost applies to “A Really Forbidden Friendship,” which features the same outstanding melodies performed by melodic percussion. However, the music is extended slightly in some parts of the track to support the new version of this iconic scene.
Other interesting examples of reusing old themes in the new soundtrack can be found at the start and end of the film. “This Is Real Berk” opens the movie the same way as the original, informing the audience that they are about to watch an authentic How to Train Your Dragon film, but it quickly diverges with additional music. The Love Theme, for example, appears later in the track with a different musical build-up to it. The finale is also almost the same, as can be heard in “We Have Dragons.” It misses the amazing flying theme with military drums from the animation counterpart, “Coming Back Around,” but it includes a brand new theme in the middle. This new theme gets its own moment to shine in the first track in the end credits, “You Are My Homeward,” where it is accompanied by lyrics sung by a choir. Afterwards, you can listen to the second part of the end titles, “..and Finally, The End Credits Suite,” a gorgeous suite containing many of the stunning themes Powell has created for How to Train Your Dragon.
There is one last track that needs to be addressed, which I saved for last in this review, and that is “Test Driving Toothless.” This track is an excellent showcase of why the music of How to Train Your Dragon (2025) is terrific, but it is not as perfect as the music for the original How to Train Your Dragon, which earned Powell an Oscar nomination. When I have to explain the strength and the importance of film music to someone, I always use “Test Drive” from How to Train Your Dragon as the perfect example. The scene can be divided into three parts. The first is learning how to fly until disaster strikes, and while falling, trying to regain flight control. After succeeding, the flight continues, but on a much grander and faster scale. These three parts can be heard perfectly in “Test Drive.” The music in that track retells that story perfectly without the need for the images on screen, matching exactly every action and transition in that scene perfectly. However, the same does not apply to “Test Driving Toothless” from How to Train Your Dragon (2025). The track begins with the same Flying Theme, which is repeated one extra time in this version, which is fine. However, when despair kicks in, a women’s choir starts to chant before continuing with the recognizable, familiar music of falling, succeeding, and flying again. When I listened to it before watching the film, I tried to think about what the choir would represent in the scene. However, when I finally saw the images, the chants did not mean anything specific, making it useless for me to use as an example of how film music can retell a scene perfectly.
After reading this review, you may think that I don’t really like the music for How to Train Your Dragon (2025) that much because I keep saying how perfect How to Train Your Dragon is. However, the music for this new live-action film is fantastic. If the first How to Train Your Dragon did not exist, this score would have been one of the best I have ever heard. Yes, John Powell used a lot of his old material and created new music with them, but put yourself in his shoes. For How to Train Your Dragon (2025), he did not have to write the perfect score; he had to rewrite the perfect score, which is almost an impossible task. He had to compose music to support the scenes, but also use familiar music for those scenes, which cannot fit perfectly because they are not exactly the same as the animated original, but he did that brilliantly by composing the music this movie needed, by using the existing material as its foundation.
After seeing the film in the theater, I was pleasantly surprised. The animation is still better, but I also heard stories of parents taking their kids to this movie, who could experience this fantastic story for the first time on a big screen, introducing them to how astounding film music can be. I have seen many people over the years who are quite influenced by the music from How to Train Your Dragon. Hopefully, How to Train Your Dragon (2025), with its stunning film music, will continue to influence people for many years to come.
Listen or buy
- Buy this soundtrack from Amazon or Apple Music
- Listen to this soundtrack on Spotify
Tracklist
The highlights are in bold.
- This Is Real Berk (7:48)
- I Hit a Night Fury (2:03)
- I Want to Be One of You Guys (1:21)
- Conference of the Tribes (2:12)
- He’s Not That Boy (1:19)
- Searching the Woods (3:26)
- Home in the Ring (2:37)
- First Dragon Training (3:57)
- Sketches of a Wounded Dragon (2:43)
- Our Most Valuable Possesion (3:01)
- I’m Beginning to Question Your Teaching Methods! (3:47)
- A Really Forbidden Friendship (4:47)
- Carefully Attaching (2:48)
- Charming the Zippleback (1:43)
- He Has a Way With the Beasts (4:28)
- Test Driving Toothless (3:06)
- Top Slayer (2:28)
- Caught Designing Outfits (2:26)
- A Romantic Flight (2:28)
- Taken to the Dragons’ Nest (2:05)
- Should We Tell Your Father? (1:40)
- Waiting to Enter the Ring (2:29)
- The Trial of Flame (4:58)
- You’re Not My Son (3:12)
- What Are You Going to Do About It? (3:36)
- Prelude to a Battle (2:18)
- Meeting the Queen (4:18)
- Allied Forces (4:32)
- The Wings of the Beast (2:56)
- Finding Hiccup (4:11)
- We Have Dragons (2:52)
- You Are My Homeward (1:45)
- ..and Finally, The End Credits Suite (6:28)
Total length: 1 hour and 46 minutes
Back Lot Music (2025)
