Every Version of How to Train Your Dragon

The original DreamWorks film is one of the rare cases where an adaptation not only stands apart from its source but creates something more emotionally complete. Roger Deakins consulted on the cinematography, John Powell's score is among the best in modern animation, and the climactic sequence between Hiccup and Toothless is genuinely moving more than fifteen years later. It holds up entirely on its own terms.

Because the films are so beloved, the source books have been somewhat buried in their shadow, which is a shame. Cowell's twelve-novel series is genuinely funny, occasionally weird, and contains a much darker arc about dragon genocide and empire than the films ever approached. The narrator's voice, an older Hiccup writing retrospectively, gives the whole sequence a melancholy undercurrent that the films replaced with spectacle. Start with the first and keep going.

DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms relocates the action 1,300 years forward to a modern setting where descendants of the original characters discover hidden dragons underground. The concept has some ambition, but the execution is pitched squarely at very young children and has little to offer older fans of the trilogy. It exists, it is not offensive, and you can safely skip it unless you have a seven-year-old who needs more dragons.