What can one say about the new “How to Train Your Dragon” that one didn’t say back in 2010, when it was animated, not live-actioned? And really good?

One can say that the remake gets the job done. One can also say the job is not an inspiring one. Reworking a familiar, proven narrative in an animation-to-“real”-live-action transfer rarely feels, looks and acts like an improvement. But freshness can be irrelevant at the box office for these ventures. (The “Lilo & Stitch” remake is heading toward the billion-dollar global benchmark.)

“Dragon” writer and director Dean DeBlois, making his live-action debut, co-directed the original and returns to the adventure fantasy world of the dragon-beset North Sea island of Berk. Viking son Hiccup, not the Viking type but a crafty graphic artist and inventor, has been raised like all Berkans to despise the marauding dragons making life persistently difficult. Gerard Butler voiced Stoick in the earlier animated features, and comes home for another tour of duty, this time in person, sounding like he’s literally gargling every line.

Loosely based on Cressida Cowell’s “Dragon” books (charming, by the way), the DreamWorks animation trilogy went its own way with admirable sweep and terrific flying sequences. What worked most affectingly in DeBlois’ “Dragon” film 15 years ago works here as well: the initially wary, gradually loving cross-species friendship between Hiccup and the young, winged Night Fury dragon dubbed Toothless by his human savior. Mason Thames isn’t quirky or witty, as Jay Baruchel’s marvelous vocal characterization was in the animated features, but he’s fine. So is Nico Parker in the expanded role of fierce dragonslayer-in-training Astrid.

In both the 2010 trilogy launch and this 2025 version there’s a ton of mayhem, and the forest training scenes between Hiccup and Toothless don’t simply act as a breather. They’re the reason the franchise clicked in the first place. It’s hard not to be affected by the cruelties inflicted on Toothless, whose sleek, elementally beautiful character design in the animated realm retains its sincere appeal in this live-action adaptation.

To be clear, live-action is of course is primarily not that at all. It’s some live-action, blended with the digitally animated everything else, mixed with choice real-world locations (Iceland, in this case, a real looker as always). But that’s the thing about making things look real, as opposed to imaginatively not real, or illustrative the way some animation embraces. The magic tends to fade. You’re left with slapstick that plays more like pain without the funny, and a much harder edge to the travails and injuries inflicted on both dragon and human figures.

DeBlois sticks extremely closely to the sequencing of the 2010 version, while adding nearly a half-hour of new material to the teenagers-in-training scenes, for example, and to the climax. The latter, you may recall, deals with newly sensitized Viking hordes following Hiccup, Astrid and company, and their newly befriended dragons, in an assault on the beastly plus-sized queen dragon ruling the faraway island nest. That climax now verges on enough-already and the no-end-in-sight ending of “Avatar: The Way of Water” in the lingering at the gate championship.

Mapping out the first “How to Train Your Dragon,” DeBlois and his co-writers and co-directors approached their source material with some fidelity to the spirit, as opposed to slavish devotion to the letter. The storybooks were blueprints for the necessary expansion. This time, the successful movie DeBlois already made is the blueprint. The remake is just like the original, but there’s more of it. And less.

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'HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON'

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG (for sequences of intense action and peril)

Running time: 2:05

How to watch: In theaters June 13

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