For years, old wood carver Mr. Meacham (Robert Redford) has delighted local children with his tales of a fierce dragon that resides deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. To his daughter, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) who works as a forest ranger, those stories are little more than tall tales until she meets Pete (Oakes Fegley), a 10-year-old with no family and no home who claims to live in the woods with a giant green dragon named Elliot. From Pete's descriptions, Elliot seems remarkably similar to the dragon from her father's stories. With the help of Natalie (Oona Laurence), an 11-year-old girl whose father Jack (Wes Bentley) owns the local lumber mill, Grace sets out to determine where Pete came from, where he belongs, and the truth about this dragon.