Thursday, February 6, 2014

How to Train Your Dragon (2010) I Want A Dragon

How To Train Your Dragon (2010) Dreamworks


As soon as this movie became a box office hit, they green-lighted two other sequels practically the same day. I can’t say I blame them because the main character was basically an animal we can all appreciate, a half dog, part cat with the demeanor of a friendly beast for being a dragon. They actually used all sorts of animal noises like elephants, elephant seals, tigers, horses, and domesticated cats to create the sounds Toothless made. The side character was a small kid with the annoying voice of Jay Baruchel who is famous for being a loser in film, but it was fitting nonetheless.

Hiccup was the modern day tale of a kid with daddy issues. He wanted to live up to his father’s expectations and continually fell flat on his face. His dad was relatable because he seems like the everyman who has trouble expressing his feelings to his son. He was a big strong Viking and it was just not in his nature to be emotional or understand the reasoning behind why Hiccup did what he did. He had other stuff to worry about, like feeding the village.

Whenever they talked about Hiccup they told him that he should stop being himself because it wasn’t helping him become a productive member of society. Whenever he was around disaster happened and it was difficult for his father to lead the people with such a misfit son.

When Hiccup meets the dragon, he is put in an interesting conundrum. Slay the dragon and become famous? Or not kill the dragon and eventually find out more about them? If I were Hiccup I probably would’ve killed the dragon and the plot would have ended similarly. Since no one had ever caught a nightfury, it’s safe to assume he would be a big celebrity and that his invention would be used to fend off more dragon attacks. They would eventually force more and more of the dragons away and their village would be safe.

Instead he doesn’t kill the spotted catdog dragon because he sees that it is just another animal and that he was scared of people. Hiccup was being himself and it leads to him finding out all sorts of secrets about dragons. In reality Hiccup just needed to be more of himself and he was going to change everything.

I don’t have a problem with non-conformity to societal and social norms, but I can’t help but feel like Hiccup would’ve had a great run as an inventor. All he really needed was for people to believe in his inventions to prove that they worked and they did work.


The sad part of the movie was the ending when Hiccup loses his left leg, which is a parallel to Toothless losing his left tail fin. It was actually emotional to see Hiccup have to come to grips with losing a limb, which can be a difficult for anyone in the same situation. It was nice to see that Toothless was there to support him the whole time and it reminded me of my awesome dog that would probably do the same. I enjoyed the film and am ready for the other two sequels. A trailer just came out for the second film and it looks good. 

No comments:

Post a Comment