DreamWork’s How to Train Your Dragon, based on the series of children’s books by Cressida Cowell, is about a young boy in the age of Vikings named Hiccup. Living in the village of Berk in a time where men and women alike must constantly fight off against countless dragons, scrawny Hiccup worries he cannot ever match with his clan’s ways nor ever make the chief proud to be Hiccup’s father. That is, until, circumstances allow Hiccup to tame and learn more about dragons through a Night Fury he names Toothless. Hiccup uses his newfound knowledge to become the top student in his dragon lessons while making sure to keep Toothless a secret from the others. Eventually a bigger threat emerges and Hiccup has to prove to his people that with right mindset dragons can coexist with humans and together they can soar to new heights.
So some personal backstory. The first exposure I ever had with How to Train Your Dragon was via a trailer before The Princess and the Frog. My dad and I went to see that movie around Christmas 2009, and the trailer played at the start. I don’t recall much of the initial impression beyond, “That black dragon is way too cute to kill.”
That being said, the first exposure that I ever had with How to Train Your Dragon that remember being consistently engaged in (somewhat unintentionally) was The Big Four craze of Tumblr a few years ago.
Four CGI characters (Merida from Brave, Rapunzel from Tangled, Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians and Hiccup from this movie) join together with some portal magic to fight some evil force and they represented different seasons and …
I actually don’t know much else about the crossover honestly. At the time people seemed to romantically pair Merida and Hiccup, which was strange because even I knew one of them wasn’t single in their own universe. I guess The Big Four was a crossover story with no boundaries; there were crossovers of this crossover with other crossovers (Harry Potter and Avengers references were common), manipulations of images to join the characters so they could be in the same scene, music videos, tribute videos, parody videos, and fanfiction galore.
I didn’t join in partially because at the time I had only seen Tangled and Brave, and partially because there was some confusion on how The Big Four was supposed to exist (if it was these four stories blended together by purposeful plot points, if it the characters were always together in this world, or if The Big Four was just a codename for meaningless images of these four characters together). Regardless, it was a fascinating period of my online life.
… This post was about dragons, let’s get back to that.
Let’s start with the characters.
Surprisingly, for a wimpy apprentice, Hiccup has some good verbal zingers throughout the film. I personally love his foreboding, “There’ll be consequences!” If he wasn’t in the Viking age, he’d make a decent retortist or witty Twitter user in today’s society.
That’s a thing that this movie balances well: the dialogue. When characters speak, they do not necessarily speak like Vikings. I mean, many have the looks and accents down pat, though Hiccup sounds pretty modern American. That’s besides the point. This movie could have gone too far in the other hand and made everything a modern day tone to the point that we’re questioning the setting of this world. Hiccup and his peers speak like modern day people but it’s toned down just enough to not be “try-hard”. Plus part of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of modern speech in a loose historical setting.
Hiccup in this movie changes mainly in the sense that he stops being driven by fear and more willing to act with his own agency. He doesn’t automatically know how to handle dragons or how to communicate with them or how to fly on them. Rather, he make the choices to learn more, to try new things and to push the boundaries between the known and the unknown. It’s a coming of age tale for him, where he learns that not everything his dad says is the right way and that his own ways are not tested but may be the better choice.
I’d argue that he doesn’t develop so much internally, as he’s always on the side of not killing dragons (which most audience members undoubtedly would root for after seeing Toothless). Hiccup is an important character less because of how he grows and more because of how he serves as a catalyst for his village to change for the better. I like the type of story where the main character is not the one that really needs to change (though they definitely do learn more about themselves), it’s more so the society around them that has to change to match the main character’s ways. Mulan is another great example of that story. A revolution often involves large groups of people, but are often started by a small number of critical individuals.
Wimpy Hiccup can be annoying to some people; him asking questions about dragons in the middle of dragon training was a bit much. But aside from an issue related to the romance between him and Astrid, which I’ll mention later in this post, he’s pretty enjoyable.
Toothless reminds me of a giant Stitch. Which makes enough sense; Chris Sanders of Lilo and Stitch helped design the dragons here.
Part of the mystery behind Toothless’s kind of dragon was that no one had ever been in close enough contact to handle one. Hiccup manages to do so by luck of the straw (or dragon net, as the case may be.)
What I like about Toothless is his nature. He’s understandable and approachable once researched, but is still undoubtedly feral. Now, “feral” does not equal “evil”, and really like how Toothless doesn’t become a cartoon dog (i.e., too cartoony and anthropomorphic) as Hiccup domesticates him. There is nothing wrong about making a giant animal into a dog-like creature in order to play up friendliness and/or kindness, but I feel that it has been done a lot. Especially in the age of the silent animal companion that a lot of animated movies chose these days, it’s refreshing to see the balance between feeling “He can hurt you without trying” and “Who’s the good boy?!”
Hiccup is constantly trying to win his father’s approval, but also doubts his own ability and morals to live up to the dragon-killing Viking ways. The father himself, Stoick the Vast, tends to push Hiccup away without care. It’s not so much disdain or disgust for his son, but rather confusion at how to deal with someone who doesn’t fit into the Viking culture. It’s also being unsure how to communicate well. Leading is Stoic’s strong suit; listening, not so much.
I mentioned before that I’ve seen Brave, and this dad really reminds me of that one. Both are bumbling yet bold, sentimental yet serious, and have lovely red hair. But whereas Brave dad has his wife, Stoic is going solo, which also accounts for his uncertainty in dealing with his son.
The fact that Stoic would disown Hiccup seems a bit out of place, and it breaks me that it happens at all.
But hey, as flawed as this dad is, he’s much more identifiable and understandable than the dad from Chicken Little. When Hiccup wants to do dragon training, Stoic lets him start with some outside persuasion. Hiccup doesn’t need to become awesome at dragon training and win the big game to get some approval, Stoic is trying to meet him halfway. Effort is always a plus in my eyes; it’s better to try and flounder than to assume your son is a lost cause and will always bring you shame (Chicken Little flashbacks…)
Astrid, the bad-to-the-bone blonde that she is, is in my eyes another “she can take care of herself” character. Nothing horrible, it’s just not my favorite personality to see in a movie. I am curious now, where are her parents in that clan? Hiccup is the only one to have his parent on screen.
Anyway, I do like how Astrid was the first one to learn about Toothless, and it was through Hiccup and more through sneaky shadowing. I wonder why she didn’t figure out sooner though — I thought the eel trick Hiccup used was so obvious!
Not strictly about Astrid, but I do not like how the relationship between Hiccup and Astrid goes down in this movie at all. They become the poster couple for the Dragon series, and I am sure it gets better over time, but something wasn’t fully realized with this relationship in this movie.
I get it, he’s a dorky wimp, she’s a brash tomboy, and they’re both teenagers around 15 years old. A relationship at this age isn’t going to be Thomas Hardy levels of nuanced.
But it seems as though Astrid only starts liking Hiccup after she finds out about Toothless and goes on an (admittedly pretty) sky ride, and it seems that Hiccup doesn’t learn anything new or deep about Astrid to make his interest anything more than a physical infatuation.
And okay, maybe Astrid can arguably be seen as someone who realizes Hiccup is an inherently good person and that being physically weaker than others isn’t bad, different people have different strengths, etc.
Here’s the thing, though. Hiccup started off with a crush on Astrid. The first scene we see of her is when she walks away from a burning shack in slow motion as seen from Hiccup’s point of view. Basically, he thinks she’s pretty and tough and popular — all surface level things that he’d probably be into because he’s lacking in those departments. (Well, okay, I personally think Hiccup, as far as animated boy characters, is cute, but that’s besides the point.)
From the start Hiccup was decent to her without intentions for specific situations, yet she doesn’t treat him with any care until after she finds out he’s hiding the pet (well, Toothless isn’t really a pet, but nuance.)
Hiccup is totally okay with this too. He never calls Astrid out on the less than nice ways she treated him before, or questions why she started liking him (it’s totally because of the dragon).
Yes, Hiccup taming and learning from Toothless shows how keen, curious, and risk-taking he is, which would all be good traits for someone in a Viking village to have and explain why Astrid would be into that.
The thing is, Hiccup was ALWAYS keen, curious, and risk-taking. He was the one begging to be involved and help out with the dragon fights. He was the one to stay into the night reading old books about dragons. He was the one to sneak away from his apprentice duties to try and capture a dragon. He’s already everything that he is later revealed to be, if that makes sense. Astrid never saw this because she never gave him the time of day.
See, I don’t get why Hiccup doesn’t have any doubts that Astrid’s interest in him isn’t anything more than shallow fascination that he can “talk” with dragons. If a girl lost weight and a guy suddenly starting liking her, or if a man won a million dollars and a woman started talking to him, an outsider would question intentions just a bit. In this film, it never gets called into attention by anyone. So I guess Hiccup is shallow too, if he doesn’t seem to mind why the pretty girl he liked suddenly sticks around.
I’ll give her this: Astrid didn’t abandon Hiccup after his father disowns him. It’s the first sign in the movie where I felt her interest is genuine. I’ll grant, too, that sometimes a big event needs to kickstart the relationship, and over time the people get to know each other better in sincere ways. It’s just a bit harder to swallow here. Maybe the relationship was too rushed and not given enough breathing room?
Teenage love. Sometimes the couple is happy but the situation is nonetheless insipid.
As for the other teen characters, I never really bothered to learn their names because I saw them as more pointless versions of Astrid. I honestly just thought of them as “The Twins”, “Brute”, and “Try-Hard”. Not the worst, but nothing memorable. I feel like if the modern dialogue can get frustrating, it’s because of these four being delivered as the de facto bullies. Thank you, next.
Minor role, but I like Gobber a lot. He’s the one to convince Stoic to let Hiccup start dragon lessons, and he has this nonchalant attitude I really enjoy.
On the whole, I really liked this movie. 2010 for me was The Year of Tangled for me, but in hindsight I wish I had made time for this one too. Given that there are two sequels now, plus a TV show, specials, and other media, it would have been nice to grow up alongside Hiccup. But in my adult eyes, I can also better understand the moral of the story, which I feel is best summed up as, “When life gives you fire breathing dragons, make friends with the beasts and conquer your fears to make a better tomorrow.” Or something thereof.
Next week, the sequel that may reach new heights.
Anima of Animation 
Pingback: How to Train Your Dragon 2 Review | Anima of Animation