Dragons have captivated people’s imaginations for centuries. While no one knows for sure where the idea of dragons first originated from, history tells us that two main types of dragon folklore evolved over time: the Chinese dragon and the European or Western dragon. Generally, European dragons were huge, could breathe fire, had wings, and were pretty much evil all around. The Chinese dragons, on the other hand, were symbols of power, wealth, wisdom, and other good things. This article does a decent job of explaining the difference between the two in greater detail. Or, if you don’t feel like reading, here’s a video. (This guy sounded the least bored when explaining the differences.) Even in modern day stories, dragons are usually either good or evil, with most of the good dragons coming from stories that have an Asian influence while most of the evil dragons have a more European influence. There are very few stories where dragons can be both good and evil. One of them is How to Train Your Dragon.
The movie opens on the island of Berk. It is in the midst of their nightly dragon attack. They don’t go somewhere that is dragon-free because they are Vikings and stubborn. Hiccup, the blacksmith’s apprentice and son of the village chief, wants more out of life and believes that the only way to do this is by killing a dragon. The only problem is he’s a twig who can’t fight, lift more than fifty pounds, or wield a weapon. He made a machine to help him fight, but no one believes in him. So he sneaks out during a dragon attack and goes after the most dangerous dragon known to man: a Night Fury. He actually manages to launch his machine and bring the beast down, not that anyone believes him. Especially since he grabs the attention of a different dragon while he’s out and manages to accidentally cause more damage to the town.
The next morning, Hiccup goes out in search of the dragon. When he finds it still alive but trapped, he realizes he’s not a dragon killer and sets it free. However, the dragon is unable to fly because its tail was damaged in the attack. Hiccup starts visiting the dragon, whom he names Toothless, every day to study him. Hiccup discovers the many catlike qualities about Toothless and the two slowly form a friendship.
Stoick, meanwhile, enrolls Hiccup in a dragon hunting class while he and the other Vikings leave to search for the Dragons Nest. To say Hiccup is not good in the class would be an understatement. He nearly dies several times. It is not until he starts incorporating what he learns from Toothless into the class that he starts to find success, and he soon becomes a celebrity around town. After Gobber tells the class that a dragon’s tail wings are what gives it flight, Hiccup uses his blacksmith skills to make an artificial wing for Toothless. A few prototypes and one montage later, they manage to get off the ground. Unfortunately for Toothless, he cannot fly solo, so Hiccup decides to he must, therefore, ride Toothless. How no one on an entire island sees or hears a dragon flying around in broad daylight is unknown, but the flying scenes are awesome so who cares.
Stoick returns and hears about Hiccup’s success in the class, and is excited that he and his son now have something in common. Hiccup has no idea how to tell his dad the truth, especially after he wins the right to kill a dragon at the graduation ceremony. He decides that the best course of action is to run away, but Astrid follows him and finds out about Toothless. Toothless decides that the best way to win over Astrid’s trust is to scare her into thinking he’s going to kill her. Scared out of her mind, she does apologize for her behavior, and Toothless calms down. The three fly into the night sky. Toothless ends up taking them to the Dragons Nest. There, they learn that the dragons have to bring food to the alpha or else they will become food.
The next day, Hiccup decides to try and end the dragon killing. He refuses to kill the dragon at the ceremony and starts to win it over, but Stoick scares it and makes it attack Hiccup. Toothless hears the commotion and rushes to protect Hiccup. Toothless is captured in the commotion. While Hiccup pleads for Toothless’ life, he accidentally tells Stoick about the Nest. Stoick then chains Toothless to his ship and goes in search of the Nest. Hiccup gathers his friends and they follow on the training dragons.
At the Nest, the smaller dragons run away from the giant behemoth dragon that controls them. The Vikings quickly realize they are no match for it and try to escape, but it won’t let them. The kids show up to help. Stoick is shocked to see them riding dragons, but more shocked when they start making a difference in fighting the beast. Hiccup and Toothless lead the beast up into the clouds to fight where it can’t see Toothless coming. They manage to light the gas in its mouth prematurely and it dies in a huge fireball. Unfortunately, Toothless’ prosthetic tail is burned off, and Hiccup falls off him in the chaos. Toothless rushes down and manages to grab Hiccup as the fireball engulfs them.
Stoick runs over to where Toothless crashed once the fire dies down. There is no sign of Hiccup. Toothless waits until Stoick says he’s sorry for not listening to reveal an unconscious and slightly injured Hiccup safe in his claws. Stoick thanks Toothless and they all go home.
Sometime later, Hiccup wakes up and is surprised that Toothless is in his house. When he gets out of bed, he realizes he is missing his left leg, just like how Toothless is missing his left tail wing, because symmetry. When he makes it out of the house, he is confused as to why there are dragons everywhere. Stoick explains that the Vikings have seen the errors of their ways and decided to follow Hiccup’s lead. Astrid kisses Hiccup, and the movie ends on a high note.
Hiccup, voiced by Jay Baruchel, is the weakling son of the chief of Berk. He has a major crush on Astrid, who does not feel the same way about him. All he wants in life is to be accepted by his peers and father. This is hard since most everyone in Berk is all brawn and no brains, and he’s the exact opposite. He’s tired of everyone bullying him for being different, and his status as the son of the chief is not helping. The reason he and Toothless become close is because curiosity gets the better of him. He could easily tell his friends, “Remember that Night Fury I shot down? I can take you to it right now.” Instead, he visits Toothless alone and learns the truth about dragons. Despite his constant “I can’t kill dragons” whining, Hiccup is the only person we see kill a dragon on screen. In the end, his intellect saves the day, and Berk quickly adapts to having dragons as pets not pests.
Toothless is a Night Fury. He is a large, black dragon with retractable teeth. Like all dragons, Toothless is very catlike. Which makes sense since the animators modeled Toothless after a tabby cat, among other animals. That explains why he reminds me of my cats so much. During the dragon attacks, he never took any food. Instead, he flew around as a distraction so the other dragons could steal food, causing massive amounts of destruction, and never missing a shot. His black scales perfectly camouflaged him against the night sky. He is reluctant to trust Hiccup at first, and even a bit annoyed that the twig of a human keeps bothering him, since humans constantly attack and kill dragons, but eventually Toothless is won over and the two become best friends. As such, he is extremely loyal and protective of Hiccup.
Stoick the Vast, voiced by Gerard Butler, is the leader of the Vikings and Hiccup’s father. He is everything Hiccup is not: loud, strong, commanding, stubborn, just to name a few. He is a terrible father. In his defense, he is a single dad and the chief, but he is not a good father. He tries, but he fails. His main concern is protecting Berk from the constant dragon attacks, and he will often lead expeditions to search for the Dragons Nest to put an end to the attacks once and for all. At the end of the movie, his parental instincts finally kick in, and he and Hiccup start to have a real relationship.
Astrid, voiced by America Ferrera, is Hiccup’s love interest. She doesn’t take Hiccup seriously at first, and even resents the fact that he becomes the best student in the class. She gets suspicious when Hiccup goes from nearly dying every time he steps into the ring to dominating dragon training class. After she discovers Toothless, and Hiccup “convinces” her to go for a ride, she changes her mind about the whole killing dragons thing. She also starts to return Hiccup’s feelings after the flight. Astrid is the one who convinces Hiccup to find another way to get to the fight after Stoick captures Toothless. I’ve always loved Astrid’s design, especially her skirt. Something about the skulls and the spikes makes her look fierce, but with a feminine touch.
Gobber, voiced by Craig Ferguson, is Stoick’s friend, a blacksmith, and the kids’ dragon fighting teacher. He lost a hand and a foot to dragons in the past. To compensate for his lost hand, he can change out the prosthetic to suit his needs. Some of his prosthetics include a hook, an ax, and a hammer. Gobber tries to help Stoick with the single parent thing as best he can, even going as far as to give Hiccup an apprenticeship, and it’s him who convinces Stoick to put Hiccup in the class. But Gobber is just as clueless as Stoick in some ways. His teaching methods are questionable at best, since they mostly involve him opening the gate and seeing what happens. He builds Hiccup a prosthetic foot at the end of the movie.
Except for Astrid, Hiccup’s classmates are not important to the story. At all. It’s actually impressive how unimportant these characters are. Ruffnut and Tuffnut, voiced by Kristen Wiig and TJ Miller respectively, are twins that are in the class with Hiccup. Even though they are technically two different people, it is impossible to separate the two, since they have the exact same personality. They’re loud, rude, and their fighting often makes the situation worse. Fishlegs, voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, is a nerdy kid in the class with Hiccup. He knows all of the stats of every dragon they could possibly face. He is the least annoying of Hiccup’s classmates who are not Astrid. Snotlout, voiced by Jonah Hill, is trying to be the suave, cool kid in the class. He has a crush on Astrid and is constantly trying to impress her. I’m not sure who I find more annoying: Snotlout or Ruffnut and Tuffnut. I kind of block all of them from my memory, though. The classmates are recruited into helping fight the huge dragon at the end, but they just kind of disappear mid-battle, then show up in the background at the very end of the movie.
The animation in this movie is really good. The movie was released in 3D, which I heard made the flying scenes super amazing. Unfortunately for me, 3D seriously hurts my eyes, so I have not seen this movie in that format. But even without the 3D effects, the flying scenes are spectacular. And the backgrounds are beautiful. There’s such an attention to detail, especially with things like fur, hair, and scales. This video goes into more detail. I touched on this briefly when talking about Astrid, but the designs of all the characters are very unique. I’m not sure how realistic or practical some of the designs are (seriously, how does Astrid sit down in her spike covered skirt?), but they’re fun to look at. Also, if you look closely at Hiccup, you will see the scar that’s important in How to Train Your Dragon 2. It’s there, the animators didn’t try and sneak it into the sequel.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I am not a fan of the gross bodily humor commonly found in DreamWorks movies. Yes, DreamWorks can and does put out some good movies. But the type of physical comedy they usually go for is not my cup of tea. (Thankfully for this movie, that type of comedy is limited to mostly the dragons and to the classmates to an extent.) Also, their premises often sound like dumb B movie plots. This is why many DreamWorks movies are mediocre at best and forgettable at worst. So when you have movies like Flushed Away, The Croods, Bee Movie, and Shark Tale under your belt, it’s hard to imagine this studio producing any truly great movies. Even their bigger movies, like Shrek, I’m pretty meh about, but that’s a story for a different review. I think How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2 are DreamWorks’ best movies. And Rotten Tomatoes agrees with me. How to Train Your Dragon has a 98% fresh rating on the site, the highest of all DreamWorks movies, and the sequel has a 95% fresh rating. The rest of their movies have an average rating of 71% fresh. I have high hopes for Hidden World, which comes out tomorrow.
Back to the point I brought up in my introduction. Dragons are usually either good or evil. They are almost never both. There are stories where people can think dragons are evil when in reality they’re good, but that’s about the closest we come to dragons being both good and evil. How to Train Your Dragon is definitely unique in this aspect. Most dragons are good, but there are some evil dragons out there, and the Vikings are right to fear the evil dragons. Of course, there are also dragons that are controlled by an evil person and are in turn controlling the smaller dragons. This video sums it up pretty well. Remember, all dragons are individuals and may not adhere to species standards. If you're thinking of adopting a dragon, do your homework and choose your next flying friend wisely.
I’m SJ, and these are my real thoughts on How to Train Your Dragon.