Review of How to Train Your Dragon, directed by Dean DeBlois

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

Back in the day, when I had a car (a kid totaled it a while back, and because I was unemployed, I didn’t want to take on a car payment while I did contract/freelance work remotely), I used to go to the movie theater two or three times a week. I had AMC A List, and because my county had quite a few AMC options and I went to New York often, I had the chance to go and see whatever I wanted.

I ended up canceling my A List because I had no car and I thought I was moving abroad, which fell through after waiting four months and being told that it was going to happen. I missed my A List dearly during this time, especially as there were so many movies I wanted to see and no longer had the chance.

It was a year after losing my A List that my sister suggested getting it again before she moved in with her boyfriend, and the second movie we ended up seeing during this time was How to Train Your Dragon. I personally have never seen the original, but was excited to see how it would unfold with a live action remake.

Let’s get into the review! I can see the introduction is getting quite long.

A boy from a Viking village befriends a dragon never seen before, leading to interesting and potentially devastating consequences.

Our main character in this movie is Hiccup, who is the seemingly useless son of a Viking village’s chief. The village is terrorized by dragons, who steal their livestock, and the villagers and Viking warriors are armed to to the teeth in order to try and stop them. The movie opens with one of these dragon raids, and Hiccup, who is unable to do anything, wants to prove to everyone he can kill a mysterious dragon called a Night Fury.

Using a launching device, Hiccup does end up shooting down a Night Fury, but he doesn’t know this until the next day when he finds it injured in the woods. No one believes him that night and his father deems him an embarrassment, much to his dismay.

It’s the next day, in the woods, that Hiccup finds the Night Fury in the woods. He goes to strike it and end the beast’s life, but when he looks it in the eye, he no longer has the heart to kill the dragon. He frees it instead, and it roars in his face, but does not kill him. His father then rallies the people to find the dragon’s nest and eradicate them, but before he goes off with the ships, he makes sure Hiccup goes into the fighting lessons for warriors.

Hiccup’s peers are less than impressed to see him there, including his crush Astrid, who aspires to be the next village chief. The group begins their lessons with the captured dragons, and while Astrid excels compared to everyone else, Hiccup only asks questions about Night Furies (which no one has seen in the tribe) and is completely uninterested in slaying dragons.

After class, Hiccup begins befriending the dragon, which he has dubbed Toothless. Toothless is unable to leave the grotto/cove he landed in, as Hiccup had accidentally cut off a portion of his tail, meaning he can’t fly properly. Hiccup begins bringing him food in order to keep the dragon alive, and the more they come together, Hiccup gets an idea.

He fashions a new prosthetic fin for the dragon, then a saddle and harness. He starts flying with Toothless and directing him with the new gadgets he’s created, and along the way Hiccup begins learning more about dragons. He uses what he knows to peacefully disarm the dragons in his lessons, putting him at the top of his class.

Astrid is not happy with what she’s seeing, though, but it doesn’t matter when she follows Hiccup to the grove and discovers Toothless. They take her on a flight, and she accepts that dragons aren’t so bad, but then Toothless shows the duo something else: the dragon’s next Hiccup’s father was looking for.

Turns out all of the dragons are under control of one dragon that demands sacrifices. If they don’t bring enough, the dragons are consumed by their overlord. Hiccup decides he needs to do something, but when his father comes home and is excited to see his son succeeding, he struggles with his father’s lack of acceptance.

The next day, Hiccup is picked as the top dragon slayer over Astrid, much to her disappointment. He’s put in the arena against a massive, intimidating dragon, but he throws down his weapon and almost befriends the dragon. However, his father demands an end to the fight and the dragon to be taken down, which causes it to go wild.

Toothless hears what’s going on and rescues Hiccup, but it’s in vain as Toothless is now in captivity. When his father learns about the dragon’s nest, he muzzles and chains Toothless and forces the dragon to show the warriors where it is. There, they encounter the dragon overlord, the Red Death, and are in a completely bad situation.

However, back home, Hiccup, Astrid, and their classmates free the captive dragons and ride them to fight Red Death. They succeed after Hiccup and his father rescue Toothless, but when they go for the final blow, Hiccup and Toothless are knocked by the Red Death’s tail. Toothless saves Hiccup, but he loses his foot in the process.

Hiccup wakes up to find the dragons and humans have made peace, and now coexist with each other. The film ends with him and Astrid sharing a kiss, as well as Toothless with a new prosthetic.

Overall Thoughts

As I mentioned before, I have never seen the original movie, which means I can’t compare this movie to the original at all when it comes to how it adapts the story and its characters. My sister, who had seen the original, commented that this movie was true to the original, but that’s just her opinion.

So as someone going in fresh, I thought this was a solid movie. I was able to guess most of the plot by the time we reached the halfway point, so it’s not completely new and groundbreaking (maybe it was a decade ago), but I thought the film still managed to keep itself being entertaining for new viewers.

Even without that emotional investment, I still wanted to watch more. The romance element was kind of just there, and some of the dialogue a little awkward, but I had fun overall. And sometimes we don’t need a deep and serious movie—although how we treat the animals and creatures we live side by side with is a very serious topic that can be applied to our real lives.

Go see this one if you’re interested! It’s a fun movie, although I’m not sure how the real life aspect translates to a kid’s movie—I think the animated version does a better job of appealing to children.

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