Top 25 Favourite Films: #17 How to Train Your Dragon (Dir. Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, 2010)
#17. How to Train Your Dragon. Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, 2010
Like most kids reared in the mid to late 1990s, under the very long shadow that a certain boy wizard cast across childrens literature, and indeed cinema, I went through the quote unquote "dragons" phase. Admittedly, I still haven't quite got out of my dinosaur phase-blame Jurassic Park and its diminishing returns for that, but there was a time, in my early teenage era, where the idea of having a dragon really rather appealed to me, not just because of Potter, and its shadowy compatriot, Eragon, that reads like a mix of those three titans of the early 2000s, (Potter, Rings, and Star Wars), with a subsequent film that quickly disappeared beneath the CGI/overacting mire, but because of a rather charming children's book series called How to Train Your Dragon.
Written by Cressida Cowell, and based around the misadventures of Hiccup Horrendous III, the rather squeamish and softhearted son of a fearsome Viking chieftan, in a world where dragons and humans are mortal enemies, who finds, takes in and tames a dragon, Toothless. Though I only read the first couple of novels, they remain, to this day, well crafted childrens' novels. And then came the film. And what you have to remember at this point is that Dreamworks were, in the late 2000s, not exactly the company of high repute, the unexpected and quirky jazz to Disney's traditional country, that they are now. Apart from their traditionally animated films, which swung between off-beat decently successful (Prince of Egypt, Spirit, Stalion of the Cimarron) and off-beat box office bombs (Sinbad, Road to El Dorado), and, uh, bankrolling Aardman Animations for two films, they were mostly famous for Shrek, and what, collectively, I would describe as weird personal projects if not for their hefty tens of millions budgets.
These range from Madagascar, which, whilst entertaining, is basically SNL castmembers (Stiller, Rock et al) playing lost zoo animals whilst homicidal penguins and Sasha Baron Cohen get all the best lines to living, breathing, meme-on-high, Bee Movie, to cinematic and visual aborrations Shark Tale and Monsters V Aliens. And yet, whilst they made bank (yes, even Shark Tale), Dreamworks felt like a studio with basically one core series and occasional good ideas, a runty younger brother to Disney-understandable, with former ousted Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberger at the helm. The fact was, in short, with the possible exception of wuxia-aping Kung Fu Panda, DreamWorks films were rarely visually ambitious, often, for lack of a better word, ugly and critical opinion ranged from dire to middling.
In a word, How to Train Your Dragon changed that. Though it is, to be fair, a loose adaption of the novel series, it is a perfect encapsulation of its story and meaning, with Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) and his dragon, Toothless, eventually uniting the warring factions through their co-operation, rather than their conflict. Undoubtedly, this film's masterstroke, from two directors, previously directors of the beloved Lilo and Stitch no stranger to making the alien lovable and a practical icon, is in its transformation of Toothless, from small, slightly weedy dragon to an apex predator, downed and wounded by Hiccup's actions.
Toothless, in short...is one of the greatest pieces of character design in animated cinema, at once adorable, with a rounded, catlike face, complete with sequences where he sticks out his tongue a-la your typical feline, and his general disposition once he begins to form a bond with the slowly confident Hiccup, and utterly menacing, in the first few scenes, first seen as a silloutette against the night sky in a dragon attack, and then equally dangerous wounded and cornered. Moreover, never before, except with their work with Aardman, had DreamWorks created a character so perfectly, wordlessly readable, using that feline-ish appearance, together with some neatly played mime-comedy, to begin to show the growing friendship between boy and dragon. The shot in which Hiccup finally reaches out and touches the dragon that will eventually become his best friend and ally is better than the entirety of some lesser Disney movies, shot through with pathos, as the trust between the human and the dragon finally pays off.
Hiccup, for his part, and indeed a lot of the characters are, simply put, well-wrought characters from what, in a lesser film would be typical teen movie tropes. Hiccup is weak and nerdy, sure, but he plays to his strengths, defeating a series of dragon-based challenges in his reluctant quest to become a true Viking to please his overbearing if well-meaning father, Stoick (Gerard Butler), using knowledge he's picked up from observing Toothless and his kind, and still enjoys a loving relationship with his father, despite their differences.
Hiccup's true rival, Astrid (America Ferrera) is the overdone "one tough girl in a group of guys" trope done right, a tough, no-nonsense leader that the film still gives some vulnerability, and some warmth to, whilst Hiccup's essential sidekick, Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse)
patterned so closely to the generic fat kid of 80s and early 90s series that I was sure that he would be the film's weak-spot, is practically the brains of the operation, a smart, and surprisingly resourceful figure.
This remarkably nuanced sense of character, of broad-brush archetypes that never teuly become stereotypes continues in Snoutlout, the typical bully, (Jonah Hill), who accepts Hiccup into the loose group of young vikings that have to face the dragon, and eventually comes to respect him, whilst the curiously...stonerish (seriously, why do kids films have these archetypal stoners so often) Tuffnut and Ruffnut (T.J. Miller and Kristen Wiig) are at points as quickwitted as the rest of the group, and get some of the best comic back and forth.
At the centre of this film undoubtedly, is the friendship between Hiccup and Toothless, and nowhere is this seen better than in the film's undeniable high point, the flying sequences. Because, in nearly a decade, nothing has come close in cinema or beyond to these scenes, at turning exhillarting, nailbiting and visually spectacular, only amped up by John Powell's score. Test Drive is, alongside Alan Silvestri's cue for the Avengers, and Tom Holkenborg's hulking, distortion and percussion led score for Mad Max Fury Road one of the single best pieces of cinematic music this decade, hands down, and lends itself pitch-perfectly to this shared first flight together.
But How to Train Your Dragon is more than a simple personal co-operation between a boy and his dragon, or between a series of young vikings and a few dragons, with the finale, at impressive scale leading our heroes back to the source of the dragons, a terrifyingly large "alpha" who Stoick and the rest of the tribe do battle with, but between dragons and people in general. This is a very different narrative to most fantasy adventures, even if the film ends with a battle between Toothless and the dragon, that leads to another unexpected parallel between the wounded dragon and his rider, in what feels like an important, and remarkably understated bit of representation. That our heroes win by working together, by compromise, led by one boy and his dragon, seems positively revolutionary.
What How to Train Your Dragon does, rather simply, is make a film with heart, spirit and a sense of adventure, with two superbly rounded, excellently complimetary heroes, one human, one dragon, that unite their worlds not with violence but with understanding, and compromise. It is a beautifully wrought, beautifully understated film at points that matches high adventure and spectacular moments with warmth, and tender character moments. I love this film, and the world that it built upon for equally impressive sequels, love Toothless, but most all, I simply love this friendship and the way that this film utterly upends the typical fantasy tropes to create a truly unique and instantly classic film. It is, in short, a film that is as exhillarting and breathtaking as its moments of flight.
Like most kids reared in the mid to late 1990s, under the very long shadow that a certain boy wizard cast across childrens literature, and indeed cinema, I went through the quote unquote "dragons" phase. Admittedly, I still haven't quite got out of my dinosaur phase-blame Jurassic Park and its diminishing returns for that, but there was a time, in my early teenage era, where the idea of having a dragon really rather appealed to me, not just because of Potter, and its shadowy compatriot, Eragon, that reads like a mix of those three titans of the early 2000s, (Potter, Rings, and Star Wars), with a subsequent film that quickly disappeared beneath the CGI/overacting mire, but because of a rather charming children's book series called How to Train Your Dragon.
Written by Cressida Cowell, and based around the misadventures of Hiccup Horrendous III, the rather squeamish and softhearted son of a fearsome Viking chieftan, in a world where dragons and humans are mortal enemies, who finds, takes in and tames a dragon, Toothless. Though I only read the first couple of novels, they remain, to this day, well crafted childrens' novels. And then came the film. And what you have to remember at this point is that Dreamworks were, in the late 2000s, not exactly the company of high repute, the unexpected and quirky jazz to Disney's traditional country, that they are now. Apart from their traditionally animated films, which swung between off-beat decently successful (Prince of Egypt, Spirit, Stalion of the Cimarron) and off-beat box office bombs (Sinbad, Road to El Dorado), and, uh, bankrolling Aardman Animations for two films, they were mostly famous for Shrek, and what, collectively, I would describe as weird personal projects if not for their hefty tens of millions budgets.
These range from Madagascar, which, whilst entertaining, is basically SNL castmembers (Stiller, Rock et al) playing lost zoo animals whilst homicidal penguins and Sasha Baron Cohen get all the best lines to living, breathing, meme-on-high, Bee Movie, to cinematic and visual aborrations Shark Tale and Monsters V Aliens. And yet, whilst they made bank (yes, even Shark Tale), Dreamworks felt like a studio with basically one core series and occasional good ideas, a runty younger brother to Disney-understandable, with former ousted Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberger at the helm. The fact was, in short, with the possible exception of wuxia-aping Kung Fu Panda, DreamWorks films were rarely visually ambitious, often, for lack of a better word, ugly and critical opinion ranged from dire to middling.
In a word, How to Train Your Dragon changed that. Though it is, to be fair, a loose adaption of the novel series, it is a perfect encapsulation of its story and meaning, with Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) and his dragon, Toothless, eventually uniting the warring factions through their co-operation, rather than their conflict. Undoubtedly, this film's masterstroke, from two directors, previously directors of the beloved Lilo and Stitch no stranger to making the alien lovable and a practical icon, is in its transformation of Toothless, from small, slightly weedy dragon to an apex predator, downed and wounded by Hiccup's actions.
Toothless, in short...is one of the greatest pieces of character design in animated cinema, at once adorable, with a rounded, catlike face, complete with sequences where he sticks out his tongue a-la your typical feline, and his general disposition once he begins to form a bond with the slowly confident Hiccup, and utterly menacing, in the first few scenes, first seen as a silloutette against the night sky in a dragon attack, and then equally dangerous wounded and cornered. Moreover, never before, except with their work with Aardman, had DreamWorks created a character so perfectly, wordlessly readable, using that feline-ish appearance, together with some neatly played mime-comedy, to begin to show the growing friendship between boy and dragon. The shot in which Hiccup finally reaches out and touches the dragon that will eventually become his best friend and ally is better than the entirety of some lesser Disney movies, shot through with pathos, as the trust between the human and the dragon finally pays off.
Hiccup, for his part, and indeed a lot of the characters are, simply put, well-wrought characters from what, in a lesser film would be typical teen movie tropes. Hiccup is weak and nerdy, sure, but he plays to his strengths, defeating a series of dragon-based challenges in his reluctant quest to become a true Viking to please his overbearing if well-meaning father, Stoick (Gerard Butler), using knowledge he's picked up from observing Toothless and his kind, and still enjoys a loving relationship with his father, despite their differences.
Hiccup's true rival, Astrid (America Ferrera) is the overdone "one tough girl in a group of guys" trope done right, a tough, no-nonsense leader that the film still gives some vulnerability, and some warmth to, whilst Hiccup's essential sidekick, Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse)
patterned so closely to the generic fat kid of 80s and early 90s series that I was sure that he would be the film's weak-spot, is practically the brains of the operation, a smart, and surprisingly resourceful figure.
This remarkably nuanced sense of character, of broad-brush archetypes that never teuly become stereotypes continues in Snoutlout, the typical bully, (Jonah Hill), who accepts Hiccup into the loose group of young vikings that have to face the dragon, and eventually comes to respect him, whilst the curiously...stonerish (seriously, why do kids films have these archetypal stoners so often) Tuffnut and Ruffnut (T.J. Miller and Kristen Wiig) are at points as quickwitted as the rest of the group, and get some of the best comic back and forth.
At the centre of this film undoubtedly, is the friendship between Hiccup and Toothless, and nowhere is this seen better than in the film's undeniable high point, the flying sequences. Because, in nearly a decade, nothing has come close in cinema or beyond to these scenes, at turning exhillarting, nailbiting and visually spectacular, only amped up by John Powell's score. Test Drive is, alongside Alan Silvestri's cue for the Avengers, and Tom Holkenborg's hulking, distortion and percussion led score for Mad Max Fury Road one of the single best pieces of cinematic music this decade, hands down, and lends itself pitch-perfectly to this shared first flight together.
But How to Train Your Dragon is more than a simple personal co-operation between a boy and his dragon, or between a series of young vikings and a few dragons, with the finale, at impressive scale leading our heroes back to the source of the dragons, a terrifyingly large "alpha" who Stoick and the rest of the tribe do battle with, but between dragons and people in general. This is a very different narrative to most fantasy adventures, even if the film ends with a battle between Toothless and the dragon, that leads to another unexpected parallel between the wounded dragon and his rider, in what feels like an important, and remarkably understated bit of representation. That our heroes win by working together, by compromise, led by one boy and his dragon, seems positively revolutionary.
What How to Train Your Dragon does, rather simply, is make a film with heart, spirit and a sense of adventure, with two superbly rounded, excellently complimetary heroes, one human, one dragon, that unite their worlds not with violence but with understanding, and compromise. It is a beautifully wrought, beautifully understated film at points that matches high adventure and spectacular moments with warmth, and tender character moments. I love this film, and the world that it built upon for equally impressive sequels, love Toothless, but most all, I simply love this friendship and the way that this film utterly upends the typical fantasy tropes to create a truly unique and instantly classic film. It is, in short, a film that is as exhillarting and breathtaking as its moments of flight.
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