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Some thoughts upon How To Train Your Dragon, upon rewatch.
How To Train Your Dragon came out on October 15th, and Dev and I watched it the next day. My original review is over here, for the curious—I loved it then, and have precisely the same opinion now: it's a marvelous film, predictable sure but full of clever dialog and bursting with heart, and so very beautiful. It is a singular pleasure to watch.
What I meant to share then, but never did; what I sit down to write now, is this: perhaps what I love most about the film, if I had to pick one single aspect, is that Toothless is not Hiccup's pet—but his friend. The film underestimates this in itself, and Toothless is called a pet twice in the script, but the interactions between the character is so far from that. On of the best moments in the film is at the very end, where Hiccup loses his leg. When I saw the film with my family I remember they were of mixed opinions on that event—why couldn't he have gotten out okay, why did he have to end up like Hiccup, isn't that sad?—but I loved it. It is an idealized parallel? Absolutely. But it's also a perfect parallel: it makes Hiccup visually equal to Toothless, which reminds us that he is equal to Toothless. How To Train Your Dragon isn't about domestication. It's about two people, and their friendship. It's about two cultures discovering each other, and the fact that they are different than previously believed, still quite unique, and also surprisingly similar.
Dragons lack speech (as far as humans can understand) and have more animalistic behaviors (at least by human standards), but in most other ways Toothless is as communicative, social, emotional, and even humorous as Hiccup. After all, it's Toothless that finds a way to bring Astrid to their side, and even if we don't know how dragon intelligence compares to human intelligence, it takes something like knowledge, social instincts, humor, and self-confidence, to do that. Toothless emotes and interacts with the same complexity and depth as the best-realized of the human characters (and far more than the supporting cast!). He's not a human being, but he's just as much of a person as the humans are.
It irks me that in dialog, the film insists on using the word "pet"—it undercuts so many of its own developments, it insists that because Toothless and other dragons look and act different, because they look like animals, they can't be people. I wish Hiccup corrected assumptions and named Toothless as a friend and, as such, an equal. Because he doesn't, the visible parallel between Hiccup and Toothless at the end of the film is a wonderful and necessary addition to the other interactions between the characters. It dismisses the lesser word, and reminds us of that essential equality. I appreciate it also as a message that disability doesn't mean inability, I acknowledge it again as idealized, and I don't think it should be interpreted as a sign that Hiccup and Toothless, or the cultures they come from, are identical—after all, the characters hardly are. But oh, I love the message it sends: they are equals. That means so much.
Truly a beautiful film, though, by the bye. Not only did I love it in all the same ways as I did when I first saw it, I cried in the same places too. Good tears. Beautiful tears. Just as I mentioned before: Dragon's aren't really my thing. Dragon flight has never really intrigued me. But oh, I understand the beauty—I understand the beauty now.
Oh, yes. Look, how apropos, again! Dragons:
What I meant to share then, but never did; what I sit down to write now, is this: perhaps what I love most about the film, if I had to pick one single aspect, is that Toothless is not Hiccup's pet—but his friend. The film underestimates this in itself, and Toothless is called a pet twice in the script, but the interactions between the character is so far from that. On of the best moments in the film is at the very end, where Hiccup loses his leg. When I saw the film with my family I remember they were of mixed opinions on that event—why couldn't he have gotten out okay, why did he have to end up like Hiccup, isn't that sad?—but I loved it. It is an idealized parallel? Absolutely. But it's also a perfect parallel: it makes Hiccup visually equal to Toothless, which reminds us that he is equal to Toothless. How To Train Your Dragon isn't about domestication. It's about two people, and their friendship. It's about two cultures discovering each other, and the fact that they are different than previously believed, still quite unique, and also surprisingly similar.
Dragons lack speech (as far as humans can understand) and have more animalistic behaviors (at least by human standards), but in most other ways Toothless is as communicative, social, emotional, and even humorous as Hiccup. After all, it's Toothless that finds a way to bring Astrid to their side, and even if we don't know how dragon intelligence compares to human intelligence, it takes something like knowledge, social instincts, humor, and self-confidence, to do that. Toothless emotes and interacts with the same complexity and depth as the best-realized of the human characters (and far more than the supporting cast!). He's not a human being, but he's just as much of a person as the humans are.
It irks me that in dialog, the film insists on using the word "pet"—it undercuts so many of its own developments, it insists that because Toothless and other dragons look and act different, because they look like animals, they can't be people. I wish Hiccup corrected assumptions and named Toothless as a friend and, as such, an equal. Because he doesn't, the visible parallel between Hiccup and Toothless at the end of the film is a wonderful and necessary addition to the other interactions between the characters. It dismisses the lesser word, and reminds us of that essential equality. I appreciate it also as a message that disability doesn't mean inability, I acknowledge it again as idealized, and I don't think it should be interpreted as a sign that Hiccup and Toothless, or the cultures they come from, are identical—after all, the characters hardly are. But oh, I love the message it sends: they are equals. That means so much.
Truly a beautiful film, though, by the bye. Not only did I love it in all the same ways as I did when I first saw it, I cried in the same places too. Good tears. Beautiful tears. Just as I mentioned before: Dragon's aren't really my thing. Dragon flight has never really intrigued me. But oh, I understand the beauty—I understand the beauty now.
Oh, yes. Look, how apropos, again! Dragons: