What Makes How to Train Your Dragon Such a Great Movie?

Hello! 

How to Train Your Dragon is one of my all time favorite movies. It’s stayed on my “favorite movies” list consistently for longer than any other movie. I’ve made a Toothless costume for Halloween and plan on making more. I love this movie series. It’s a beautiful take on the hero’s journey with an awesome cat-dog-dragon-hybrid and amazing music. 

After finally getting all three movies on DVD, I had a HTTYD marathon with my friends. We watched the movies in the span of one day, and I noticed a lot of differences between the movies. I also tried to answer the question “Why are these some of my favorite movies?” 

Spoiler warning for the first and second How to Train Your Dragon movies

First of all, the second and third movies will never live up to the first movie. I’m very happy that the people at Dreamworks have said that there aren’t going to be any more HTTYD movies. As much as I love series, all too often each new book or movie ends up being worse than the first, along with adding new things to the world and possibly making it just a giant jumbled mess. 

Humor: 

There was a lot of sarcastic humor in the first movie, and that seemed to fade into cheesy, slightly cringy jokes in the 2nd and 3rd movies. I love this kind of humor and it would be really interesting to see what the other two movies would be like if there was more of the sarcastic, witty humor of the first movie. (Although Ruffnut and Tuffnut will always be the most hilarious characters.)

Showing and Telling: 

When I was about 7, I watched the first HTTYD movie. I was kind of confused because it was hard to understand what was happening. This is because the first movie did a lot of “showing” instead of “telling.” To show that Toothless had part of his tail missing, Hiccup drew Toothles, and then rubbed out the part of his tail that was missing. It wasn’t actually said, “Part of his tail is missing, which is why he can’t fly.” They showed it, which isn’t very common, especially for a kids film. It helps the movie stand out a little more and appeal to more than just little kids. 

Music: 

I will go into a full ramble about how much I love the music of this entire franchise in Part 2, but for now, I’ll just say that the score for the first movie is absolutely AMAZING! Apart from sounding so nice to my ears, the different themes, or leitmotifs, help tell the story. Differenet characters have different themes that are played and blended together in such a cool way, and I love it! 

The Second Movie

I like how Hiccup still changes and grows in the second movie.  It makes his character arc one ginormous arc that spans over years and years. In the second movie, Hiccup grows even more, learning he can’t convince everyone that dragons are good. But learning this came at the price of Stoik dying. 

That still doesn’t mean it was as great as the original film. 

When I first watched the second movie, I hadn’t seen the first in a long time. They were released 4 years apart, and that’s partly why I think barely anyone noticed how the villain was very similar to the villain in the first movie. In the first, it was a giant dragon that threatened and controlled other dragons to make a nest sort of thing. In the second movie, there was a big dragon who could control other dragons, who was controlled by a creepy villain. Very similar. 

I still really liked this movie. I loved the music because it took the original themes and added more to them. I also really liked being introduced to Valka. The scene where she’s showing Hiccup her dragon sanctuary makes me want to fly on a dragon so badly! As I already said, Stock being killed seemed to help Hiccup realize that he can’t convince everyone that dragons are good. That there will always be someone out there who wants to control or kill or do other things to them. (This is brought up more in the third movie too, but Hiccup has to come to that decision on his own rather than being forced into it.)

Okay everyone, to keep this post from being super long, I’m splitting it into two parts. Part 2 will cover the third movie, some theories, and the music score for all three movies (With some very long rambles)  Until next time! 

-Hannah

4 comments