Enjoying "How to Train Your Dragon"

    How to Train Your Dragon was the first and most memorable 3D movie experience I’ve had. I had no idea what the movie was and I walked in late with my uncle. I had no expectations and when I finished, it was an awesome experience. To this day, I still recall fondly the experience of figuratively flying together with Toothless and Hiccup through the skies above Berk.

    For those who were like me, How to Train Your Dragon was a 2010 Dreamworks film that pits the Vikings from the fictional village of Berk against the fictional dragons who burn buildings, steal food, and cause mayhem for the inhabitants of Berk. Leader of the town is Stoick the Vast, a hearty and sturdy Viking who loves killing dragons and protecting his village. His son, Hiccup, is not hearty, nor sturdy, and does not have killing dragons at the top of his favorite things to do list. During the course of the movie, Hiccup befriends a dragon whom he names Toothless and together they inspire a change that eventually leads to two additional movies, but for now, we will focus on the first movie and some takeaways I had.

    First of all, the music is excellent. John Powell wrote the score and it fits the movie well. I particularly loved the scene where Hiccup and Toothless first fly together. The drama of the flight is made that much more intense by the music that accompanies the scene. 

    Second, there is a message of change and repentance.. The most recent time I watched the movie, I recalled these words from President Nelson about repentance from 2019: 

“The word for repentance in the Greek New Testament is metanoeo. The prefix meta- means ‘change.’ The suffix -noeo is related to Greek words that mean ‘mind,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘spirit,’ and ‘breath.’

"Thus, when Jesus asks you and me to ‘repent,’ He is inviting us to change our mind, our knowledge, our spirit—even the way we breathe. He is asking us to change the way we love, think, serve, spend our time, treat our wives, teach our children, and even care for our bodies.”

  Just such a change occurs to Stoick during this movie. As I mentioned before, dragon killing is at the top of Stoick’s list of things to do, but by the end of the movie, he not only allows dragons to take up residence in Berk, but becomes a dragon rider himself. This change is a central point of the movie and becomes the means by which a father and a son become reconciled. 

  

 Lastly, dragons seem like they would be wonderful pets so long as they don’t burn down the house. My wife and I are raising chickens and one of them is black and so we named her Toothless as an homage to the dragon that Hiccup tames and trains. This chicken does not breathe fire and can’t fly as well as Toothless, the dragon, but it is fun to think about such a pet every time I see this chicken.