How to train your dragon - Review (Spoilers)

How to train your dragon - Review (Spoilers)

Originally written in February 2023. 

From the beginning this is so obviously transparently trying to be relatable and quirky for american audiences. Nothing inherently wrong with some relatability, its just something i find myself instantly eye rolling to because its a speedrun toward outing your movie as a corporate tool trying to appeal to as many people as possible, its also because of this that is extremely over done, hence why its so tiring to me. I wasnt really digging that quirky voice-over introduction to this magical world aimed at kids… 

Voice performances

Speaking of voices, what the actual hell is up with the main cast of kids all sounding like grown ass adults? Okay, its one thing to cast a bunch of twenty-somethings as teenagers, but this is merely a voice performance job. You dont want to deal with actual teenagers? Fine, you have the advantage that you now only have to get someone who sounds like obe. How the hell did they managed to still blew it? Just transparently prioritizing that sweet ticket-selling star power over artístic integrity and the welfare of the movie. 

How did Dreamworks from what they did with the voicecast in kung fu panda to whatever the hell this is? 

And why the fuck do only the adults have nordic accents? Did they tought that would be one more thing that would make this less appealing to mainstream audiences? 

It was clearly a desition for the worse because of how bland casting Jake Baruchel's as the main lead was. I did not enjoyed his performance at all. He has the same monotonous tone the entire time and at the same time its like he thinks he is doing some stupid stand up show. Its now i realize how  i find myself thinking the main leads performance most of all. 

And somehow this is just barely scratching the surface of all the red flags that to my eyes only out this film as the piece of corpotate filmmaking it is.  This movie is full of them. 

Music

The music, another redflag. Whenever something tríes to be as popular as possible, any hope of the music being creative is one of the first things to get ditched. This movie did nothing to dress its soundtrack in any meaningful theme according to the setting. 

The lion king showed us you can use the score as a beautiful canvas to pay homage to the region's typical music, while obviously still making it enganhe the tone of the film, and to make it sound good as fuck. 

Expect little to none of that in this movie tough. Come on, local viking culture instruments playing a big role in the score Pffffffttt…. Nah, throw all that culture away and just make some generic ass soundtrack using mostly modern instruments in modern arrangements. 

Such great potential of what we couldve gotten, completely wasted away. 

Story

Okay now weve establish this movie is the epitome of originality is not afraid to be creative and bring inventive new ideas to the table. The story is just like that too right? Its so totally not themost overdone and nor extremely formulaic thing ever. Lets see, whimpy out cast kid misfit, who wants to fit in with the cool kids and has a crush on a popular girl, but doesnt even exist to them, and is expected to exceed at whatever everyone does but cant do it and its presented as a relatable failure and different from the others, but wouldn't you know it, its this uniqueness wich will play a role into achieving things nobody else has or can do, and he will save the day and change the ways of the entire community. 

Yeah its not like originality is the one word that comes to my mind when i think of kung fu panda, but at least that one is so well presented and placed that it far overcompensates whatever tropy things we may have seen, where as in this one, i was really missing kung fu pandas style the entire time, because without it, all we are left with is blandness. Its not nearly filled with as many ideas, or as well told. Pair a very bland directing with the blandest story of all time its not a very good idea. 

I did not emotionally connect with most of the scenes, the plot or the cacharcters even tough i understood what they were going for. It always felt too familiar and i only experienced but a fraction of the fun i had with kung fu panda. And if I compare these movies a lot, don't entirely blame me, because this feel like this movie is trying to hit a lot of the same notes

The whole outcast thing trying to fit with the group of cool guys that are mean to him trope felt so fucking formulaic and repetitive after Kung Fu Panda

The special but diffetent kid who later becomes really talented at what he does and now everyone loves him. Is one rehused ass tropes. Everything in this movie offers only annoyingly over familiar content prevebtinf it from feeling anything, 

Save maybe only for the scenes developing the kid and dragon relationship. That was as close to being actually entertained as i got. 

But at what point exactly did he got the perfect measurements of toothpaste's tal? I dont know maybe there was a scene showing him measure the tale and it was cut it to save time, but it felt weird, like he got them out of nowhere. 

And did somebody say cute dragon companion?! Another mass appeal red flag. 

Awwww look at cute toothpaste is! 

Come on, dont you think hes cute? Dont you? Go ahead, feel something for their totally real not phoned in special relationship! Awww they are just so special together. Doesn't it get you in the mood to buy some merch? 

Take kung fu pandas over reliance on physical comedy, double its presence, make it infinitely more annoying and transparent, and thats all toothpaste's character. 

Violence censorship

Come on people, this movie is speedrunning toward being the most safe and formulaic youve ever seen. Did you tought there was even a chance that they showed any blood? 

You gotta love how its implied that their whole culture is based around killing dragons and not a single time is a viking shown killing a dragon or at least even using weapons against them or not getting interrupted before they can. Its a ninja turtles situation here. They all just have to weirdly punch them with their fists instead. 

Those training scenes were incredibly dumb. Why does he yell "you're out!" as if hes done assuming that this is some kind of game and whatever hits they get will always be non fatal? Its a fucking dragon, what about the thing you said about dragons always going for the kill? As if that thing didn't just fail miserably to kill any of you. 

And how the fuck did the trick of the eel worked? If its inside his clothes can they not smell it? Do they only fear it if they actually see it? 

How did they knew toothpaste would take them to the nest? Were they previously aware of the alphas mind control thing? If so, why didnt they tried to do the exact same with the other dragons they had already captured? 

And why doesnt the big bad try its mind control against the training dragons they just freed? Shouldn't they specifically hate humans with all that time being caged and used for fighting? How in hell did the petting trick work on them? 

And are you seriously implying no vking, in the entire time they have been here, has tried to pet or get close to a dragon? No, this was an idea exclusive to our very special protagonists. 

How many writers did this thing have again? 

Because yes, this movie does the cliche of reaching your hand out to pet a wild creature, and somehow thats all its needed to tame it. See you just have to make a leap of trust and the animal will magically read your emotions and sense you mean no harm, and become your forever friend… Not only is that a very corny human fantasy, but id argue thats a pretty dangerous myth to perpetuate in a movie aimed at children. Yes, i see the themes of trust in each other and respecting the animals that this is trying to promote, but that doesn't mean that the ultimate key toward peacefully coexisting with the ecosystem is to walk out into the forest petting around every potentially dangerous creature we find. 

Yeah try that in a raging pitbull and tell me how it went. If in a bear attack, just reach out your hand to it, it will immediately turn into your friend. 

Part of respecting the enviorment, is to just literally leave it the fuck alone and not interfere at all. We need to get over the myth that non-domestic animals are there to also be our pets… They're not. 

Anyhow, why is this cliche so popular when it's so incredibly stupid? What logical sense does it make that a wild ravaging creature will just turn docile and friendly the second you reach out your hand to them? We want to turn wild animals into our pets so bad, that we anthropomize them and count on them observing and understanding our human emotions the way we do with each other. Wich is exactly the way the dragons were written in this movie. How lucky were the vikings in this world, that the dragons seem to be almost as smart as humans. Congratulations, you wrote a story about peacefully coexisting with the ecosystem where no actual reconciliation effort had to be made because the dragons are nearly as smart as humans and can understand when we truly mean no harm… And yes you guessed it, they all get to turn them into our pets in the end. Each viking gets a cool new pokemon and the village is now a pokemon sanctuary. Or so it seems. 

The writers took this completely watered down caricature stereotype of what vikings were supposed to be, then tried to paint them as heroes in their story, and unintentionally still made them look like massive assholes. 

I presume these vikings originally were the invasive species in these lands. They took away land from the dragon's natural habitual, they killed thousands of them in the process of keeping it, and luckily for them, the writers came up with a big evil dragon who is their queen and controls their minds: See, the dragons don't want to attack the vikings, its the evil dragon forcing them to! That's why she deserves to die! Just add some water, and voila! Instant justification for our human protagonists to be the saviors and permanently disrupt the natural ecosystem! That's how actual nature works and that's why this movie should be reveread as a fucking mind-bending guidebook toward achieving peaceful human coexistence with nature; if endemic species are crossing human settlements in search of food, just go and kill their evil queen who is forcing them to do this. Its not like these are the consequences of building human inhabitation as a fundamentally invasive disrupting factor to local ecosystems. 

I swear its so annoying to see writers ass-pull "solutions" to systemic issues, that are always so dipped into the mechanics in which these systems work, and never think outside of to offer real alternatives. It can never be that human expansionism is fundamentally flawed, it can never be that this is just the way the environment functions, it's always gotta be some stupid reason, usually the figurehead at the top being a bad apple, as we see with the dragon queen, which is the cause for things issues surfacing up, and are exclusively the product of the system's administration, not its flawed fundamentals.

The movie wants to be seen as a thoughtful tale about two cultures changing their ways to peacefully coexist with eachother, but in reality, this story functions more as a piece of propaganda the exploiters would use to persuade the exploited that they were in their right to take their land, slaughter them, and now domesticate them. 

The societal reconciliatión effort its entirely one sided, as are its benefits. The vikings had despicably based their entire social system upon the act of killing dragons. For merely dropping this flawed system look at all the benefits they get. They shook their social system into loving dragons instead of killing them, and are rewarded with the benefits of an incredibly strong and numerous power force to further enhance their status quo, turning themselves into the only people with such an advantage over others. Again, stop the killings them was all they had to do. 

Guys, please stop killing the local species, have yoy considered turning them into pets? Look at all the rewards you can get. Look at the cool pokemon villages we could turn our cities into. You have tought of killing them, but what if instead, you used them?  This is classic capitalist way of thinking. Things, specially those in nature cannot simply exist, they have to be harnessed into being useful to humans. Its nature who has to adapt to us, not otherwise. 

On the other had, its the dragons who have entirely abandoned the only life they've ever known inside the ecosystem, to go live in this sanctuary, after the vikings intentionally interfered and completely destroyed it. 

Why is them who have to move in and adapt to a human settlement, and not the other way around. As if human expansion, and the way it operates, was an unquestionable aspect of reality. 

Of course i understand portraying the nuances of humans and dragons coexisting together in a new society could be its own movie, but the total omission of these to skip to a bright and functional picture of this society, only further confirms the film as the naive, conveniently written myth not of what cultural reconciliation is like, but what these writers would want it to be. 

Arguably now the dragons will live a more comfortable life and will not have to fight for their food, but that's only because the vikings have allowed them to settle in. 

Its a deal based on coercion, nothing but exploiters gaslighting: "I may have stolen your land, i may have killed count less of you, i may have destroyed the home you hid, but since i am so good i will now allow you to share with me this land i have taken." 

Who got the most benefits out of this entire scheme, with the least effort? 

The subtext is clear: the best thing a colonizer could do to you, its not kill you, and for that mercy, they deserve everything.

Remember people, the powerful could exterminate you, but they choose not to. And we should be very grateful for that. 

What is the true lesson How to Train Your Dragon Teaches its audience? There is so gruesome unspeakably fucked up shit to be found in the stories the capitalist machine wants to aim at people, even from a very young age.

This is definetly a story told from the perspective of those who won history. Its outdated, its a product of its time, and its the exact kind of myth that couldve come out of the industrial movie machine, which i cannot exert how much this movie is a product of. This is why its nothing but exhausting. 

Outro

I cant outright say this film doesnt feel like the product of an artístic vision, but the cynicism of making itself as consumable of a movie as possible, far outweights whatever artístic nuances it brought to the table. Its only not applying some crucial evaluation criterio i.e. seeing it as nothing but a dumb kids movie that it may stand its ground, but holy hell this one did not survived watching it as an adult. 

5.5/10

Support Me