This year, DreamWorks Animation celebrates its 20th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Callie Petch is going through their entire animated canon, one film a week for the next 30 weeks, and giving them a full-on retrospective treatment. Prior entries can be found here, should you desire.
19] How to Train Your Dragon (26th March 2010)
Budget: $165 million
Gross: $494,878,759
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%
Let’s talk about Astrid.
Astrid, at the outset of How to Train Your Dragon, is a tough, no-nonsense dragon warrior in training. She takes extreme pride in her chosen life path, wanting to become a great dragon slayer more than anything else. She has no time for f*ck-ups, no time for the boys that are constantly hitting on her even though she keeps repeatedly making it clear that she is not interested, and to not take training seriously is to deeply insult her. The mere insinuation that her path in life is anything less than noble and desirable sending her into an understandable rage.
Therefore, Hiccup infuriates Astrid, openly so. She has been training her entire life to kill dragons and takes every little bit of it seriously. And in comes Hiccup, bumbling his way through training half-heartedly, making a joke out of her profession. Then Hiccup inexplicably starts getting good; he starts getting really good. Astrid’s pride can’t take it, there is simply no way that Hiccup, a clumsy fool who has openly stated that he cannot and does not want to kill a dragon, can suddenly become a master of dragons overnight. Not when she has dedicated her whole life to being the best at this stuff, not now that she is suddenly number two to what appears to be a halfwit.
When she is passed over for the opportunity to kill a dragon, she decides to tail Hiccup and find out his secret. There she discovers Toothless, the incredibly dangerous Nightfury dragon that Hiccup has seemingly tamed and has been getting his dragon info from. Terrified, she runs off to warn the village, but Hiccup and Toothless kidnap her before she can in order to get assurances that she won’t spill the beans. To help convince her, Hiccup has her fly with him on Toothless to discover just how peaceful dragons can be and how amazing riding them is. It does the trick, Astrid is very much convinced.
In fact, she’s so convinced that she kisses Hiccup practically the second they get back down to the ground and becomes his girlfriend for the rest of the movie, despite having held him in pure contempt for the previous hour.
Does this sound familiar? It should. This kind of character trajectory – from a strong young woman trying to earn respect in a man’s world and with absolutely no time for the awkward flirting of the lead protagonist, to someone who is suddenly stuck in the gravitational pull of the lead male’s penis (metaphorically) and reduced to simply being The Girlfriend who needs rescuing in the finale – has been utilised by DreamWorks Animation before. Remember Marina from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas? And just like in that film, How to Train Your Dragon ends up taking a torch to its incredibly interesting female co-lead, with a whole bunch of potential distinctly female-focussed themes and narrative threads attached to her existence and character (although it’s annoyingly just left as subtext), for quite literally no good reason.
In an article posted on The Dissolve this past Summer, Tasha Robinson termed this kind of character trajectory as “Trinity Syndrome,” after the closest thing to a ur-text in the shape of Trinity from The Matrix, and few things in movies annoy me more than it. It gives off the impression that women are not important enough to have their own stories and narrative arcs unless they are inextricably tied to the whims of a man. That ends up becoming even more infuriating when their plotlines are deep and detailed, yet are dropped like week-old garbage the second the film decides that its time for them to suddenly be irresistibly attracted to the man’s genitalia (metaphorically).
Astrid is someone who has an incredibly interesting character and thematic arc, as previously detailed, and it very much seems to be building up to her swallowing her pride, recognising Hiccup’s way of doing things and growing to respect him as a fellow Viking. Then, at the hour mark and quite literally out of nowhere, she falls hopelessly in love with Hiccup and, around that time, loses her competency in combat – her main character trait by that point – so that Hiccup can rescue her in the finale. Much like with Sinbad, the film gains nothing from making Astrid the girlfriend of Hiccup. The film could have taken the romance part of the relationship out of it and lost nothing except a whole surplus load of problems. It’s character derailment of the highest order and the only thing that even slightly redeems it is the early scene between the two in the sequel where proceedings are suitably adorable and cute. That’s the sequel, however, so it’s still a problem in this film.
Specifically, in addition to ruining the character of Astrid, her sudden and inexplicable falling for Hiccup contributes to the film’s broken attempt at its message. From the start of the film, How to Train Your Dragon loudly sets up a message of alternate masculinity. Hiccup wants to be accepted in a very manly culture of walking badasses who practically reek of testosterone, including the women, but is incapable of being so because he’s physically weak and an altogether more peaceful guy stuck in a society that prides strength and violence above everything else. From the very start of the film, the pieces are put in place for Hiccup to earn the respect and admiration of his father and the community in other ways, through inner strength and the ability to make peace with the dragons. He will never be the guy who walks away from the explosion in slow motion, girlfriend in one arm, without looking back, but he can be masculine in other ways.
Yet his arc pays off by having him achieve acceptance in the way that the film’s society deems is the only way to be a true man: fighting and killing a dragon. He even loses a leg in the process; truest sign of a man and a badass is when you have a war wound; direct quote from Astrid prior to training, “It’s only fun if you get a scar out of it.” Sure, he’s riding a dragon and is only doing this in order to set the other dragons free and keep his dad from being killed, but it’s still very much a traditional way to wrap up his arc and makes the messages of the film – being true to one’s-self, what society deems to be masculine is not the only way to be a man, and that pacifism does not make you a coward or wuss – contradict events on screen.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 has this same problem, but works it into the overall narrative. The message of that film being some people cannot be reasoned with and, in those extreme situations, drastic steps must be taken to keep things from spiralling further out of control. The problem with How to Train Your Dragon is that the Alpha Dragon – the unreasonable thing that requires drastic steps to combat – is not worked into the message, so his existence and eventual combat feels like a sacrifice to big-budget filmmaking rather than a natural part of the film. Yet, frustratingly, his existence is still inextricably linked to the film’s DNA. Even though he contradicts the messages and feels superfluous, the film is still building up to a final showdown with Hiccup and Toothless against something big and nasty, so he can’t be ejected from the film.
So, Hiccup fits and slays a dragon; the biggest and baddest alive that also happens to be the reason why dragons keep raiding Berk and attacking/killing people. He also demonstrates natural leadership, gets the girl of his dreams, rescues the girl of his dreams as The Strong Female Character cannot be allowed to be self-reliant in the finale, becomes accepted by the Viking society for totally being one of them deep inside when the chips are down, and wins the respect of his father for basically doing what needed to be done. There’s nothing particularly alternative or Hiccup about it, despite having Stoick state otherwise. It’s like the film is at war with itself, between what it wants to be and what it needs to be. Kinda fitting, in all honesty.
Yes, as you may have gathered, I don’t love How to Train Your Dragon. I also don’t hate it, but I have many problems with it and I feel that, although it has many outstanding individual scenes, the whole doesn’t quite work. Let it be said, however, that, despite how I may sometimes come off when talking about films, I was really trying to like it. As a dog owner, the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless is the kind of pure, beautiful relationship between owner and pet that sends my heart all a-swelling. The film’s opening reel, where it sets up the intent of subverting typically accepted masculinity, had me all set to feel super “yay!” at the finale due to my personal relationships with masculinity. On the filmmaking side, the directors and co-writers are Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, previous of one of my favourite animated films of all-time in the shape of Lilo & Stitch.
Yet, both times that I’ve seen the film now – once prior to How to Train Your Dragon 2 because I learnt my lesson from February thank you kindly, once again for this series – it has left me cold overall, and I’m honestly not sure why. I mean, those two issues I just spent extensive time going into are not exactly deal-breakers; broken Aesops are not major problems for me and I’m a hardcore Disney fan so, although I am a feminist, I’m not going to write a film off totally for messing up its female characters (unless things switch over into an openly sexist, hateful misogynistic vibe, anyway). And, as I think we’ve discovered throughout this series, I don’t have a bias against DreamWorks Animation, having loved or really liked a good majority of their films.
But, try as I might, I can’t figure out why I feel no particular affinity to the whole of How to Train Your Dragon. There’s just this thing, I don’t know what it is and I can’t describe it but I know it’s not in HTTYD, for me at least. I mean, I’m rather alone on this. It has the highest score on Rotten Tomatoes of any DreamWorks Animation film to date and that includes Aardman co-productions; it swept the 2010 Annie Awards – albeit not without controversy – many people feel the film was snubbed when Toy Story 3 took the Best Animated Feature Oscar over it at that year’s Academy Awards; and, without fail, every single time I mention to somebody that this series and this film does pretty much nothing for me, they gasp in shock, assume I outright hate the film and demand an immediate explanation. But I can’t. I can tell them about Astrid and I can tell them about the walking contradiction known as the alpha dragon, but those are still not the reason why the overall film does nothing for me. So, therefore, I can’t tell people why I’m rather indifferent on a lot of this film except for just knowing that I am.
It’s a real shame, too, because How to Train Your Dragon does a lot of things right. Visually, the film is a delight, even if its ability to blow minds thanks to raw quality has been lessened somewhat by the sequel outdoing it in every regard. DreamWorks, especially in the Shrek series, have so far had a problem when it comes to animating and representing humans on screen, with them pretty much always falling into the Uncanny Valley and clashing badly with the rest of the film’s world. HTTYD is the first to really break through that with strong distinctive character designs that are clearly more focussed on resembling ideas in artists’ heads than the famous celebrity voicing them. Boarding and layout, meanwhile, take the arty heavily thought-out nature of Kung Fu Panda and run with it, constructing gorgeous shots that make great usage of space and size. (It likely doesn’t surprise you, incidentally, to find out that Roger Deakins was a visual consultant on the film.)
Writing is mostly strong, excluding the prior mentioned issues and most things out of Snoutlout’s obnoxiously awful mouth. It’s a film that maintains a serious tone for a large percentage of its runtime without being joyless. It doesn’t force its humour, the dragon training kids are teenagers so it makes sense that they’d be obnoxious and silly, and many of the jokes work on a dramatic level too. Stoick telling Hiccup that to become a true Viking he needs to stop being him, represented by gesturing to all of Hiccup, is funny because of how blunt he is and how incredulous Hiccup is about the whole thing, but it also works dramatically as Hiccup’s own father all but openly announces his contempt for his son to his face.
(Side Bar, whilst we’re on the subject: holy hell, do I find Stoick to be an incredibly irritating and unlikeable little sh*tbag in this film. Despite its best efforts, I don’t find him sympathetic at all and it’s because the film pushes down so hard on the “contempt for his son” button. His sympathetic side, including why he is especially vindictive towards dragons, is saved for the sequel so all we get here is miserable, angry, really unlikeable Stoick with only very occasional hints of genuine love bursting through, so that part of the heart side of the film falls flat for me. I also realise I’ve just undermined my “writing is mostly strong” point with this little digression, but I thought I’d talk about it briefly whilst it was still relevant.)
And then there is the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless. When the film is firing on all cylinders, and it fires on all cylinders a fair bit despite the constant negativity I’ve been indulging in in this here article, it’s because of those two. There’s a huge, giant beating heart powering all of their interactions and an incredibly sweet and natural development to their relationship. The design of Toothless especially helps matters, balancing cute and cuddly and adorable with dangerous and wild for the appropriate situations; making him consistent whether he’s this dangerous mythical beast who is three seconds away from biting Hiccup’s face off, or this adorable cutie curling up next to his master after a successful test flight.
Their bond feels real and genuine as the film perfectly paces their relationship from predator and prey, to cautious friends, to life partners. How to Train Your Dragon’s standout scene, the one that genuinely moved me to tears on first viewing because of its beauty, is the bit where Hiccup manages to tame Toothless and Toothless genuinely warms to Hiccup. A sequence told almost entirely without words yet saying more than 75% of vastly inferior animated movies manage to say in their entire runtime. It’s here where everything comes together – the strong writing, the brilliant character designs, the outstanding character animation, John Powell’s utterly sensational score, that giant beating heart – to create art. It’s just so impeccably done and… you know what? Just watch.
A close second is the test flight sequence, for pretty much all of the reasons listed about the prior scene and with the added pro of it being one of the best non-Miyazaki flight scenes I have ever seen in an animated movie. Closely behind that there’s the sequence where Hiccup wakes up after the battle with the alpha dragon (officially known as Red Death although I never once heard the film call it that), is re-united with Toothless and discovers his new prosthetic leg. Second Side Bar, real quick: although the path taken to get there and its overall thematic ramifications in this film are shoddy and rather unearned, I cannot deny that everything else this series has done, and hasn’t done, with the prosthetic leg is brilliant.
Yes, there is a point behind my devolving into referring to scenes without any real critical analysis to accompany them. Again, I find How to Train Your Dragon to be a whole bunch of excellent scenes in a whole that never quite works, and those scenes are most emblematic of that fact. They have that intangible something which, for me at least, the rest of the film doesn’t. After all, pretty much every single one of those elements that I mentioned a second ago are working at that level for the whole film, and How to Train Your Dragon is never really bad – those negative marks I’ve mentioned are more things I find disagreeable than outright negative deal-breakers. It just doesn’t work as a whole, for some reason, and that intangible thing that powers those three particular scenes to transcendental excellence doesn’t really show up outside of those scenes.
The problem of course being that, no matter how hard I try, I can’t figure out what that thing is. And that fact is killing me!
So, as you may have gathered by now, it’s very easy to see why How to Train Your Dragon blew off many doors at the box office. It had a rather modest opening, $43 million which is way below par for DreamWorks films especially since it now had the bonus of 3D tickets, but it held. It held extremely well over the following 10 weeks, even as DreamWorks’ own Shrek Forever After came along two months in to cannibalise long-term play. Considering the fact that action-focussed animated films supposedly don’t hold well – a view more than likely enforced due to that turn-of-the-century animation problem we talked about many weeks back – the fact that it finished as the 9th highest grossing film domestically of 2010 is a damn miracle.
Overseas gross ended up about equal with domestic gross, which is what kept the film from being a runaway hit and is decidedly underwhelming considering how DreamWorks normally do overseas, but I’m pretty sure that DreamWorks executives weren’t exactly crying over failures or what have you when the home media sales numbers started coming in. Besides, the company made a tonne of money from the domestic dollar, which is mostly better for the studios than foreign dollars (once again, this article will explain everything). How to Train Your Dragon today consists of two critically acclaimed and financially successful – sorta for the second one, depends how much you subscribe to Hollywood Accounting – feature films with a third on the way, a very successful TV series, four short films, multiple videogames, and an arena show adaptation that lasted about 10 minutes in America and Canada before it was uprooted to China instead.
And I get why this series is incredibly popular. I really do, they are damn good films. How to Train Your Dragon is a really damn good film! I want to love it unconditionally like I do so many other animated films, like I do Chris Sanders & Dean DeBlois’ Lilo & Stitch, like I do with so many of DreamWorks’ other films that we’ve covered in this series. But the film as a whole does nothing for me. I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t, much like how I cannot get into Adventure Time to save my life. And if you find that fact bewildering and maddening, know that I am right there with you. I’m really glad that so many people love and get something out of the How to Train Your Dragon series, but they just do nothing for me and I just don’t know why.
Even though the company had been on a significant upswing in terms of quality in the two years prior to its release, pretty much nobody saw the sheer quality of How to Train Your Dragon coming. DreamWorks would be rewarded for that pleasant surprise with an unparalleled amount of critical praise and a very healthy return at the box office. The hot streak that the company was on, however, had to come to an end sooner or later and, two months later, the company unleashed the final Shrek film to date upon the world to (relatively, considering how much a juggernaut Shrek was supposed to be) middling box office success and critical shrugs of indifference. Next week, we’ll tackle Shrek Forever After and see whether it was unfairly dismissed by critics based on the brand name or is yet another low-quality squirt for cash.
A new entry in The DreamWorks Animation Retrospective will be posted every Monday at 1PM BST.
Callie Petch is caught up in love and they’re in ecstasy.
Callie Petch 