In many ways I regret getting my dog
because I've grown annoyingly fond of her and I know that one day the bitch
will break my heart and die. For years I refused to watch animal documentaries
because I didn't like the idea of seeing a shark rip open a seal or a crocodile
pulling the head off a zebra. People say I should man up because it's just part
of life, but fuck them! When I was younger I lived in the kind of area where a
young girl would drop her pants in the park and then casually do a shit under
the slide. Just because something's part of life it doesn't mean I need to
watch Richard Attenborough narrate it on a Sunday night. Around the time she
was doing her public dump, there seemed to be a weird sub-genre of animal abuse
movies that masqueraded as kids films that I didn't like either. They all had
the exact same plot in which a child would befriend an animal that would be
taken away and tormented by the adults before being rescued by the kid at the
end. Free Willy is probably a good example of this with the film-makers
cleverly realising that the simplest way of creating drama in a film for
children is by finding a cute, innocent creature and then fucking it up. Like
those shit movies from my youth, my dog too has found herself in trouble when
I've needed to protect her. Another dog attacked her once and so I had to kick
it in the face... Job’s a good’n. Let's move on.
In preparation for the sequel I decided to
re-watch How To Train Your Dragon...or as I annoyingly keep wanting to call
it, How To Train Your Dragon And Alienate People. It tells the story of
a young Viking named Hiccup whose geeky persona and lack of muscles cause him
to be a huge disappointment to his significantly larger, sted-head of a father.
Together they live in a bizarre fantasy world in which half of the residents
are Scottish and the other half American. Can you imagine that? It's fucking
weird! Oh, and they're also plagued by dragons who have been flying in and
stealing all of their sheep... Whatever! Considering it's a known fact that the
Scottish diet consists exclusively of deep-fried mars bars and heroin, I do
wonder what they use the sheep for because having them stolen really seems to
frustrate them. As a result, both humans and dragons seem at constant war until
the one day that Hiccup shoots one down and secretly befriends it. Although
there is a girl to act as a potential love interest to Hiccup, the film is more
interested in his relationship with the dragon than her. I'm not sure why the
human relationship isn't really explored but I’d imagine it's because they're Vikings
and there's no easy way that a kids film can explore romance within a culture
that was so notoriously rapey.
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| "I wish I knew how to quit you..." |
As the film goes on we find out that the
violence towards the dragons at the hands of the Vikings might in fact be a
little irrational and based far more on fear and misunderstanding than fact or
fairness. This is a movie that explores the idea of prejudice by depicting the
forbidden love of the two main characters. As Hiccup is forced into Viking
training, he even has to pretend to be somebody that he's not before coming
face to face with the inevitable ‘coming out’ scene later on. Most kids’ films
don't have any message to them beyond, “look at the bright colours and shut the
fuck up, children”. Therefore I think that How To Train You Dragon deserves
huge praise for teaching kids that prejudice is wrong and that we should
instead live and let live. Whether it be the bond between a boy and a dragon or
simply two cowboys who go bum-fucking up the mountainside the movie depicts
true happiness through acceptance rather than confrontation. The Vikings have
been fighting dragons for years and getting nowhere, however by the end of the
film, (spoiler alert) the two have decided to live in peace which has resulted
in a better world for everybody. When fighting each side has lost limbs and
lives however, the moment that they become more accepting the land is swarming
with dragons which as we see is no bad thing. Replace the dragons with gay
people and this fantasy land with San Francisco and the end result is exactly
the same... a more open and happy society that seems to have a lot less hate
and few more rainbows.
Sentimental message aside though, How To
Train Your Dragon is still a great film which gets over its clichéd
characters with a great relationship between Hiccup and the dragon, Toothless.
Yes Hiccip is your run of the mill farmboy type chap but at least Toothless
looks cool. He's less of the typical lizardy dragon that you might expect to
see and more like if a cat fucked a dog and their offspring fucked a
salamander. To be fair I also think it helps that although the dragon is an
animal it seems to be just as intelligent and useful as the human is. As much
as Hiccup helps Toothless, Toothless too helps Hiccup with the film culminating
in a final battle in which we see how much stronger they actually are together.
In fact it's not even until they start to bond that the film even gets going,
really.
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| Wait, 'Berk' means what now?! |
I kind of think that films are like
Rorschach tests in that what you see
in them sometimes says more about you than it does what you're watching. So
before you make any assumptions about me, I'd like to say that although there
is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, as a general rule I tend to go for
the gal's... although it has been a while. So although that's what this film’s
story seemed like to me, I'm sure somebody else might see it as being more
about how being disabled doesn't make you useless. With his broken tail, poor
old toothless is basically just the dragon equivalent of an old time gimp. But
you know, the ability to have multiple readings is I suppose proof that you're
watching what could be a great film. Is How To Train Your Dragon a
classic? Well I guess only time will tell but I think we can surely state as
fact that it's certainly Gerard Butler’s best movie. I think it also deserves
credit for having the balls to just be an actually good family film and not a kid’s
film with adult jokes in it to avoid the parents getting so bored that they
kill their child to never have to watch it again. It's got a great design and
having now set the world up it leaves it in a great place to build upon in
future instalments. I mean fuck it, if they can make four million shit Free
Willy films then I don't see why they can't make at least a couple of good
ones in this franchise. Anyway, thanks for reading motherfuckers and I'll see
you next time!
You can also visit the blog picture artist at _Moriendus_
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