Media observation #9

Hello everybody!

Since I'm at the storytelling & scriptwriting course at the moment and narrative has been a topic on this course as well, I thought I'd write a little about the movie "How to Train Your Dragon". This post is one big spoiler about that movie so don't read if you still haven't seen it!

When this movie first came out, I wasn't interested at all. I found the theme of "dragon hunting vikings" a bit boring and maybe even old-fashioned. My friends and the people in internet however love this movie so I got a little interested in it and finally ended up watching it this week.

I'm not going to write out the whole plot here but this is basically how the movie starts: The movie tells a story of a young viking named Hiccup. He lives in a viking village which is constantly under attack by dragons. It's a tradition that vikings kill dragons and Hiccup is eager to become a true viking. He's a pretty small and slim boy with a tendency to be clumsy so other's don't really see him as a potential dragon slayer. One night the village is attacked by dragons once again and Hiccup goes hunting for the legendary dragon called "Night Fury", which nobody has seen. With the catapult Hiccup made himself, he manages to hit a dragon which falls down to the middle of the forest. He goes searching for his prey and finds out he'd captured Night Fury. In the end, he's unable to kill the dragon and frees it, however they'll cross paths again...

As a practise, I tried to think of how the movie would fit the Syd Field "Paradigm", which is an example of the classic Hollywood narrative. I can't say if the results of my thinking are exact but at least I tried!

ACT I
I'd say the inciting incident is when Hiccup captures Night Fury. That sets the whole plot into motion. The 1st plot point would be the moment when Hiccup tries to tell his dad that he's unable to kill dragons and his father refuses to listen, making Hiccup join the dragon hunter training.

ACT II
First half
Hiccup joins the hunter training and tries to train Night Fury/Toothless in secret at the same time. I'd say the first pinch would be when Hiccup almost falls off of Toothless' back while flying.
Midpoint
Hiccup makes progress in school and with Toothless' training.
Second half
I think the second pinch is when Astrid finds out about Toothless. The second plot point would be when Toothless comes to protect Hiccup in the final test of his school's training and is captured instead.

ACT III
Vikings set sail to dragon's nest making Toothless to lead the way. The climax would be the battle and victory against Red Death, a gigantic dragon. The resolution to the whole plot would be humans becoming more friendly towards dragons.

I think the movie did fit the classic Hollywood narrative pretty nicely. I also tried to compare it to Hero's Journey but the plot didn't seem to fit it that well.

I liked this movie for many reasons and I'd like to list a few of them down below:

• The main character was a nerd: building all sorts of machines and things
• It promoted the message of understanding each other instead of just killing the enemy
• I always love it when a boy doesn't have to be a manly macho man to save the day and get the girl (Although we can argue about the necessity of the love story between Hiccup and Astrid...)
• At the end, both of the main characters have a prosthesis. It's always nice to see big movies include a wider spectrum of people as main characters.

I'd recommend this movie to people who like watching animations. It's a bit cheesy and corny at times but at it's core it's a sweet story. I'll probably watch the sequel(s) too at some point!

Happy thoughts,
Oona