Challenging the Status Quo

Rating: 8/10 (25 June 2015)

The world would probably be a better place, if all children watched How to Train Your Dragon. The story of the animated film demonstrates, among other things, that (1) parents are not always right, (2) the self-evident truths in a society may very well be false, and the established practices inspired from them equally misguided, (3) societies sometimes consider their enemies inherently evil, due to a lack of empathy, if not projective identification, (4) animosities may come to an end if people try to view their enemies through different lenses, and develop different attitudes toward them, and (5) enemies today may become friends tomorrow, especially if one stops pointing a weapon at them, and extends a hand.
In all, How to Train Your Dragon makes it clear that we live in a world of our own making. We take it over from those who came before us, along with the values they created it with. Still, we can make it a better place if we take up the challenge to question these values, and replace them with better ones. The final scenes of the film are a demonstration of such a better world, where the seemingly-perpetual state of war is no more, and peaceful coexistence prevails.
Serdar Kaya