How to Train Your Dragon is a story about a Viking and his dragon friend.

Rating: 10/10 (5 February 2017)

How to Train Your Dragon is about a young Viking, and son of the town's leader Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler), named Hiccup (Jay Baruchal) who has no perceivable skills that learns how to create a friendship with a dragon. His journey starts as he attempts to kills his first dragon, but instead, ends up taking pity on the creature and then nurses it back to health. He teaches himself about the dragon race and applies it to the dragon that he affectionately names Toothless. The pair then take Hiccup's friend Astrid (America Ferrera), who believes that Toothless is dangerous, on a little ride to teach her about the dragons. They then find an alpha dragon that terrorizes all of the others in the area. After some time, the alpha is taken down and all the townsfolk believe that they too can become friends with dragons.The story is about creating friendships in the most unlikely places.
After Hiccup takes down Toothless with a catapult and finds him in the woods, he realizes that he can't just kill the creature. He lets him go, but then finds him later on and figures out that Toothless can no longer fly correctly. This fuels his compassion for the dragon and thus starts the friendship. As time goes on, Toothless reciprocates this by protecting Hiccup from multiple perceived threats, such as Astrid or the other dragons. Toothless and Hiccup always have each other's backs and they help teach others that it's possible to create friendships between two species. Movies with similar themes include Guardians of the Galaxy, Bolt, and Shrek. All are family friendly, and show that friendships can be created over many mediums and that they are very powerful.
One technique that was very relevant to the film was the use of montages. This helped to show the development of a friendship between Toothless and Hiccup. It also demonstrated how Hiccup learned about the different quirks of dragons and their usefulness in creating trust. Another useful technique was the use of color. Because of how bright and colorful the movie was, it kept children's' attention throughout the movie. It also added a useful effect for many scenes. When Hiccup was working with Toothless, everything was nice, bright, and used colors like green to convey a happier tone. When Hiccup was with his training partners, everything seemed to be brown and bland except for the dragons themselves. When getting into contact with the alpha dragon and in the fighting scenes, the color was dark, with a lot of grays and black. From montages, to the use of different color schemes, this all helped to show that friendship can be created in the most unlikely places.