How to Train Your Dragon Reveals Modern Familial Relationships

Rating: 8/10 (27 September 2016)

How to Train Your Dragon Reveals Modern Familial Relationships Written for IMDb.com How to Train Your Dragon is a film which reveals the lack of familial relationships in current society through Hiccup's struggle to impress his father, Stoick, and the rest of his village. In this film, Hiccup is a young viking who lives on the island of Berk, beset every night by dragon attacks. Hiccup is small and weak for his age, and is ostracized by the rest of the village. This film follows Hiccup's search for family and friends in a society he does not seem to fit into. Jay Baruchel does a good job of displaying Hiccup as a young boy trying to impress his father, because of how weak he is. Gerard Butler reveals Stoick's character as a busy chieftain who usually has no time for his incompetent son. This reveals the struggles of fathers and sons in real life, with the father usually being too busy to help his son and the son finding that the only way to get his father's attention is to get in trouble. Hiccup ends up, as many children today do, finding a sense of belonging outside of his family, with his dragon Toothless. By the time Stoick starts paying attention to Hiccup, Hiccup has already found his place with a friend who he can always count on, but grows distant from his real family in the process. Children nowadays face similar problems, always searching for a sense of belonging. Their family is often too busy with work and the virtual world, and so the children grow distant from their family and instead come to rely on a group of friends who are very different from their parents. Although the actual volume of sappy emotions in the film is very low, the lack of volume in that area is made up for. The reduction of emotion is compensated by the large amounts of explosive, aerial dragon combat. This film is very similar to a video game in its action and realistic quality. Overall, the directors, Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, wrote an engaging and exciting movie that is an accurate depiction of the relationship between children and parents today.