Good example of essay on how to train your dragon: film review

The movie, “ How to Train Your Dragon” is a 3D animated movie that was released in the year 2010. Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois directed this movie was one of the biggest successes on the American box office. Dream Work’s produced this action fantasy was admired by children and adult audiences across the world. The movie succeeded in winning support of the audiences, as well as, critics. This paper intends to discuss the movie, “ How to Train Your Dragon” along with discussing how concepts of tolerance, intolerance and prejudice are related to this movie.
The concept of tolerance is very wide. Tolerance indicates towards a behavior that respects human dignity. Tolerance is a commitment to show fair attitude towards those whose opinion is different on various or all issues. Tolerance is the idea of strength, and the more strength one has, the more liberty he will give to others to express his views or execute his practices. Tolerance is an idea of allowing others to be different and let them do whatever they want to do.
The film ‘ How to train your dragon’ portraits the true picture of any society or place. The movie starts from showing an island of Berk (i. e. Viking village) that is beleaguered by dragons’ attack. Villagers were frantic on the dragons because they were stealing the livestock. The film shows a typical setting of tribal society where Chieftain is head of the society and people respect his decisions. In the movie ‘ Stoick the Vast’ is chieftain of Viking village and Hiccup who is the main character of the movie is his son. Stoicks formed a fleet for discovery of dragon’s nest and Hiccup was also a member of that fleet.
The concept of tolerance is portrayed in the movie, “ How to Train Your Dragon” in a realistic manner. The story of this movie suggests that villagers lacked tolerance and they were showing intolerance towards dragons. They were prejudiced that dragons are always dangerous and they can eat people. Villagers were prejudiced about dragons that they were killers of villagers. This prejudice caused intolerance among villagers and they lost their tolerance. The villagers did not show any tolerance towards dragons and it caused mistrust between villagers and dragons.
Since very beginning movie is showing people’s intolerance towards a creature that is powerful and causing some harm to them. In a society, intolerance often resulted in dispute fight and war, the same is shown in the movie. Villagers were making their all efforts to kill dragons and abolishing their nests. Hiccup and other young members of the fleet send for training under the guidance of Gobber, a blacksmith. Hiccup with assistance of Gobber develops mechanical devices to kill dragons and to become dragon slayer as per tradition of Viking society. The young Hiccup under the influence of his father and society wanted to kill dragons.
Value, beliefs, traditions and culture of any society are transferred by senior people to the young children. In the movie Stoick and other elder members of the society transfer their beliefs and traditions to the children and convince them that dragons are our enemies, hence, can not be tolerated. The movie shows prejudice when people form perception about something without even knowing the reality and transfer their knowledge to upcoming generations. In Viking village, villagers formed perception that dragons are harmful for the society and should be killed. The same prejudice was formed in the mind of youngsters.
The concept of tolerance, intolerance and prejudice is visible in various incidents of the movie. There are different scenes, characters and instances that reiterate these ideas in different ways. It has been portrayed that villagers had a perception that dragons are their adversaries and they should be killed. The main character, Hiccup has been shown growing up with the feeling that he has to fight dragons. Even if Hiccup was physically not that strong he was determined to fight dragons because he was under a prejudice about them.
Hiccup shows the influence of prejudice and intolerance when he attempts to kill dragon in the movie. During his first attack, he thought that he killed a very dangerous dragon, but soon realized that the dragon was trapped in bolas. Hiccup saw the trapped dragon and set it free, Hiccup realized that he cannot kill an innocent animal without any reason. The free dragon went back to the forest. This scene was the turning point in the story, where first time a human shown his tolerance or emotions for the dragon.
Hiccup has been portrayed determined to kill dragon and making a canon to shoot dragons, but end up in developing a good amicable relation and both of them helped one another at times. Both of them did not disclose their friendly relation because of long time prejudices against each other in family and Viking community.
The movie progress with development of positive emotions for the dragons in the mind of Hiccup and simultaneously in the mind of other Vikings. Hiccup discover that dragon he was trying to kill but could not, has got injured and cannot fly. Hiccup cares and helps dragon and develop a bonding of trust. He gave a name to the dragon ‘ Toothless’. Hiccup also helped dragon in fly by providing him a prosthetic tail part. Hiccup learned lots of thing about dragons from the Toothless that allowed him to know about other species of dragon.
Hiccup transferred his knowledge to class which made him in becoming star pupil and shocked Astrid (a classmate). The movie here shows the benefits of tolerance as Hiccup gained lots of knowledge by making Toothless his friend. His friendship with toothless allowed him to deal with other species of dragons.
Hiccup takes Astrid with him on the ride on toothless, and reached to dragons’ nest. However, Hiccup asked Astrid to keep it secret in order to prevent toothless from any harm. Hiccup wanted to show how dragon can be lived calmly with human in same society during his exam, but Stoick unintentionally stopped him. This action made dragons angry and toothless protected the Hiccup. This scene in the movie shows intolerance and benefits of tolerance both. On one hand Stoick stopped Hiccup due to intolerance, and on the other hand, arrival of toothless to protect Hiccup shows benefits of tolerance.
Towards the end Stoick went to find dragon’s nest by taking help of toothless, however, Vikings find difficult to win Red Death (giant dragon). At that time Hiccup tries to protect Vikings from the Red Death. Due to existing intolerance and prejudices, they fight a war and some incidents of this war open their eyes. Stoick noticed how toothless is helping Hiccup and protecting Vikings.
The movies shows how certain level of tolerance can benefit not only humans but two different species. It is also important for the humans not to form any prejudice based on false stories or without and proper information. The movie ends with a scene where toothless is helping Stoick in rehabilitating the village after war. The scene shows how tolerance can benefit a society and people living in the society.
Hiccup and his dragon friend, Toothless saved each other and cooperate even during the war of villagers and dragons. Their friendship and cooperation suggested each other to remain with love and peace. At the end of movie, villagers come to realize that not every dragon is their enemy and they expressed their commitment to help each other. Tolerance and trust is established and all prejudices come to an end. This was a happy ending of this excellent movie, “ How to Train Your Dragon”.
Having observed an overview and succinct analysis of the abovementioned subject, this paper concludes that the movie, “ How to Train Your Dragon” is a good entertainer. The movie excels in various aspects of the movie making. The movie also portrays the concepts of tolerance, intolerance and prejudice in a realistic manner. It depicts the human behavior in its true sense and suggests that humans are prejudiced against dangers. They are prejudiced and intolerant towards anything that is not known to them. Once they are acquainted to dangers or strangers, they do not take much time in befriending them.