In reviews of films like The Vikings (1958), I mentioned how I have been on a bit of a Medieval History kick of late.  I am not sure what has kept me going outside of my desire to avoid current news when it is bad and my love of the past.  Surely there has to be something more?  Until I figure that out, I can sigh and shake my head at new releases like How to Train Your Dragon (2025).  I guess I underestimated the popularity of the animated trilogy of the same name, which began in 2010.  Still, that is a mere fifteen years ago.  Disney waited almost ninety years to make a live version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which premiered earlier this year.  Given how universally panned that was, as with other attempts to bring cartoons to reality (for lack of a better phrase), you would think Universal would be reticent to do the same with their unexpectedly beloved How to Train Your Dragon.  Well, they were not, so here we are.  Please forgive any uncharitable textual sighs on my part with all this Medieval History bouncing around inside my brain.

The only thing bouncing around at the beginning of How to Train Your Dragon is an alert system developed by our hero and narrator, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Mason Thomas).  He is the son of the legendary, dragon slaying, Viking chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler).  I do not know why he is named something other than Hiccup Horrendous Haddock, Jr., but that is a discussion for another time.  At any rate, Hiccup’s invention is helpful in terms of getting the villagers of this island outpost called Berk ready for a dragon attack, but that is as far as Stoick is willing to allow his only child to do in terms of defending their livestock.  Hiccup is more brains than brawn, and he is relegated to assisting the severely crippled blacksmith Gobber the Belch (Nick Frost) pass out weapons during the melee.  One should not take this treatment as a lack of willingness on Hiccup’s part.  He is eager to prove himself not only to his father, but to his crush, the up-and-coming warrior girl Astrid Hofferson (Nico Parker).  For now, like the rest of his peers, she scorns the slightly clumsy Hiccup while they assist in putting out flames caused by the fire breathers.  Despite his orders, as soon as he finds an opportunity, he wheels out another contraption of his own design that shoots bolas into the air to take down the winged creatures and make them easier to kill.  Tonight, he has a special target in mind: the extremely rare and hard to see Night Fury.  It is small and black, but extremely agile and quick.  Spotting it only by where its wingspan blots out the stars, he fires and down it goes.  Before he can do anything else, the battle ends and he is confronted by Stoick.  Following his scolding of Hiccup, Stoick addresses the rest of his subjects, trying to allay their fears by suggesting that they do what their ancestors had come to do, and that is finding where the dragons are and killing them all.  Before the warriors depart by boat, Gobber talks with Stoick and convinces the leader to allow Hiccup to undergo the dragon slaying testing so that the young man can prove himself.  This would be great news for Hiccup save for the fact that when he finds the Night Fury, he cannot bring himself to dispatch the creature.  Instead, he frees the dragon from its bonds.  However, because of damage sustained to its tail, it cannot fly away.  With it trapped in sort of sink hole, this allows Hiccup to observe the so-called monster and make notes.  This goes on while he and Astrid and four others commence their instruction in the art of killing animals like Hiccup’s new friend.  Friendship, though, takes some coaxing, and like anyone else, it ends up being through the stomach.  Getting up close to the dragon allows him to apply his new knowledge to utilizing non-lethal ways of defeating the wyvern on which his class practices.  Doing so garners Hiccup a great deal of attention, outshining even Astrid to her annoyance.  Meanwhile, he comes up with a name for the Night Fury, Toothless, as well as a fix for the injured dorsal section.  The workaround involves a harness, but it can only work properly if Hiccup rides Toothless. Meanwhile, Astrid eventually discovers Hiccup’s secret, which she keeps when it is spectacularly demonstrated to her just how non-threatening can be these former terrors.  This happens on the eve of Stoick returning from another bloody and failed expedition to wipe out dragons, but he is pleased to hear that his son has been chosen as the strongest of the warrior hopefuls.  This means that he must demonstrate his worth by killing a fire breather in front of everyone watching him in the arena.  To Stoick’s horror, Hiccup instead calms the beast.  The peace is almost immediately shattered when Stoick jumps  down to fight.  Sensing Hiccup’s danger, Toothless manages to come to Hiccup’s rescue but is captured in the process.  In the ensuing argument, Hiccup lets slip that he and Toothless found the dragons’ nest.  Before he can say anything else, Stoick and the troops take the sea once more, using Toothless to guide them to where they can finally end their longtime foes.  The “anything else” Hiccup would have said is that the dragons they typically see are controlled by a singular fire breather the size of a mountain known as an “Alpha.”  Deciding to act, Hiccup gathers his classmates, frees the dragons held captive in the village, and goes to rescue their doomed comrades.  As the conflict rages, Hiccup unfetters Toothless with some help from a remorseful Stoick, and Hiccup and Toothless manage to destroy the Alpha.  It comes at a cost, though.  While Toothless saves Hiccup’s life, the young man comes out of it with one less foot.  Yet, since (according to this movie) that is the Viking way, he is happier about the fact that dragons are now integrated into Berk and he is gotten a girlfriend in Astrid.

It is safe to assume that real Vikings had similar relationships, and the same can be said about them not having dragons as pets, but that is How to Train Your Dragon for you.  I get that this is meant to be fantasy and not realistic, but my historian brain goes a little haywire when such stories use actual people.  For example, nearly every male, and many of the females, has a horned helmet.  There is zero evidence that any Viking anywhere at any time wore such a head covering.  That implement is a nineteenth fabrication.  I could go on about the historical problems contained therein, but that is not the focus of The Legionnaire.  This is an avowed Catholic film review blog, but, as usual, there is nothing in the movie to use directly.  What I am doing here, though, is commenting on how Viking culture is used on film in order to convey a world that never existed.  I find such decisions puzzling.  If you want to make it fantasy, then conjure some other, fictional people and have them befriend dragons.  I guess the reason why they are utilized is because if there is possibly one real fact that is arguably well known about these medieval, seafaring raiders is that some of the prows of their boats had dragon heads on them.  The monsters were also a part of their mythology, but such are the conventions of grammar that I cannot emphasize enough the root word “myth.”  In other words, dragons were not real.  My worry with this and other movies like it is that people can come to believe that this is history.  Our culture has enough misinformation in it, but I hope that people do not believe everything they see in movies.  What would be nice, if they are going to use history as a plot device, would be to get some more facts into the narrative.  It is not the complete story, but Catholicism played a role in taming (one could say “training”) the wilder aspects of Viking society.

Having lodged my complaints about How to Train Your Dragon’s depiction of Viking society, it is time to praise its message of acceptance.  It is something much needed for us today, and it is a more Christ-like approach to one’s enemies.  This aspect of the story is underscored beautifully when Astrid confronts Hiccup about his softened stance on dragons.  She points out that it is their people’s mission to destroy the fire breathers.  He adds that his mother was killed by them.  Hence, he has every reason to hate the monsters that have brought so much misery on Berk.  What I would point to is John 8:2-11 when Jesus stops the crowd from stoning a woman caught in adultery.  All that those who would punish this woman could see was her sin.  Jesus responds to them by asking who among them is sinless and challenging that person to “cast the first stone,” the famous part of the Scripture from verse seven.  There is more that can be read into this passage.  Jesus consorted with sinners (call them dragons if you like) because He knew they were worthy of redemption.  Further, we do not know the circumstances that led to the woman committing adultery.  Maybe she had been raped?  If you think that is unlikely, then read the thirteenth chapter of Daniel where two men force themselves unto the wife of another man.  They were about to stone her until the eponymous prophet speaks out against the crime.  The point here is that Jesus, and Faith by extension, shows us that there is usually more to the world than a black and white, guilty or not, dragon or human division in society.  The more we strive to understand one another, the more peaceful will we be.  I would rather co-exist with dragons rather than kill them, praying for any sins they might have and evangelizing when possible.

The message of co-existence in How to Train Your Dragon, taken with its abhorrent history, make this a half recommendation, half warning.  One could accuse me of hypocrisy for making a binary judgement considering my previous paragraphs.  What I hope I have presented is a nuanced discussion of a flawed movie, one that is flawed like the rest of us, but worth understanding.