How to Train Your Dragon
We first saw this trailer of How To Train Your Dragon when we went to see Avatar at the SM IMAX theater. We knew right away that we wanted to see it, and that my nephew Esban would want to see it too. Upon seeing last week that it was already showing at Trinoma, we started making plans to go. Sorry, I’ll get to the movie, just let me tell this backgrounder ok? 🙂
On Monday, Esban didn’t want to go because, ahem, maglalaro pa daw siya. O K ! Haha. No matter what I said, he disagreed, we couldn’t go just yet because he was going to play. I told him we can’t go the next day because I would already have work on Tuesday night. His response: call your boss and say you’d go half day. Toinks! Haha. 🙂 So yesterday, Sunday, we finally got to go and Adam came with us too.
The trailer shows the first scene of the movie. Uh-oh, a thought popped up in my head: there’s too much talking, the kids might have trouble understanding this! But I think they turned out okay, they didn’t ask me too many questions. Kaya lang, Esban had to go pee right when the story climaxed! Kaloka. And Alfred refused to take him out because he didn’t want to miss the scene at the arena where Hiccup had to slay the dragon. So I just went with the poor kid. When we got back, the Vikings were sailing to the dragon’s nest.
The movie is basically about a young Viking who is different from everyone else in their island. Their village is old, but the houses are always new. Dragons are their biggest problems because they always come preying on their livestock and blasting their structures. The Vikings dedicate their time training for and fighting the war against dragons. Expeditions are dispatched to find the dragons’ nest and put an end to them, but none of the boats come back. Now the lead character, Hiccup, is the son of the Viking chief (do they call him that?) but he is not built for slaying dragons. Instead, he buckles a lot and is often in accidents. He is awesome in the workshop though and has been an apprentice in making weapons. All he has wanted was to fit in and start killing dragons.
I think this happens everywhere, not the dragons, but kids turning out to be so different from their parents. Think about all those young ones who are forced to take up courses that they don’t really like and ending up failing miserably. Sons and daughters of doctors or lawyers or engineers who don’t want to be anything like their parents. Yet, that is what everyone expects them to be. For Hiccup though, his dad wasn’t pressuring him to be a dragon-slaying Viking, at least not in the beginning. He was fearful for him, sure that he won’t survive dragon training. And his good friend (the kids call him the uncle) was kind enough to tell Hiccup why:
Despite that, Hiccup persevered to prove everyone else wrong. And he did, though it was in a way that he had never imagined.
The movie also touches on father-son relationships, and how it isn’t always easy to talk to each other. I guess that is the case for all parent-child relationships too. Here it is shown in this scene, although you could also see it when Hiccup and his dad talked AFTER the dad heard the news about how well Hiccup’s been doing in dragon training:
Okay, although I am dying to show more clips of Hiccup with Toothless the Night Fury, I will restrain myself. I wouldn’t want to spoil the entire movie for those of you who have yet to watch it. And I really hope you do check it out, because it’s a good one. It’s not just fun to watch and visually beautiful, it also talks about shifting perspectives, how things aren’t always just how they seem. Training a Dragon isn’t as easy as learning to navigate a computer, or adding more mac memory, but it is simpler and less dangerous than slaying dragons.
Oh and yeah, now I remember, Esban did have one question: Why did Toothless always fly over water?
