The story takes place in a mythical Viking world where a young Viking teenager named Hiccup aspires to follow his tribe's tradition of becoming a dragon slayer. After finally capturing his first dragon, and with his chance at finally gaining the tribe's acceptance, he finds that he no longer has the desire to kill it and instead befriends it.
At first glance, the movie is concerning because it threatens to produce a generation of children who grow up with the impression that the Vikings are Scottish. They are not. Neither are the children of Vikings American. Why movies lack the ability to produce characters whose accents accurately portray the setting of the story is quite frankly perplexing. The Hibernian Island has a rich history of Viking settlements, whose decedents are part of the present population of Ireland. Scotland has a history of repelling most Viking raids. There is far more evidence that the Vikings fought dragons in Wales or Ireland than in Scotland. With that in mind, it is surprising that well-known Scotsmen would lend their talents to a project re-writes their history at best, slanders it at worst.
Having said that, the rest of the movie is absolutely great. It’s sometimes hard to tell what the motivating factors of the protagonist to change the centuries-old lifestyle of his Viking culture is. It seems that it might be his less than Viking stature and habitual clumsiness that make him an outcast from the rest of his people. A self-fulfilling prophecy could have contributed to his already outcast nature- thus paving the way for his eventual challenge to the status quo.
This might be a bit of a harsh treatment for an animated fantasy. It was cute. The dragons are awesome and the animation is outstanding. The story, I think, says a lot about following one’s conscience rather than blindly following a culture that ultimately undermines that conscience.
It was a good movie. I’m just long winded, and perhaps a bit droning.
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