Whenever my kids complain about how cold it is I remind them of their Viking ancestors.
“How to Train Your Dragons” tells the story of a boy who lives in a Viking village where it snows 70% of the year and hails the other 30%. And all the buildings are new.
Why? Well because of their constant ongoing battle with dragons who come to steal their food and livestock.
The goal of every child is to learn how to kill dragons and become a real Viking. And pretty much every child and every adult in this village is big burly and able to knock the teeth out of a dragon with a good right hook.
Except Hiccup. And he is the son of Stoic(sp?) the village chieftain.
Small scrawny and not very violent. But he manages early in the film to bring down the most elusive dangerous and feared type of dragon. And changes everything.
“How to Train Your Dragon” is almost pure joy. Utterly delightful. Alternately funny then exciting then dramatic then moving then back to delightful.
I have not been able to draw any deep theology or meaning out of the film yet. Oh wait maybe a little.
A cornerstone of my person theology is that human beings were created with a high calling. To manage the world with and for God. To use the world sometimes for food clothes and houses? Sure. But never to exploit or destroy. And always with an eye toward managing preserving even continuing the creation. This is straight up Genesis 1-2 people. I remember one saint saying the reason another saint got along so well with animals is because “they could smell the fragrance of Adam on him”.
And straight up Genesis 3 is that this all fell apart and even our relationship with animals has become broken.
There is a sense in which “How to Train Your Dragon” is partly about human beings rediscovering their original Adamic vocation. To understand and to care for the created world. Including otherwise wild and dangerous animals.
(Although I recall a significant paper by Margaret O’Dell a few years ago at a Society for Biblical Literature meeting. She argued that the eschatological “lion lies down with the lamb” imagery does not mean ultimately we all live together in harmony. Rather we all live in our proper places. And that is how we will all get along with each other.)
There is also the usual “God created everyone different and your child might be different in a special way”. Stoic goes from being embarrassed of his misfit weakling son to proud and grateful.
Finally – and this is similar to the first point – there is the biblical theme of Chaoskampf. How even God battles and restrains chaos. (This is one of my areas of interest in the study of the Hebrew Bible. What I call “primordial mythology” in the Bible. Good place to start is Creation and the Persistence of Evil by Jon Levenson.) Sometimes personified as the “deep” or the “waters” or “behemoth” or “Leviathan”. There is a “Leviathan” in this movie that threatens humans and dragons alike.
We saw it in 3D but the frankly the film stands on its own. The 3D is just bonus.
(Most memorable 3D effect was toward the end when ash was falling and you would swear some of the flakes were landing on your lap.)
