school of dragons: how to train your dragon

Even Toothless is not immune to the alpha’s powers. He controls an alpha dragon, the Bewilderbeast, a gigantic creature with the power to bind all dragons to his will. In the second film, five years after the first, an evil overlord, Drago Bludvist, is luring away all the dragons in the world. And Berk, once a grim, dark, dour place, blossoms with bright colors to match the many varieties of dragons that have come to make their home there. They can ride them.ĭragons are no longer a scourge on Berk. His fellow students quickly see the utter coolness of this radical change in everything they’ve been brought up to believe. He literally has them rolling at his feet while he rubs their bellies.

When his father sends him to school to learn how to kill dragons, he tames them instead. Toothless can’t maneuver in the air without Hiccup.īut that’s not all Hiccup does. Hiccup rides Toothless, not just because it’s an amazing and exhilarating experience, but because Toothless initially needs Hiccup’s help to manage his prosthesis. They’re all about partnership about figuring out what the animal wants, and winning his cooperation. The methods he uses to train the dragon he names Toothless (because the dragon has retractable teeth) are the same methods that have become standard for training horses and dogs in our world. They’re just defending themselves against humans who are trying to kill them. By the time he’s done, he’s figured out that dragons aren’t really monsters at all. Hiccup being what and who he is, instead of finishing the creature off, first he makes friends with it, then he builds a prosthetic for its mutilated tail. He tries, but his one attempt results in an injured dragon. In the world built by Cressida Cowell in a series of books for younger readers, as translated into a trilogy of DreamWorks films, the Vikings of Berk devote their lives to slaying dragons-until the chief’s misfit heir, Hiccup, changes everything. The title of the first film touches on one of my real-world preoccupations, which is animal training. How to Train Your Dragon, three times over. This week I actually felt as if I was playing hooky, watching movies instead of doing, you know, work.īut.

I am having much too much fun with this chapter of the SFF Bestiary-and there’s still more to come.

School of dragons: how to train your dragon