Review of How to Train Your Dragon (2010) by Maineutral R — 25 Jun 2014

A movie with almost every single animated movie cliché ever...HOW THE HELL DOES IT MAKE IT WORK SO GREAT?! Well, we'll get to that later on the review. How to Train Your Dragon tells the story of Hiccup, a boy that lives in a world of Vikings and, of course, Dragons. The Vikings are struggling with the dragons, and their on to find their nest and get them off the map. Everything starts to change when Hiccup finds a wounded dragon, whom he later befriends. Hiccup studies the dragon, spends time with him, and little by little starts realizing that dragons aren't bad, they're just another kind of creatures, like us. The rest of the story I'll let it out from here, cause I don't want to spoil it for those who are just looking for an opinion before seeing it.

This Dreamworks animated movie has some incredible animation, great epic music, likeable characters, funny moments and some of the most beautiful and exhilarating flying scenes ever. The animation is the star: it's just unbelievable; it's unlike anything I've seen, especially in a movie that has many clichés in such a way, that they make them necessary to progress in the story, but in a good way. Now, for that point previously stated at the beginning: why do the clichés work here? Almost as if they were the first time anyone uses them? Well, it's all on storytelling and characters: the storytelling is paced correctly, like if it where meticulously timing it to get it right; and the characters are well developed: when a cliché is on, it doesn't simply happen or anything, we actually see the characters change or emotions through these clichés, making them work. Also, it's just the setting they use, it's the right one.

Another thing I have to point out is the feeling I have through this movie. It's almost as if I was watching something that Pixar would envy. Something that raises the bar for Dreamworks, and it surely did. It was something unexpected, but also surprising by effect. And who doesn't like pleasant surprises?

How to Train Your Dragon might be the best use of 3D animation I've seen for an animated movie, and vastly superior to James Cameron's Avatar in 3D experience. The sequel is coming soon, and I can only set my hopes in middle mode, as even I know sometimes is easy to fuck up. We'll see if they can exceed this movie's magnificence in the next one.