Training dragons

Jonathan's parents were kind enough to come babysit Meg last night, so Jonathan and I went on a date! We saw How to Train Your Own Dragon (in 3D, so for an extra $3.50 each. Surprise!). It was, if not actually a fun movie, at least a movie with fun parts.

The 3D was great. It added a lot. You'd look over a hill, and a dragon would really jump out at you. Ack! The animation was very nice - beautiful, in places, and quite detailed, right down to the limpets on the ship. And that meeting hall, with lovely carvings - ahh. I'd live in Burk happily.

The story editor failed, though. And the guy in charge of characters. The plot hit a whole rainbow of cliches: villains are misunderstood rather than actually evil, the (also misunderstood) teenager will keep secrets from his parents but that's okay, teenagers know best and will save the world for the grown-ups, Dad will apologize in the climax, etc. The characters were also pretty cliche'd and shallow, with a couple exceptions. We had a fat fanboy, two really annoying bickering siblings, a warrior chica, and a fawning rival for the chica's hand.

Said chica... sigh. There is, in fact, a place for lady warriors. Eowyn from Lord of the Rings has a rather good one. But I don't see why every movie needs a girl wearing (ferret?) skulls on her belt who needs to prove she's Just As Good As Any Stupid Boy At Boys' Activities. I want to see a heroine who has feminine qualities, somewhere, somehow. If women aren't allowed to be women, but have to be men, isn't that kind of denigrating to women? Just asking...

The most interesting character was the dad's friend, the blacksmith and dragon-fighting-trainer. He was a sensible person, fun to be around, and gave good advice (except for his unenlightened prejudice against dragons who after all had only been trying to kill him his entire life, but oh well). There was one really good scene where the blacksmith and the dad have an actual conversation about what to do with Hiccup (main character). The blacksmith advised they let accident-prone Hiccup learn to fight dragons like he'd been begging to, on the grounds that he would get into trouble one day and really should be equipped to handle it. The dad actually took this advice. I only wish the plot hadn't then invalidated this sensible decision by making the training totally unnecessary.

The dad and the blacksmith had a great relationship. They're obviously both brave and great guys. There's a lot of medieval instances of such friendships, from Roland and Oliver on down, so I thought that really fit in this movie. In the last scene we get to see them working together (oh yeah!). It would have been much more fun to have lots of scenes with those two, rather than so many with the selfish and puerile teenagers. Also, possibly then the dad could have spent most of the movie showing his virtue rather than apparently being dumb.

The biggest gaping plot hole was the ending. Spoiler! We all come together, men, teens, and dragons, by fighting the ginormous other dragon. I'm really not clear why we should make friends with normal dragons but it's great to kill the big one. Er? Surely the giant dragon was only wicked because someone had kicked him as a dragonling? But except for being wildly inconsistent, that was a good scene, in which nearly everyone got to be heroic.

So. Overall, it was a perfectly adequate movie. Technically it was great, but it could have used a lot of refining.