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Blu-ray Review: How to Train Your Dragon

Back in 2010, the world fell in love with a dragon named toothless and his Viking saviour, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) in DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon. The movie is an inspiring tale of bravery and courage as we follow Hiccup through his adventure in trying to become a dragon slayer to win the respect of his father and the townspeople. However things take quite the turn when he manages to injure the most dangerous dragon of them all, a Night Fury. The bond of eternal friendship can always cure the xenophobia of the village people.

The only reason why Hiccup is enlisted in dragon school is so he can impress his mighty father, Stoick (Gerard Butler) who is the leader of Vikings. His life’s mission is to find the layer of the dragons and kill them all for the destruction and torment they have caused his village. However Hiccup being less than inclined to join the team in killing dragons, decides to swallow his pride and attempt to slay a dragon, thusly injuring Hiccup and starting our story off. Hiccup throughout the film is leading a double life as primary caregiver of Toothless trying to fix his broken tail so he can one day fly again as well as learning to become the ultimate dragon killer in school. He battles dragons without hurting them with what he learned from his studies and from Toothless for the dragon’s weaknesses. Will the rest of the Vikings including Hiccup’s father accept the fact that Hiccup is not as he seems, or will he become more of an outcast then he ever was before?

How to Train Your Dragon is a beautiful film about friendship, courage, and change that truly has a strong message for children as well as includes a lot of fun for the adults as well. When looking at screenwriters/directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders they have written things such as Lilo & Stitch and Mulan as well as the stories for Aladdin and Lion King (Chris Sanders, for those two), it isn’t a mystery as to why How to Train Your Dragon was brilliant.

New Episode of DreamWorks Dragons: Defenders of Berk

This feature is definitely for the children as it as never before seen from DreamWorks animated show based on this very successful movie. The show does not have as much heart as the movie does, so it is definitely more aimed for the children than it is the adults in this situation.

Deleted Scenes

With deleted scenes on any BluRay/DVD combo pack I expect the scenes to have some gravitas or change to the flow of the movie which would explain their deletion, but like most that is not the case. These scenes were either cut short and just interfered with the general flow of the movie making their removal an indifference. They are still fun to watch though to try and comprehend why they were removed in the first place, but did not provide any missed information from the movie.

Filmmakers Commentary

This is always a fun great feature that no one can ever tire of, thankfully. A feature more aimed at the older crowd for obvious reasons this commentary features a strong insight to what DeBlois and Sanders had thinking of into coming into the project. A really fun and entertaining commentary on the film, provided you enjoy commentaries.