'How to Train Your Dragon': Fantasy battle reflects real-world wars

A beautifully animated, often funny adventure touches on some serious topics

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“Our parents’ war is about to become ours,” a young girltells her friend in a new film. “Figure out what side you’re on.” Allaround them they see destruction and chaos, the result of being under siege bya culture they don’t understand. Some of these enemies set themselves on firein order to kill more effectively. Many of the warriors who join in the battlecome home with missing limbs.

The rationale behind the fighting is vague. “They’ve killedhundreds of us!” a father warns his son. “And we’ve killed thousands of them!”the son replies.

Given those kinds of details, you might think the movie isset in Iraq or Afghanistan or the Gaza Strip. It’s not: It takes place on theisland of Berk, in the Meridian of Misery, where “it snows nine months of theyear and hails the other three.” This is not a docudrama. It’s an animatedfantasy from DreamWorks called “How to Train Your Dragon” — and, in its ownway, it’s every bit as politically charged as “Green Zone.”

You won’t find the topical material in Cressida Cowell’soriginal book, which (aside from the location and character names) has littlein common with the screenplay by Adam F. Goldberg, Peter Tolan, Dean DeBloisand Chris Sanders. Cowell’s novel is whimsical and largely light-hearted; themovie is often quite funny and suspenseful as well, although its message about the need forcommunication and open-mindedness is impossible to miss.

The human characters in “Dragon” are Vikings, led by thehearty, gung-ho dragonslayer known as Stoick the Vast. Scores of dragons regularlyravage the Vikings’ village, swooping off with their livestock and torchingtheir homes.

Stoick’s son, a willowy kid named Hiccup (voice provided byJay Baruchel), dreams of following in Dad’s footsteps, but his awkwardness hasalready made him a local laughingstock. When Hiccup miraculously succeeds incapturing and partially crippling a “Nightfury,” an elusive, ultra-powerfuldragon with skin as black as India ink and the quizzical, neon-green eyes of acat, the boy initially plans to kill the monster. Hiccup’s innate sense ofempathy gets the better of him, however, and he decides to study the Nightfuryinstead. Eventually, he even fashions a mechanical tail for the dragon toreplace the one it lost when Hiccup shot it down.

In many ways, “Dragon” adheres to the misfit-makes-goodformula that’s been at the heart of “The Little Mermaid,” “Pocahontas,”“Mulan,” “Hercules” and dozens of other animated features. This theme hasfrequently turned up in previous DreamWorks’ efforts as well. In last year’shighly successful “Monsters vs. Aliens,” a nondescript bride-to-be named Sue istransformed by a cosmic calamity into the towering Ginormica and, after someinitial misgivings, she decides she prefers being a “monster” to being anobody. The previous year, the company rolled out “Kung Fu Panda,” in which Pothe clumsy panda becomes a champion.

But the exquisitely animated “Dragon” is by far the most overtly political picture ofthe bunch. Stoick (who speaks in the Scottish burr of Gerard Butler, perhapsbecause Scottish accents have been a staple of DreamWorks’ massively popular“Shrek” franchise) brings together his people through their common fear of thedragons. His dream is to locate the secret nest of the flying reptiles anddestroy it — in other words, to fight them “over there” so he doesn’t have tofight them in his own backyard. Several of the Vikings have hooks for hands orpeg-legs, sad souvenirs of their battlefield experiences.

In the book, the dragons have been largely subjugated by theVikings and are treated like workhorses. They speak “dragonese,” a languagesome of the Vikings can understand. The movie presents the dragons as wild andnon-verbal, which makes them more mysterious and “foreign.”

Hiccup and his classmates study a manual full of supposedlyvalid tips on dragon culture, although when Hiccup begins to establish a bondwith the Nightfury (which he nicknames “Toothless” because of the creature’sretractable teeth), he realizes the “intelligence” is false. “Everything weknow about you guys is wrong,” Hiccup marvels.

The Iraq War has been box office poison, as evidenced by theweak grosses of “In the Valley of Elah,” “Rendition,” “Stop-Loss” and “Lionsfor Lambs.” Currently, “Green Zone,” which takes a harsh view of the early daysof the conflict, is dying on the vine: After 10 days, the film — whichreportedly cost upwards of $100 million to produce — had brought in less than$25 million. So you might expect audiences to reject “Dragon” as well.

But if anyone was grumbling about the anti-war sentiments ofthe film, you couldn’t hear it at a preview screening last Saturday in GrandRapids. The crowd laughed at the comic bits, “ooh”ed and “aah”ed at the movie’smagnificent sequences in which Hiccup and Tootless take to the skies, andapplauded and cheered as the end credits began to roll. A screeningrepresentative who was collecting comments told me, “Nobody didn’t like it: Ihaven’t seen a response like that in a long time.”

So maybe there is room in the multiplex for a movie thatdares to question the War On Terror — as long as the “terrorists” are dragons.

How to Train Your Dragon showtimes at Celebration!Lansing (playing in 3D and IMAX 3D)

Showtimes at NCG Eastwood Cinemas

Showtimes at Lansing Mall Cinema

Showtimes at AMC Meridian Mall

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