The Vikings

Stoick The Vast

"This is Berk. It's twelve days north of hopeless and a few degrees south of freezing to death. It's located solidly on the meridian of misery..."

On Berk, there's a tribe of Vikings who suffer from pests and where normal pests might be mice or bugs, the people of Berk are plagued by dragons. They're constantly raiding the village, fighting with the villagers, and burning down their houses This is why Berk's houses are all new, despite the fact the the village has been there for 300 years, for as Vikings, they have serious stubbornness issues.

Hiccup

Astrid

There are many different types of pests - sorry, dragons on and around Berk, like the Scaldron, the Changeling, the Zippelback, the Skrill, Bonenapper and Whispering Death. All of them different shapes and different sizes and each one apparently more deadly than the one before, with the deadliest - the Night Fury sitting at the top of the list.

Regardless of the dangers, the express instructions in the 'Dragon Handbook' with all but the Night Fury is 'extremely dangerous; kill on sight'. As far as the night fury is concerned, well no-one has been able to get near enough to find out.

Our hero, Hiccup, has aspirations towards becoming a dragon killer, just like the others in the village. However, he's small, more than a little accident prone and is usually kept out of the way during dragon attacks for fear of causing more harm to the other villagers than good.

Slowly but surely, Toothless begins to trust Hiccup

Hiccup and Toothless sharing a tasty morsel

One night, he spots and bags a Night Fury, but no-one will listen to him when he tells them that he managed to bring it down behind a range of trees - least of all his father - Stoick the Vast - a huge man who just happens to be the village's chief.

The next day, Hiccup goes in search of his dragon. When he finds it, he discovers that whilst he may have caught it, he didn't and can't bring himself to kill it. So he cuts it free of its tangled bonds.

Hiccup is enrolled in dragon training whilst his father and numerous others are away on a dragon quest. However, he's not really interested in learning how to kill dragons as the more he gets to know Toothless - the dragon he set free, the more he learns about the dragons and what they are really like.

In fact, he learns how to disable the dragons without fighting them at all, much to Astrid and later his father's disgust. However he manages to do it, becomes the hero of the village and when Stoick and his crew return, the village elder has chosen him to kill the first dragon.

Astrid and Hiccup being chosen to fight the dragon to the death

Hiccup is possibly the most unlikely of heroes yet at the same time, fits the bill brilliantly. How to train your dragon is for me one of the best animated stories for a long time, with more attention to detail than I have seen in a while, giving skin - both animal and human a look of realism that is going to be hard to beat. For someone like me who first got into this genre with things like Reboot and Insektors, CGI has come a long, long way since then.

Whilst there are other stories that are perhaps as good, this one stands out for me as one of the greats. The pace is fast and the action makes you feel like you're flying by the seat of your pants. More than that, the interplay between Astrid and Hiccup is wicked as is that of Gobber, Stoick and the other trainees. Who'd have thought that Vikings accents would have been a mixture of Scottish and surfer dude (or dudette for that matter)? Nevertheless, it works a treat and somehow, the accents seem to enhance the fantasy and certainly the characters rather than detracting from either.

I often wonder when I watch a film like this, just what their demographic was when they made it, because I think that much of this would be lost on the young. Sad, but who cares? I'm an animation junkie and when they're producing films like this, I'll keep on unashamedly watching, enjoying and lapping them up.

I'd like to give this more than five stars, but since five is what I have set, five is what it gets. However in this instance, it's five gilt stars with clusters of diamonds to boot. Brilliant.

Related Links...