Hero’s Joy Rene: Separation: Hiccup (the male protagonist) begins his journey to heroism right from the first scene. In this scene he is seen as a useless child and he is sent away from all the action of hunting dragon to repair the weapons of the other Vikings. Hiccup disobeys his father’s orders and he set out to kill a Nightlife, the most dangerous of all of the dragons. He unexpectedly hits one, yet no one believes him, he in fact get in trouble. Later the next day he sets out to find the Nightlife he hit, when he finds it he realizes that it is a scared as he is and that he cannot kill it. He hides he knowledge of the whereabouts of the Nightlife from the village. This is where his heroism begins, it is at this moment when he realizes that he does not want to be a dragon hunter and that he simply wants to protect the dragons from the other Vikings. Initiation: After seeing how scared the dragon he shot down is he befriends it and begins to study it. He eventually names it Toothless. When Hiccup realizes that Toothless cannot fly he decides to try and make him a makeshift tail.
Once Toothless becomes comfortable with Hiccup he begins to let Hiccup ride him. As they spend more and more time together Hiccup begins to learn any things about dragons and is able to fake his way through the dragon training his dad is putting him through. Eventually Astrid (the female protagonist) becomes suspicious of Hiccup and finds out about Toothless. At first she is scared but once she rides him with Hiccup she too realizes that everything they know about dragons. She too comes on board with Hiccup plan to protect the dragons. Return: Once Astrid knows about Toothless Hiccup is prepared to return to their village and tell everybody about the dragons even if they don’t believe him. Unfortunately the village does not believe them and they set out to find the argons’ nest to kill them all. Hiccup is determined to save the dragons, but most importantly Toothless who has been taken by Hiccup father. Hiccup teaches the other dragon training participants about the dragons and the 6 of them set out to save the day.
When they arrive (by dragon) they must now defeat the head dragon, who is the evil ruler of all dragons. With the support of his friends along with his father and the village (who now believe him), Hiccup and his dragon Toothless defeat the head dragon. When everyone returns to the village, Hiccup becomes the ‘town hero’ and has caused all of he Viking to change their ways. These three things influenced the characters and plot greatly, were it not for the fact that Hiccup shot down and befriended Toothless he would not be where he is today. He would have attended dragon training and possibly become a new dragon hunter. Without him and his journey the Vikings would not have seen how wrong they were about dragons. Colors: Black: Typically black represents evil and death. In the movie “How to Train Your Dragon” the most dangerous of all the dragons, the Nightlife, is a black dragon. Initially everyone thinks that dragons are evil and they cause death to al the animals and eventually the Vikings. As the story progresses they begin to see how wrong they were about dragons, especially the Nightlife.
In this case the black creature is very loving and protects Hiccup and the rest of the village from a lot of things. It is ironic how Toothless is black, which is a color of evil and death, and he is the most gentle and loving creature. Nature: Water: In archetypes water is used to represent eternity, timelessness and serenity. In the case of “How to Train Your Dragon” this is used very often. The first scene with water is when Hiccup first rides Toothless. This is the scene when Hiccup first realizes that Toothless is a harmless creature. The timelessness of this Scene is when they are flying together over the water. As a viewer you can tell how intense it is to be flying and you can see Hiccup worries disappear the entire flight. The same thing happens when Astrid joins them on their second flight, though initially a little bumpy it becomes extremely clam, like they are in another world when they are flying over the water. In both scenes it seems as if neither of them has anything to worry about and they could fly forever and not notice because of the amazing beauty over the water.
