Comments on: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

By: ED

ED — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:42:06 +0000

More likely for Moana’s Mum – remember, in Hollywood actresses can pretend to be older, but never younger.

Hollywood is horrible that way, amongst others.

By: Dan Stalcup

Dan Stalcup — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:07:31 +0000

In reply to ED. Haha it is pretty funny how well he fits the character visually and in screen presence. Speaking of voice actors who returned as live action actors in their respective LARM characters, I know The Rock plays Maui in the Moana live action film, but I wonder if they contacted Auli'i Cravalho for Moana.

By: Dan Stalcup

Dan Stalcup — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:04:27 +0000

In reply to Hunter Allen.

Ridiculous top 3 in 2010. I think we discussed it elsewhere but not many years come close for top 3 American animated films (I’m very weak on my anime/international animation).

Re: Toothless needing Hiccup. I think they cheat that one a couple of times, and eventually give Toothless a tail fin so he can fly on his own. (I think it’s in the second one.)

I didn’t address it in the review but I think the HTTYD does not stick the landing in terms of considering the dragons’ relationship to the thrall queen dragon. If one of the takeaways is that we must try to understand the dragons instead of controlling them, killing their hive mother seems like maybe not the best idea, even if she seems parasitic!

By: Hunter Allen

Hunter Allen — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 12:46:10 +0000

Really can’t be overstated how great a year for American animation that 2010 was, even if that promise was not kept for too long–except perhaps at our poor, easy-to-discount, still-basically-going-out-of-business DWA, where Dragon pointed towards a decade and a half where they’ve been mostly solid and capable of making cartoons with actual meaningful stories along with vastly better versions of the dumb gag cartoons they started with, sometimes simultaneously. (Though over the past three or four years they’ve become inconsistent enough that invoking any “DWA Renaissance” can only be justifiable in retrospect.)

Didn’t realize he’d been nominated; it’s outlandish to me that John Powell wouldn’t have won if so. It’s only one of the smallest handful of orchestral film scores in the past quarter century that can stand beside the best from the 20th.

Had half-forgotten the detail that Toothless needed Hiccup to help him fly; I guess he must’ve gotten an upgrade but I forget exactly where? Maybe I should give the trilogy another spin, it is pretty terrific overall (though I have qualms about 2, and tend to wish 2 and 3’s best elements were just combined into one movie).

By: ED

ED — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 15:10:42 +0000

I like the movie, but must admit to having seen it for the first time on television and not in cinemas: grand wee movie it is too.

Also, it always amuses me to remember that the remake felt it could do without almost every single actor – except Gerry Butler, who presumably swaggered majestically into auditions (to a spontaneous chorus of ‘Returns a King’ from 300 from the potentials, naturally) and got his job back on the spot.

SHHH! Don’t spoil the beauty of an image with mere accuracy!