Daughter and I had a rather slow, low-energy day today. We finally got to see “How to Train Your Dragon.” Liked it well enough, but I had issues.
1) The movie’s theme was that dragons are people too, and that all humans have to do to live in harmony with these sweet, kitten-like critters, is to find their special scratchy spot. OK, that was great, loved that. Very adorable. So why did that all go out the window when it came to the big bad dragon? Why is HE the only unredeemably mean dragon? Well, because we needed a big dragon fight, of course!
2) Also, one wonders what will happen now that the whole traditional ecological setup of dragon society has now been destroyed. I mean, the existence of the big mamma-jamma dragon suggests that there’s some kind of evolutionary advantage, right? Ecologies don’t spring up out of nowhere for no reason. When I saw all those dragons overrunning the village at the end of the movie, my response was probably exactly the opposite of what the moviemakers wanted. Instead of being filled with delight and wonder, I was like, “oh crap, now the top predator of the top predators is gone, those islanders are well and truly screwed.” I couldn’t help but think of this island I heard of once, where they imported cats, and the cats got totally out of control because there was nothing to control their reproduction, and soon all the native wildlife was gone and the island was just overwhelmed with cats.
But other than that, I really liked the movie.
