How to Train Your Dragon | the m0vie blog

420. How to Train Your Dragon – Ani-May 2025 (#198)

Posted on May 25, 2025 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this week with special guests Deirdre Molumby and Graham Day, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This week, Chris Sanders’ and Dean DeBlois’ How to Train Your Dragon.

On the island of Berk, the Viking settlers have found themselves engaged in a war against dragons spanning literal generations. Hiccup, the son of the town chieftain, struggles to find his place in a community that doesn’t value his unique strengths and attributes – he wonders whether he will even be manly enough to hunt and kill dragons. However, a chance encounter with a fallen dragon named Toothless leads Hiccup to question everything that he thinks he knows about dragons.

At time of recording, it was ranked 198th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: animated film, animation industry, animation quality, Astrid, character development, character dynamics, connection, deirdre molumby, dragons, dreamworks, empathy, father-son relationship, friendship, gender representation, graham day, hiccup, How to Train Your Dragon, identity, imdb, IMDb top 250, legacy, live-action adaptation, personal growth, podcast, production challenges, sequels, storytelling, thematic elements, themes | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! Scannain Podcast (2019) #4!

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Darren

It’s time for the latest Scannain podcast!

This week, I join Jay Coyle and Graham Day from Speakin’ Geek to discuss the week in film news. It’s a fun and wide-ranging discussion, covering everything from the growth of Dreamworks as an animation studio to the extended cut of Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. There’s also discussion of Dragonball Z and Destroyer. In film news, we mark the passing of Dick Miller, the coverage of Sundance, February at the Irish Film Institute and the thirtieth anniversary of the Cork French Film Festival.

The top ten:

The Favourite
Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet
Stan and Ollie
Second Act
Mary Poppins Returns
The Mule
Vice
Mary Queen of Scots
Glass
A Dog’s Way Home

New releases:

Burning
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Escape Room
Green Book
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
A Private War

You can download the episode here, or listen to it below.

Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: destroyer, film, films, glass, How to Train Your Dragon, Movies, Tree of Life | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: How To Train Your Dragon 2

Posted on June 22, 2014 by Darren

How To Train Your Dragon 2 is a staggeringly beautiful piece of work. Every frame of the movie is elegantly crafted and beautifully composited. It’s a wonderful example of how computer-generated animation is every bit as artistically valid as the classic hand-drawn style. The vistas are breathtaking, the choreography is stunning, the design work is elegant. It’s a wonderful piece of animation that is never anything less than visually amazing.

Structurally, How To Train Your Dragon 2 is well-constructed – perhaps a little too well-constructed. It’s a wonderful demonstration of just how fantastic the sequel structure established by The Empire Strikes Back can be when applied well. The sequel is meticulously put together, carefully and precisely calibrated to strike the right notes at the right time with the right intensity. As far as constructing a sequel goes, How To Train Your Dragon 2 is following some impressive blueprints.

There are moments when it feels like How To Train Your Dragon 2 adheres a little too rigidly to formula, but given how well it pays off, it’s easy enough to forgive.

Sky hopes…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: animation, art design, character design, design, dragons, hiccup, How to Train Your Dragon, sequels, the empire strikes back, toothless, twists | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: How To Train Your Dragon

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Darren

How To Train Your Dragon is, at its core, the story of a boy and his dog. Except his dog happens to be a dragon. It is a well-cast, well-made and well-written little film that actually manages to have a lot more emotional depth than the majority of Dreamworks films, even if it doesn’t quite approach the wonderful sophistication that Pixar manage to produce about once a year. It’s big, it’s bold and it’s fun – a wonderfully crafted piece of family entertainment.