When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.<\/i><\/p>\n Credit: Universal<\/p>\n I never got into the How to Train Your Dragon animated movies, and I missed the big live-action remake when it hit the 2025 movie schedule<\/u><\/a> earlier this year, but I decided to check it out when it came out on home release<\/u><\/a> after hearing so many good things about it<\/u><\/a>. My wife, kids, and I recently kicked off a weekend with this family-friendly adventure film, and while I expected it to be fun, exciting, and fantastical, the emotional tone genuinely caught me off guard.<\/p>\n Sure, with this being a film marketed towards children, I had a feeling there\u2019d be some emotion sprinkled in between massive action set pieces and dazzling special effects. However, this movie shot an arrow straight through my heart.<\/p>\n Credit: Universal Pictures<\/p>\n Going into How to Train Your Dragon (again, I didn\u2019t watch the original DreamWorks animated films<\/u><\/a>), I thought this was going to be a big movie about the Vikings fighting dragons. Don\u2019t get me wrong, this is very much a movie where Vikings team up to fight all kinds of dragons that keep stealing their food, killing their families, and burning their villages to the ground.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t really know what to expect, but I thought I\u2019d spend a couple of hours watching Gerard Butler looking cool as can be, wearing layers of fur and an awesome helmet as he led his people to a better tomorrow while his on-screen son tried to find a different approach to the whole dragon problem. Both are true, but the movie is so much more than that\u2026<\/p>\n At the core of <\/u>How to Train Your Dragon<\/u><\/a> is the story of a father (Gerard Butler\u2019s Stoick the Vast) and son (Mason Thames Hiccup Horrendous) trying to repair their broken relationship and overcome grief in their own ways. Those ways, as we see multiple times in the early goings of the movie (and even later after Hiccup reveals he\u2019s been training Toothless), largely don\u2019t work for the most part, and the father and son are pulled further apart from one another.<\/p>\n Once I found that father-son angle<\/u><\/a>, I was hooked and down for the ride. Don\u2019t get me wrong, there were other emotional elements throughout this movie, but How to Train Your Dragon\u2019s story of two people trying to find meaning in life after experiencing a devastating tragedy just hit really hard.<\/p>\n Credit: DreamWorks<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
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Going In, I Thought The Movie Would Just Be About Vikings Fighting Dragons<\/h2>\n
Instead, This Is About A Father And Son Repairing Their Fractured Relationship And Overcoming Grief<\/h2>\n
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I Don’t Know If The Animated Movies Are This Emotional, But Now I Want To Check Them Out<\/h2>\n