Sound Reply: How to train your Dragon (2025) - Kairos Global, May 2026, ISSUE 98

Author :Joseph Anthraper

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Although it is pure entertainment, this is where the movie speaks to today’s culture – that true mercy and compassion always prevail – of course, it is not going to be easy, but as the Lord himself promised, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’ The movie also reiterates the importance of a father’s recognition and blessing in the life of a child.

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In his bestselling memoir, The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch (post his terminal cancer diagnosis) begins his final lecture at Carnegie Mellon on the topic, ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,’ by acknowledging his life’s first blessing – winning the parent lottery to start life off. He was blessed with parents who cared more about providing their children with knowledge, education and a good moral framework – a foundation strong enough to enter adulthood prepared and ready; rather than chasing after transitory, fleeting and frequently changing standards of society. Lottery or not, no sane person would deny the fact that parents are the most important people in a child’s life and it is an oft repeated mantra by psychologists that childhood experiences play a huge part in who a child becomes and where he/she ends when grown up. The Catholic paediatrician and best-selling author Meg Meeker says that the principal factor in raising well-rounded boys is their relationship with their father and mother. As the adage goes, we are indeed ‘relationally wired’.

How to train your Dragon (2025) is a live action remake of the 2010 animation movie of the same name, which itself was a loose adaptation of the novel of the same name by Cressida Cowell. The original animated trilogy became so popular that it was just a matter of time before they came up with more ways to capitalise and monetise on the popularity, and of course, this is the first of the live action trilogy. But to their credit, it must be accepted that the live action is as engrossing and entertaining as the original animated movie – credit to Dean DeBlois and Dreamworks.

The story is set in the fictional Viking village of Berk – which for all its natural beauty and its courageous people, has a problem – the village is frequently raided at night by flying dragons that steal livestock and kill its people. Though he has already lost his wife to one such dragon raid many years ago, the chief of Berk, Stoick the Vast, believes that through courage and tenacity, Berk-ians can and should kill all the dragons and rid themselves of this plight. Although Stoick is well respected by his people, his son, the chief-to-be-waiting-in-the-wings, Hiccup is the joke of the village. Hiccup never seems to get things right and in the world of Berk where indecision and error in judgement is literally a matter of life and death, as much as he loves Hiccup, Stoick or Berk doesn’t have the luxury to tolerate Hiccup’s inadvertent mistakes. 

Try as Stoick may to keep Hiccup out of harm’s way, the lad is bent on showing everyone, above all else his father, that he too is courageous and man enough to deal with real life – fighting and killing the dragons. And on one such dragon-raid night, despite orders to stay indoors while the villagers salvage their livestock from the raiding fire-breathing dragons, Hiccup, using a mechanical bow he had built, shoots at a Night Fury, an elusive rare dragon never before seen in daylight. Although he thinks he struck the Night Fury, he is widely disbelieved and blamed for much of the loss that night. Undaunted, Hiccup decides to search for the Night Fury using the approximate downward trajectory the dragon might have taken after getting hit. 

And find he does indeed! Hiccup finds the dragon trapped and unable to move – knowing that this is his chance to redeem himself by killing the Night Fury, Hiccup draws up courage to kill Berk’s archenemy. Yet even with his reputation on the line, he can’t bring himself to hurt the helpless animal and instead, sets it free. But once free, the Night Fury immediately charges at Hiccup and although dragons always go for the kill, this time the beast reciprocates the favour and flees into the forest. 

Meanwhile Stoick, enough of the dragons causing havoc in Berk, decides to go on an expedition to find and destroy the dragons’ nest – to get rid of the problem once and for all. And before going away, at the advice of his friend, Gobber, Stoic lets Hiccup join the other teens in the dragon fighters’ training programme, the coming-of-age ritual for the young people of Berk. Hiccup, however, returns to the forest to find the injured Night Fury trapped in a cove, unable to fly as Hiccup’s bow had severed half of its tail fin. Moved with pity and compassion, Hiccup begins to take care of the injured dragon, naming him Toothless, feeding and nursing him, and an unlikely camaraderie develops between the two. Spending time with Toothless also gives Hiccup the unique advantage of studying the nature of dragons from a close vantage point, enabling him to ace the dragon fighting course – much to the surprise of his peers as well as Gobber. Knowing the peril Toothless would be in if the village knew about the dragon, Hiccup keeps Toothless and their friendship a secret from everyone.

And by the time Stoick returns from his failed expedition, having lost half his crew, he is both surprised as well as stunned to learn the transformation that has happened in Berk – his son Hiccup is no longer the butt of all jokes, but considered among the best and most courageous of dragon fighters. Both reeling from the aftermath of his failure, as well as realising that this is the most opportune moment to redeem the reputation of his son, the overjoyed father in Stoick immediately announces that his son will be the one to take part in the final exam reserved for the winner of the dragon fighting programme, to slay one of the captive dragons. Can Hiccup muster the courage and ruthlessness to kill the dragon to be that ‘someone’ in the eyes of his father? Will Hiccup be able to save Toothless and turn around the enmity between dragons and men so that both can live peacefully, forms the rest of the story.

We live in a culture which values power more than anything else. The Christian values of humility, kindness and welcoming the stranger that shaped the Western civilisation for more than a millennia are slowly being eroded by a hedonistic and individualistic culture. This should, however, come as no surprise to anyone, as for a long time it was just the façade of Christian values without the inner support of faith. Although it is pure entertainment, this is where the movie speaks to today’s culture – that true mercy and compassion always prevail – of course, it is not going to be easy, but as the Lord himself promised, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’ The movie also reiterates the importance of a father’s recognition and blessing in the life of a child.

How to train your dragon is a hugely entertaining family movie, appropriate for all ages; while speaking truth to our culture allegorically.