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I was watching the movie of How to Train Your Dragon last night, and
at one point one of the dragon-killer trainees--not the brainy main
character--starts reciting the stats of each dragon as they are
introduced. Each stat is a dimensionless quantity. At one point, when
asked what the trainees will need to survive an encounter with a
dragon, he suggests "+5 speed." And while the dragons actually
encountered in the movie all breathe fire, the guide to dragons and
the character who has read it seven times and keeps quoting the stats
from it both refer to dragons who have other breath weapons, such as
boiling water. I have no idea whether the book that the movie is based
on does anything of the sort, but it seems clear to me that the movie
script is making a deliberate set of references.

[A bit of spoiler follows, but it's necessary to understand my
decision to say that the depiction is fairly neutral, although
slightly positive. You don't have to read past this point if you're
interested in seeing the movie and hate spoilers.]

Given the overall depiction of the stat-memorizing character, I can't
really say that the depiction was hugely positive, but it wasn't
really negative, either; while the movie does have some stereotyping--
we aren't all fat kids who memorize the Monster Manual--he also gets
to use his skills to analyze an unknown dragon's anatomy and
physiology to help them attack it in the finale. In doing so, he
doesn't make as much of an ass of himself as the other dragon-killer
trainees who help out in that scene--the special talent employed by
the twins turns out to be "being annoying"--and I would argue that he
proves to be rather more useful/important than them, too. Given the
process of redeeming antagonistic characters in the finale and showing
the characters' differences to be useful, I have to say that the
depiction is slightly positive overall, even if the movie relies on
stereotypes for the entire cast.

In service,
M. Alan Thomas II

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