Peaceful Coexistence, Dragon-Style

By now, few of you would be very surprised to hear or read people saying they want their very own dragon. By now, the buzz would have had you hitting the nearest 3D theater to watch DreamWorks' dream of an animated film How to Train Your Dragon.

In this film, a Viking teen named Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel), a gangly, dorky, skinny blacksmith's apprentice, first tries to fit in with his people in the seaside village of Berk by becoming a dragon slayer. However, when he finally does get a chance to slay the much-feared Night Fury, Hiccup realizes he just doesn't have it in him to kill any of the creatures his people have considered pests for generations.

He also realizes there is more to the creatures than his people, especially his father Stoick the Vast (Gerald Butler), the village chieftain, have believed for so long. In fact, taming the crippled Night Fury he was supposed to kill and eventually naming him Toothless, Hiccup finds out that most of what they believed about dragons were wrong.

Of course, being himself, it's almost next to impossible for Hiccup to convince the villagers of what he has learned through Toothless. He has to go through the whole charade of training to become a dragon slayer, upon the insistence of his father, who thinks he's finally letting Hiccup do what he wants, even as he discovers more and more things about the creatures that would render killing them totally unecessary.

I won't say anymore, except that if you enjoyed the scenes in Avatar that had the Sully flying with the Banshees, you're going to find some scenes in How to Train Your Dragon equally fascinating, if not more aw-shucks impressive.

There are many reasons to love this DreamWorks treasure, which, I think, would go down in the minds of young children who watched it today as a classic they'd want to watch again when they're older. I know, because The Flight of Dragons, among other animated films I caught on television, was like that for me.

Here are my reasons why I loved How to Train Your Dragon:

1. It stars a geeky kid who doesn't fit in. Of course, most of the fantasy heroes are like Hiccup mainly because those who wrote about fantasy heroes are like Hiccup. But it's always nice to see a bookish kid choosing to take notes instead of picking up a sword and slaying something he fears and yet doesn't completely understand.

2. It shows how important it is to understand the “enemy” before branding it as such. We are like this with so many things we don't understand—with animals, with nature, with people. What's more striking is that upon understanding the dragons, Hiccup also discovers that things as they were were protecting Berk from a more threatening danger.

3. It shows how taking a strong stand on something can convince others to take a strong stand on something they haven't quite decided on yet too. Sometimes, all it takes is to bare your heart.

4. It also reveals how slaying dragons don't have to equate to killing them. As a wise man posited, “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" This movie, again, is a child's lesson on peaceful coexistence.

5. Lastly, the dragons are the cutest things ever to grace the screen since, I don't know, the Ewoks? But that's just me and my penchant for these magical creatures, which, up to now, I wish were real.

A quick Easter message

Just a quick Easter message to all of you. I've been reading this book “What's so Amazing about Grace?” by Philip Yancey and he shares a quote from Simone Weil: “It is to the prodigals... that the memory of their Father's house comes back. If the son had lived economically he would never have thought of returning.” Finding God, discovering our faith, knowing this sort of love that never ends—it all begins with a necessary fall for many of us.

Let's all embrace the fall, and rise. Happy Easter!

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