Dragons have always fascinated the
human mind and have remained a large part of human imaginations and fantasies. How To Train Your Dragon capitalizes on
everyone’s love for the mythical beasts. Creating a viable world where these
creatures can behave realistically is an important factor in bringing them to
life for the audience. The creators of How
To Train Your Dragon toe a fine
line between realism and fiction to present a story with both fantasy and
science.
The
film revolves around Hiccup and his unlikely friendship with a dragon that he names
Toothless. Hiccup comes from a village that hates dragon, but when he befriends
one, he struggles to face his village and come forward with his new friendship.
Toothless’ has fins or wings on his tail that comes in a pair, but one of them
is missing. His tail acts like rudder and allows him to balance himself and
turn. Hiccup inadvertently shoots it off in his attempt to kill Toothless at
the beginning of the film. This handicap prevents Toothless from flying. Hiccup
after befriending the dragon, engineers a device that Toothless can use as a
substitute for his missing wing. The only caveat is that Hiccup has to be on
Toothless during flight in order to change the positioning of the wing to cater
to different flight patterns.
.An incredible
amount of effort was put into flight mechanics for Toothless. Toothless’ wing
and flight patterns mimic a bird. Many times in other movies dragon wings follow
a simple, unrealistic up and down motion. However, a bird traditionally pushes
downward and forward in an arcing motion. (Fig 1) In the movie, Toothless’
wings follow the logic of a bird flying and there are many scenes throughout
the movie that apply to this. (Fig 2)
Fig 1
Fig 2
An example of Toothless Flying
When
Hiccup and Toothless fall during a flight, it is portrayed realistically, more
or less, as far as a dragon falling from the sky is concerned. Toothless, being
a dragon and much larger than Hiccup, falls faster. The force of air resistance
is greater for Toothless, but it is insignificant compared to his weight. His
terminal velocity is greater than Hiccup, thus he falls faster than him. (Fig.
3) Hiccup able to control his fall by adjusting his surface area. As he tries
to grab Toothless, he brings his limbs closer to his body so he can fall faster;
he is not spreading them out. Though he as not as skilled as a skydiver, he is
able to get closer to the dragon. As this happens, Toothless is
attempting to slow himself down by unfurling his wings. Hiccup is able to grab
on to Toothless, and gain control of him. After this fall, Toothless
accelerates to his terminal velocity that he has to slow down to prevent
himself from crashing. He does this by spreading out his wings fully in order
to use their surface area. (Fig. 4) This is an accurate portrayal of how on
object would react when falling and the response it would have to increased
surface area.
Fig 3
Here, Toothless has fallen faster than Hiccup
Fig 4
While
movie does have physically possible situations, if dragons existed, there are
many scenes when science is sacrificed for the story. There are several scenes
that have unrealistic reactions to an unbalanced force. In one scene, two siblings are fighting over a
shield. They have the shield between each other and are both pulling on it in
an opposite direction. A dragon sees them and shoots fire at the shield. The
shield is sent flying on the same path that the fire was shot. The two siblings
spin rapidly in place as a reaction to the force of energy sent their way. The
fire hitting the shield should have blown them back because the law of Inertia
states, “An object at rest remains at rest until acted on by unbalanced force.”
In addition, they should have followed the path of the fire blast rather than
simply spinning in place. In the case of this scene, their unrealistic reaction
was for the purpose entertainment, more specifically comedic relief.
In another scene,
at the beginning of the film, Hiccup makes some early attempts to ride
Toothless. At one point, Toothless flings him off his back into a lake. Instead
of simply falling into the lake, he skips across the surface. The Law of
Inertia also states, “An object moves with constant, uniform motion until acted
on by an unbalanced force.” This is the logic behind why animators might have
had him skip across the surface rather than fall in. Much like with the force
of air resistance, the force of the water’s surface becomes insignificant as
weight increases. Hiccup is too heavy for the water, and it is too weak to be a
viable unbalanced force that acts upon him. Thus, he should have fallen into
the water. Even if there were enough force to skip Hiccup across the water, his
flailing limbs would prevent such an occurrence. Lastly, Toothless shoots a
small fire blast at a little dragon trying to steal his fish. The force of the
attack, though small, should have sent the smaller dragon in the same direction
as how the fire blast was moving. Instead, he plops down in the same spot. (Fig
5) He does not move, and behaves like an object at rest, even though he is not supposed to be.
Fig 5
Even
though Toothless the dragon has many scenes with realistic flight patterns and
reactions, many of the other dragons in the movie do not. The creators did this
to set Toothless apart as a unique and special dragon. He contrasts with the
other dragons in overall shape and movements. A very large dragon in the shape
of a Tyrannosaurus Rex is able to fly with wings that proportionately have less
surface area than Toothless’ wings. (Fig 6) At another point, there is a
dragon is larger than any of the other dragons that is able to fly. As the law
of Inertia states, “An object at rest remains at rest until acted on by an
unbalanced force.” Planes are heavy and large and are only able to take off
because of the lift and the power of the engines. Birds are light of enough to
generate enough thrust proportionate to their weight. The large Dragon in
question does not generate enough thrust to realistically get into the air in
the first place. In addition to this, his wings are not large enough for his
body and weight.
Fig 6
As a final note,
Toothless the dragon is a very streamlined, aerodynamic dragon that is capable
of complex maneuvers. At one point, Hiccup has his friend Astrid ride Toothless
to show her the beauty of flying. Toothless pulls a lot of stunts in the air
like twists and steep climbs into the air. All these maneuvers should have
thrown Astrid off into the ocean unless she has an incredible amount of
strength. (Fig 7) When Toothless is flying in a straight line and jerks and or turns
suddenly, Astrid should be sent flying, because her body wants to continue
going in a straight line and she is technically strong enough to be hold on to
follow Toothless’ path in the sky.
Fig 7
How To Train Your Dragon is a great
fantasy film for children and adults. It takes mythical creatures and brings it
to life on screen using story and a great character design for the dragon. The
universe that the characters live in is based closely off the physical world
that its audience lives in and there are many aspects that hold true in both
worlds. However, when the creators want to emphasize the story, the physics are
often exaggerated, but the pay off is worth it. In the end, audiences have an
entertaining experience watching How To
Train Your Dragon.
I deviated
slightly from my original outline. In my outline I had a section entitled
“Exaggerated Reactions to Weight.” I replaced it with a section about how the
movie followed the flight logic of birds and how it was applied to Toothless,
the main dragon character. I found it more interesting. I thought my original
ideas weren’t as interesting and not easy to explain in detail.
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