Film Theory: How NOT To Train Your Dragon! (How To Train Your Dragon)

But reptiles CAN be trained. I personally watched Chris Pratt train a squad of raptors.

Yeah not a great basis here. 1. Hiccup did not intentionally injure Toothless, he only realised the injury after setting him free (e.g. he didn't even consider training him until after the fact). 2. Why drop Stockholm syndrome if lizards do not have any form of emotional capacity? 3. Throughout the movies Toothless actively defends/interacts with Hiccup, for example in the first movie when Hiccup screamed from being attacked in the Dragon arena Toothless ran to defend him, and on other occasions seemed to emotionally care about Hiccup and others. 4. Toothless (and other dragons) do show degrees of higher intelligence other than emotional complexity. In the first movie Toothless stays hidden and only attacks towers and other important offensive structures instead of simply 'going on a rampage' like a simple animal. Showing almost a degree of tactics, something lower lifeforms could certainly never achieve. 5. In the 2nd movie, if Toothless was simply relying on whoever was riding him, then why did Toothless overcome mind control to side with Hiccup instead of the current alpha? Sorry MatPat but we're going to disagree here.

i love that mat pat ignore that all the other dragons were dommesticated without being beat or forced and toothless didn´t want the tail that make him fly alone a lot of times until the last movie

Mat, in the 3rd movie when hiccup is making toothless a tail he can fly with, it is stated hiccup had made one for toothless and tried to get him to use it but toothless didn't want to, and instead destroyed it.

Dragon: clearly displays emotion throughout all 3 movies MatPat: no you can’t feel anything you cat-lizard

Toothless: Shows jelousy when hiccup introduces him to Astrid Matpat: I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that

There are several times in EACH movie where Toothless has the chance to leave Hiccup, but he CHOOSES not to. In the first movie, when Hiccup falls off Toothless after fighting the Red Death, Toothless could have flown off on his own, but instead CHOOSES to save Hiccup. In the second movie, Toothless could have flown away again while fighting Drago's Alpha, as Hiccup was not riding him, and we saw him earlier in the movie getting better at flying on his own. And of course, in the third movie, Toothless has MULTIPLE chances to leave hiccup, but every time he does, he eventually comes back.

This is one of the MatPat theories we’ve put in the dumpster, I do love whenever I disagree with a theory because I can feel like I might be smart.

How to Train Your Dragon Step one: live in a world where dragons exist good tip

Says Dragons are glorified cats in the "How To Train Your Dragon" universe Uses lizard as a close representation to dragons. 10/10 Matt.

In literally every historical piece of writing that involves dragons they're always depicted as wise Beyond humans understanding or at least in the couple that I've read the dragons and how to train your dragons are actually picked it as stupider than the average dragon

Counterpoint: The Christmas special is set only a few months after the first movie, in the winter season. In the winter, the dragons leave Berk to breed, but Hiccup didn't know that. Seeing Toothless eager to leave with the already departed dragons, he designed an automated tail for the him before anyone even knew why the other dragons had left. He didn't even project a retrieving mechanism like it's said in the video, Mat just made it up! There's even a line where it's stated that if Toothless chose to leave, he'd be gone for good, when Astrid asks "But what if he doesn't come back...? Oh, who am I kidding? Of course he will come back! ...Right?". Toothless then promptly leaves Berk, but as his genus seemingly mates for life, he doesn't want to breed since he doesn't have a mate yet. Insted he retrieves Hiccup's helmet, which had fallen in the ocean. After his task is done, Toothless destroys the new tail and asks for the old one to be re-attatched. Now here's a bit of a mini theory of why Toothless came back (other than the fact Dreamworks had money to make): In the end of the first movie, Toothless shows great empathy towards Hiccup's missing leg and does his most to help him get around without it. Hiccup seems to realize the dragon is sensible to his limited mobility, as he states in the second movie, when they're play-fighting: "Oh, come on, you wouldn't hurt a one-legged... Whoa!". Toothless takes pity on his wounded friend, as he himself once lost a body part and thus his ability to move with ease. After being tamed and taught to fly with the new artificial tail, Toothless now thinks his duty as being the wings for this injured human who can't move well anymore, like a service dog. He's more than willing to walk on a metaphoric leash until he feels his duty of taking his dear friend to places he can no longer reach is done, which makes his reaction to seeing older Hiccup in the end of the third movie that much sweeter. He reacts happyly seeing an old friend and that's a very beautiful moment on its own, but he also feels great joy on seeing that Hiccup can now reach the dragons' nest on his own, without the aid of wings. That's when Toothless is really free. Or, you know, maybe not. Maybe it's what Mat said. I'm just a random in the comments overthinking details from an animated movie.

I get what you're going for here, but I feel like there's a couple things worth pointing out: 1. You only mention Toothless in this video. Hiccup's peers all have their own dragon by the end of the first video, and none of them have the handicap Toothless does. 2. In virtually any story or myth about Dragons, they are usually much more sentient (of that's the right word) than most other reptiles. Especially in this movie series. Dragons often display much more emotion (among other things) than ordinary lizards. You can see that Toothless and many other dragons express non-primitive emotions. For example, in more than one seen you can see that the dragons actually enjoy being petted. There obviously isn't any scientific basis for this, but dragons always seem to have more advanced brains than you give them credit for. But hey, that's just a theory. A counter-theory. Thanks for reading.

But dragons are really smart, toothless can understand drawing, shows complex emotions and rejects a working tail Hiccup offered him

The movie franchise never said that dragons are just glorified reptiles. If I were to guess, their ancestors probably split off from reptiles at about the same time mammals did, maybe even earlier considering most dragons have 6 limbs. For anyone not aware, the reason no terrestrial vertebrate has more than 4 limbs is because their common ancestor, the first fish to come on land, only had four limbs. So it is very much possible that dragons have a completely separate ancestor from the common ancestor of all land vertebrates. An ancestor with 6 limbs. Even if dragons were just lizards, you could take a look at dinosaurs. Dinosaurs split off from the reptile lineage about 250 million years ago, they quickly changed into the largest terrestrial creatures ever. They dominated the lands they lived in. This has nothing to do with how smart they are, just about how quickly they can change. For dragons to have enough time to completely change into creatures who are warm blooded, with a fast metabolism, and an extra set of limbs, they'd need at least 100 million years, probably more because no creature has ever been able to make that shift. And in that time they would easily be able to gain an intelligence equal to or even better than a humans. So your argument that "you can't train dragons because you can't train lizards" is invalid because dragons are not ever stated to be lizards. They have very obviously different behavioral patterns and are physically extremely different from reptiles, except for the fact that they have scales and lay eggs. I know you will never see this as I am a few years late, but I just had to say something.

I think Matpat changed his mind about dragons not having any emotions or caring about their owners after he saw Toothless give Hiccup a hug before he left for The Hidden World. It was truly heartbreaking and i think Matpat, if he watched the full movie, cried at that scene just like the rest of us.

Every instance of Dragon: Smart, intelligent, creatures usually with ancient knowledge and abilities lost to the ages. Matpat: big lizard.

I think that Dragons are a bit smarter than your average lizard They are depicted in the movies as having an emotional range

The obvious has already been said here, that you're comparing dragons to lizards when they could really be completely different and much more emotionally evolved, perhaps more like birds. But the one thing that I have to point out here is that, whilst it was wrong of Hiccup to injure Toothless, that's the reason he feels it's his duty to help him regain his freedom after he'd realised he'd harmed an innocent being, even if it's only attainable with Hiccup at his side. Hiccup dedicates his life to righting his wrong, then the wrongs of the rest of his people that have been taught to hate dragons, which is an incredibly noble thing to do. Not selfish at all. Also that look of happiness on his face when his first tail flap works is because he's excited that his invention worked. Soz Matpat but you missed the mark on this one!

True. If dragons were similar to other reptiles in this theory's reasons, then the movie would've been really different. But, I'm glad dragons aren't like the common reptile when it comes to their minds.