Why How To Train Your Dragon Has The Best Opening Ever

0:00 so here's the thing How to Train Your Dragon is a very very good movie most people would leave not us we're Vikings stubbornness issues with a really really good soundtrack [Music] I honestly feel like this is one of the most overlooked films of the last decade which really isn't that risky of a statement when you look at the decade-long franchise that this film created with two sequels and all that merchandising and branding and TV shows and specials and all the kinds of stuff like did you know that there are How to Train Your Dragon TV shows on Netflix I didn't but yeah one of them this one this race to the edge it has six seasons I had no idea I'm completely out of touch with the youth of the world

0:46 so dab floss fortnight but I mean it when I say it I think this whole franchise was carried on the shoulders of the success from this first film which is a tale as old as time right the first film was some massive franchise is always amazing and then the sequels and spin-offs and toy lines are all just a bunch of Friday business majors trying to milk the intellectual property for all it's worth because as much as I like the first film the other two have a couple of awkward moments I'm not saying they're bad films they just they really don't feel as strong as the original the Alpha protects them all but that's a really weird message to have in your family film and then like in the final film in the trilogy which they didn't slap at number three on because I guess they were trying to reinvent themselves or something it was an okay movie I guess I just couldn't help but feel like they were trying really hard to come up with designs for action figures instead

1:32 of building on the story from How to Train Your Dragon the hidden world the Dragons of Berk battled Rivlin his death grippers hookfang stormfly and their armored riders watch the attack like come on they just look like Power Rangers because then like the end of the film undermines its own ending there was a really weird epilogue he's gone forever psyche it really just felt like the filmmakers going look he's old now they have a family that's it it's done it's over just bury the damn thing and let's move on but I'm getting off-track beside all that besides the dehydrated husk that is the corpse of How to Train Your Dragon that has been cruising on life support for the last few years we shouldn't overlook how amazing the original film was but no for real this is an incredible film even when you think about how it's technically ten years old the character design is great the sound design is amazing but the story is fantastic

2:18 you can track hiccup through the hero's journey like where toothless is a part of the world of the unknown that hiccup has to learn about and showing the other teenagers how to ride the dragons is the return with the elixir and like literally the Magic Flight but for me the thing that makes this film so amazing naturally is the music shocking I know the music guy loves them you but for real this soundtrack is fantastic this was John Powell's first solo animated feature film and he brought the heat get it he because dragons never mind anyway side note john powell actually has a youtube channel where he releases piano rules and orchestrations of a lot of his music and as of right now it only has two case subs on youtube so let's go send him some love and go subscribe but it isn't just the music that makes this film soundtrack so great which is kind of a weird statement to make I know like just

3:04 how the music sounds on its own isn't the whole deal there's something else that this film does better than any other film that has ever existed ever now I'm sure you all have your own opinions and I'm gonna let you finish but How to Train Your Dragon had the best opening of all time now I know what you're thinking you're thinking hey what about Star Wars and sure I like I'm not gonna lie it's pretty great i play some when i'm grinding in classic well who doesn't like but doesn't have anything on How to Train Your Dragon [Music] okay so obviously it doesn't have the same impact but let me pose a question what is the opening to a film and or a soundtrack supposed to do establish a

3:52 tone right yes yes that joke was old before I started this video but really an opening supposed to establish the world in which the narrative takes place introduce us to our characters and get the ball rolling but to be clear here I'm not like a story or a narrative guy I'm a music guy but there's a really great video on a youtube channel called grant Hodges that outlines a lot of the story beats and goes into more depth about how the opening to How to Train Your Dragon is really strong in terms of its world building and how it functions in the narrative so if you're interested in the story by all means go and check his video out links in the description but there are a thousand and a half things that a good opening is supposed to do and in many ways music is very similar so listen listen to what this film opens with [Music] this is the piece of music that comes to

4:37 represent Berk the Vikings and the Viking Way of life most people would leave not us we're Vikings shortly after that we get this piece of music misery my village in a word sturdy it's been here for seven generations um actually let's put a pin in that just remember this tune because we're gonna come back to it later but shortly after that while we're getting narration from hiccup oh no wait I'm talking about a film on YouTube hold on narration but while hiccups narrating right when we get to the Dragons we get a more exciting statement of the Viking theme most people would leave not us more Vikings then while we get introduced to stoic we get some of Stoics theme that comes back whenever he's doing something stoic that's a

5:28 stoic the vast chief of the triangle they say that when he was a baby he popped a dragon's head clean off his shoulders then we get this great slow-mo moment cool guys don't look at explosions and this is in fact asteroids theme [Music] obviously this represents Astrid and you can hear it come back in its full glory during the track titled romantic flight [Music] now right here when hiccup demonstrates his bolo launcher you can barely hear it it's like a blink or you'll miss it kind of moment or I guess you can't really blink with your ears to be weird anyway you have to pay attention but there's

6:14 another little thematic idea here like this we'll throw it for me this cheesy kind of jokey theme comes back at the very end of the film when the teenagers fly in to save the day it's kinda not too serious poking fun at the generic hero theme it's kind of tongue-in-cheek but I think it really fits that dorky style of the teenagers then right here when hiccups listing off the Dragons we're introduced to a theme for the Dragons which as I'm sure you can imagine comes to represent the Dragons a Nadder head be sure to get me at least noticed wrong culture stuff taken down one of those would definitely yeah and that is in effect the entire opening at least musically speaking sure

6:59 the scene continues on for a little bit but musically this is all we really need and with that you can see the strength in the opening of this film not just from a musical point of view but narrative Lee as well the opening goes through each of the main thematic ideas of the film from the protagonists to the population to what drove the protagonist to act in the first place to what is arguably the antagonist of the film and efficiently introduces the audience to the narrative environment were introduced to each of the characters and the main ideas in the story one by one fantastically establishing not only the starting point but also who and what are the significant players in this film but because this film establishes the story so well powell was able to hijack that opening and establish all the thematic musical material that he'd end up using throughout the film okay so let's go back to like yes it's attention-grabbing it's big it's loud everyone knows it

7:44 it's wonderful but really this theme just becomes Luke's theme in Star Wars [Music] and although the title crawl is informative it doesn't show us any of the characters or the settings or the motivations and it didn't give Williams any opportunity to develop any kind of light motifs or musical ideas that Williams could use for the rest of the film aside from Luke and really that's just because Luke is the main character in Star Wars you could take a look at Superman and say the same thing it's a very similar opening to Star Wars and if you pay attention you can actually hear the love theme as a part of the opening which is really the only music that Lois Lane gets in the entire film which if you really want to cut this open you can argue that musically she exists as an accessory to Superman but that's a discussion for another day or you can look at a film opening and it comes from the opposite perspective what if you

8:31 have a piece of music that goes through all the musical material that you're gonna hear like the overture to a musical or the opening to one of those older Disney animated feature films but since it's being played over the credits or in a live-action setting over an empty stage we don't get to associate those musical ideas with what they're gonna represent on stage wait John Williams adapted the music for the film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof huh you learned something new every day anyway that's what makes the opening to this film the best intro to a film ever it cleanly efficiently and concisely tells the audience everything they need to know and establishes the musical chess pieces that Powell will end up moving throughout the film the opening scene I mean not even in barely just the first five minutes of the film Powell introduces the audience to all the musical material that he's going to use to tell the story all

9:16 except for one [Music] this is toothless's theme you can hear it whenever toothless is around [Music] but here's the thing and this is important toothless theme is the only theme that doesn't appear in the opening of the film because toothless is an outsider he isn't a part of Berk or the known world if you want to get all hero's journey II about it toothless is an unknown to the berkians and hiccup leaving the village to learn about toothless represents the hero's journey into the unknown you actually check out my video on the spider versus if you

10:01 want to know more about that kind of thing so when you first hear toothless is light motif it's really the only new material that you hear outside of that introduction so when you first hear that theme musically speaking you're experiencing hiccups discovery with him this is something that's different that we aren't familiar with on top of that there are two elements of this theme that powell uses to tell a story first it's in bagpipes we don't really hear bagpipes in any other pointless story in turn aiding toothless and feeling like this alienated outsider in fact we don't get bagpipes appear in the score again until we see the Vikings tying toothless up but as the story progresses we hear his theme and more familiar instruments or at least instruments that made an appearance in the beginning of the film

10:47 [Music] similarly when we first hear toothless's light motif it's in a minor key signature but as we see hiccup and toothless get to know and learn from each other we start hearing his light motif in a major key signature so you hear toothless's theme all over the place when toothless is around sure great exactly what you'd expect but remember that piece of music I told you to remember from the beginning misery my village in a word sturdy it's been here for seven generations that's technically hiccup steam now full disclosure there's a lot of material out there and the thematic and musical ideas of How to Train Your Dragon and I don't necessarily all agree with each other and how certain themes are labeled or how they appear in the film so I'll

11:33 include links to all these sources as well as a bunch of additional reading in the description below and I'd like to draw an extra close attention to this video by a youtube channel called Phoebe Kate that barely has 250 views so go check her video out as always links in the description but I'd especially like to draw attention to this video because it does an extra better job at explaining what I'm gonna try to explain right here because if we call this hiccups theme my village in a word [Music] and then we take toothless's theme then listen to what happens in a scene where hiccup and toothless figure out how to fly together with a track that

12:18 powell titled test-drive [Music] not only do we hear these two come together but at this absolutely epic moment where hiccup ditches his cheat sheet and a two are able to just fly together symbiotically [Music] it's emphasized in the music when Powell modulates or changes key signatures from D to e it's that standard power ballad modulation you hear it all over the place when you want to give your piece that extra momentum but in this moment we see and hear these characters come together in the film and the soundtrack which gives us just this epic moment but

13:05 it doesn't just stop there all these musical ideas continue into the sequels in fact I'd say it was the strong establishment of these things in the first film that made them so effective moving forward for example in the second film we see a lot more of Astrid in the teenagers so naturally we hear a lot more of asteroids theme and we hear a lot more of the teenagers theme as well [Applause] what and when we see the Alpha in this hidden world of dragons we get those unfamiliar bagpipes again [Music]

13:50 hey I thought and of course we get a new theme for the new villain Drago but when it comes to hiccup and toothless we get the music we're all familiar with [Applause] [Music] and by the time we get to the third film because so much has changed powell has to introduce a lot of new material like spoilers but Stoics dead and he only appears in flashbacks so trying to maintain the use of his theme could get kind of awkward but there's something family interesting that happens in this film so when they're deciding to leave Berk they have this thor ragnarok moment where hiccup says that burke isn't a

14:35 place it's a people but burke is more than this place we are burke the people the dragons I say burke is wherever we go as Scott is not the place that was this could be a scud a Scott is where people stand which is more or less what we've been getting musically speaking the theme for burke is really also the theme for the people of Berk or the Vikings most people would leave not us we're Vikings and naturally this theme appears in the third film as well [Music] so powell ends up introducing new music for the third film like a new theme for the new villain grimille

15:25 and a new love thing for toothless in the light fury but here's the thing even though he introduces new music in a second and third films he still opens them by showing us as much of the original material that he can in the opening in a second film we have a rehashing of a bunch of familiar themes [Music] this is Berk the best-kept secret this side of well anywhere [Applause] [Music]

16:11 and the same thing happens in the opening of the third film it even introduces us to the toothless and light fury theme [Music] but yeah sure don't bother to wait for us this colorful as you get any run-of-the-mill paradise boasts beaches and sunshine dragons lots and here's the thing these themes being constantly reintroduced became so ubiquitous with

16:57 the entire franchise that those specials on Netflix use them as theme music and all of this this entire franchise this decade's worth of musical material all comes from the first five minutes of the first film a collage of musical ideas that were all quickly introduced and then we're allowed to naturally develop and breathe as the story unfolded so yeah I get it when you first listen to it maybe it doesn't have the same impact that you might get with something like oh I don't know but from a structural perspective the opening to this film acted as a foundation to build an intricately detailed score that has not only lasted through the onslaught of franchising and the never-ending sequels but has also stood as a testament to the impact that well-crafted music can have as a storytelling device and that's why How to Train Your Dragon has the best opening ever thanks for watching likely

17:45 my patrons for making these videos possible the very special thank you to Alec Alec Alec e Andrew Luke Clara tan DJ now Anand doctor well Emmett Hussman Hayden Elsa Jordan Adams Karen Rosa now Meyer and John to Terran and Who am I I'd also like to thank everybody who requested that talk about how to train your dragon I love this film seriously this was tons of fun to do if you like what you saw here be sure to subscribe and check out my other videos follow me on Twitter and twitch have your musical questions answered live and if you really like what I'm doing the consider supporting the channel on patreon but that's all you got for now thanks for watching