Trivia / How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

• Approval of God: Cressida Cowell, when asked, showed no offence or anger at the differences the movie had from the original novel (tone, setup, etc.) — she acknowledged that it worked better for the new medium and that the story stood strong on its own despite not adapting the books' narrative more strictly.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: A whole series of them, concerning the giant dragon at the end of the movie. In-movie, it's only referred to as the Queen Dragon. Then the soundtrack names it the Green Death, obviously a Shout-Out to the original novel. Then the McDonald's toy referred to it simply as 'R.D.' A review subsequently named it the Red Death. The video game for the the Nintendo DS mentioned it as the Red Death. Word of God (in the DVD commentary) officially named it the Red Death. Nonetheless, it's still commonly referred to as the Green Death by consensus in the entry, in honor of the original book. And yet, the dragon in question is blue in the movie... (though to be fair it has some amount of red coloring).
• DVD Commentary: With co-writers/directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois and producer Bonnie Arnold.
• Focus Group Ending: Notably averted; the producers were concerned how audiences would react to the idea of Hiccup losing a foot in the battle against the Red Death dragon, but test audiences went up to them on their own account saying that they loved this powerful and daring twist for a family film and asked them to keep it.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's released a set of eight figures of the dragons in their Happy Meals; Toothless with Hiccup, Hideous Zippleback, Nadir with Astrid, Gronckle, Monstrous Nightmare, The Terrible Terror, Night Fury, and R.D..
• Production Posse: All save one of the actors playing the young Vikings have worked with each other before through various Apatow and Follow the Leader-esque R-rated comedies and play similar archetypes in this film that they embodied in their previous works (dorky Jay Baruchel, uber-nerd Christopher Mintz-Plasse, brash horndog Jonah Hill etc.). Of the six actors making up the film's young troupe, only America Ferrera (Astrid) had not been in a film with another actor in that group before.
• Reality Subtext: Cressida Cowell said in a few interviews that she based Hiccup's relationship with Stoick off hers with her father. She felt like he was disappointed in her when she was in her twenties and that he was godlike, a paragon that she could never match. It didn't help that before How to Train Your Dragon became a hit, Cressida had a few picture books that were modest successes.
• Release Date Change: The film was originally slated for release on November 20, 2009, but was pushed back to March 26, 2010 in order to avoid competition with A Christmas Carol and Avatar.
• Sleeper Hit: Even though the film debuted at #1 in the box office, its premiere weekend take was judged a disappointment and people hastily wrote it off as a de facto failure. However, the film developed such ecstatic word of mouth that the film just kept going and going until it arguably regained #1 in week 4 (the official grosses put Kick-Ass on top by a few hundred thousand dollars, but Lionsgate counted Thursday night grosses into its weekend total, therefore indicating the possibility that Dragon was the actual winner) and definitely in week 5; it's a box office performance path that almost never happens nowadays! So, the "disappointment" became the spring pop culture sensation in 2010, finishing a shade under half a billion dollars worldwide when all was said and done.
• Throw It In!:
  • Both the lines "dat da da, we're dead" and "thank you for nothing, you useless reptile" were ad-libbed by Jay Baruchel. Other lines were also improvised, including much of Snotlout's dialogue in the scene where Gobber tells the teens how he lost his limbs.
  • The shot of Toothless opening his eyes after his wing temporarily blocks them from view is actually an animation mistake, but was kept in because it lent an eerie quality to the rest of the scene.
  • Toothless' slight hesitation to accept Hiccup's hand is actually a glitch in the animation software; the animators decided to keep it in because they thought the timing fit perfectly.
• What Could Have Been: Fly to this page on your dragon.

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