When you get asked about your favorite movie hero or heroine, there are so many iconic options to choose from. And while there is increased diversity in creating characters for the big screen, there is one category which remains overlooked. How many disabled main heroes can you name? Sure, there is post-Episode V Luke Skywalker, and there are the comic book powerhouses Daredevil and Professor X. The problem is that when asked about disabled or disfigured villains, the list would be way longer. Not to mention characters where the portrayal of disability did not go as planned.
And then, the 2010 animated surprise How to Train Your Dragon ended with a happy end, as almost all films aimed mostly at kids do, but not a complete one. To be precise, the main hero, Hiccup, did not end the movie as a “complete” one. He lost a part of his left leg in the final battle and continued to wear a prosthetic one during the second and the third film. What is more, his dragon best friend Toothless is also disabled because he is missing a part of his tail and needs a prosthetic replacement to fly.
The world of animated films is not devoid of showing disabilities or mental problems. But when it comes to physical disabilities, the characters who had them were usually shunned or full-fledged villains – just think about Captain Hook, who was literally named after his prosthetic arm. On the other hand, Hiccup’s character wasn’t defined or constricted by his disability. His journey and coming-of-age story weren’t reduced to his processing the trauma, nor was he turned into a bitter villain. How to Train Your Dragon is thus a good example of how the representation of disabilities can be handled well on the silver screen. It can serve as a source of empowerment, not of further spreading of inadequate or hurtful stereotypes.
A villain or a victim?
However, representation of disabled people is hard to come by in the movie industry as “across the 100 top-grossing movies of 2016, only 2.7 percent of characters were depicted with a disability, only 2.5 percent of characters were depicted with a disability over the past 10 years, and nearly half of the films across the top 100 did not include a single character with a disability” (Heumann et al. 1). And when there is some, it’s not very positive – on the contrary, it’s usually quite stereotypical. Heumann et al. put together four main categories of stereotypical roles disabled people in the movies usually take on, three of which were applicable to physical disability such as Hiccup’s:
- The Super Crip or the type of “disabled characters who triumph over their disability” which yet, at the same time, “reinforces the idea that disability is something that must be overcome” (3).
- The villain or the type that “plays on people’s inherent discomfort with those who do not look the same as them, telling them that disfigurement—and disability, in general—makes characters revolting and morally wrong” (3).
- The victim or people whose “disability becomes their defining feature and their lives revolve around it, rendering them failures and objects of pity”, which often results in preferred suicide (3).
Hiccup’s injury and ensuing disability doesn’t fall in either of these categories and the film is not being criticized for the portrayal. On the contrary, actually – in his article on the topic, Michael Cavna writes that “depiction of Hiccup certainly resonates with Joe Kashnow, a former Army sergeant who drove over a roadside bomb that detonated outside Baghdad in 2003. He had half his right leg amputated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center”. He quotes the sergeant who thought the disabilities the main characters had were “incredibly well-represented”. What is more, the article also mentions several amputee cosplayers embracing the character of Hiccup (check out one Hiccup cosplayer and other amputee cosplayers here).
A question of technicalities
So how is Hiccup’s (and Toothless’) disability represented, then? As far as the first stereotype is concerned, the characters embrace their disabilities and use them for their advantage in their flying. There is a sense of their need to overcome their disability. Immediately after finding Toothless injured in the first film and realizing he can’t fly properly, Hiccup sets out to create a prosthetic fin for him. He constantly improves it in the course of the three movies, finally creating a model that allows Toothless to fly independently. The same goes for Hiccup’s saddle which is accommodated for his prosthetic leg. The overall message, however, is more positive. It is not about completely overcoming disability because there is just no getting rid of it. What they can do is to find ways around it and overcome the obvious technical limitations that come with disabilities. The pair is never shown as feeling less for their missing limbs or parts. The viewers only see them battling the practicalities so they can be allowed to live an independent life they know they deserve.
While the disability did not grant Hiccup any special superpowers, he, as the main character of the franchise, still grew up to be a hero. What’s refreshing is that it had very little to do with his disability. His character arc was built on learning how to take responsibility, how to lead, and how to believe in himself. He simply happened to be missing a limb. It’s a story about Hiccup, not his left leg.
The loss of the limb did not make Hiccup into a vindictive villain, either. There is no indication that Hiccup would be shunned from his village after his disability, or that it would be an obstacle for him when he was forming relationships with others. Actually, while he had a crush on Astrid during the first movie, the two only started a relationship after the injury that caused his disability, which goes against the stereotype of disability making people revolting. He also continues to lead his village and advocate for dragons, which disproves the stereotypes of disability indicating that a person is morally wrong. There is actually a precedent in the Viking world when it comes to prosthetic limbs – the blacksmith Gobber is missing two limbs, and nobody bats an eye. The film also uses an interesting example of foreshadowing when they connect Gobber with Hiccup in the first film as the young Viking acts as his apprentice and becomes very skillful in the forge himself, only to be connected at the end of the first film by a similar disability.
There is a different link in the second film by which the film directly targets the stereotype of disabled villains. The main villain for the sequel, Drago Bludvist, is missing his left arm, a result of an injury in a dragon attack. While such a character would be consistent with the stereotype, by contrasting Drago with Hiccup as the similarly disabled hero, there is the implication that your moral compass is not about the disability but it depends on your attitude and decisions.
As it is clear, disability didn’t become the characteristic that defined neither Hiccup nor Toothless; nor were the characters objects of (self) pity. Apart from the scenes where Hiccup constructs new prosthetic fins for Toothless or saddles for himself, disability isn’t often in the forefront – except for two notable scenes. Firstly, look at the scene from the end of the first movie: the saddened look on Hiccup’s face reflects the heavy realization that he just lost a leg and he’s going to have to live with it for the rest of his life. However, the scene is supported by the presence of Toothless who helps Hiccup get to the door, personifying the need for emotional support as well as the physical one. However, with the spirit true to himself, Hiccup cracks a half-serious joke about the prosthetic leg only moments later. He then shows the same dry humor regarding his disability when he tells his mother about the leg in the second film:
HICCUP: It’s okay though. He got me back, right bud? You couldn’t save all of me, could you? You just had to make it even. So… peg leg!
(HTTYD2 00:35:27-00:35-37)
The scene showed that Hiccup, after realizing he became disabled, didn’t stick to the somber mood it induced in him but rather continued to crack jokes and take it in his stride.
One leg, one fin, one big friendship
Despite disability being full on display in the movie but not really visible in the story, there is one way it’s used as a narrative technique. It helps tell the story of embracement and unity, and it created a deeper sense of bond between Hiccup and Toothless:
DeBlois also liked the idea that the use of a forged-metal lower leg helped deepen the symbiotic relationship between Hiccup and his pet dragon. Earlier in the first film, Hiccup’s capture of Toothless damages the dragon’s tail, leading the teenage Viking to engineer a prosthetic fin. “It is a loss,” DeBlois says, “that linked to two of them” narratively, emotionally, even physically — when flying, Hiccup uses a stirrup attached to the dragon’s mechanical tail.
(Cavna)
The relationship between Hiccup and Toothless then isn’t built only on their friendship and the fact that they are the same age. It’s also built on the trust they had to have between them from early on because they had to rely on each other often because of their disabilities. The missing part of Toothless’ tail was the reason why the relationship between them was able to start at all. If it wasn’t for it, Toothless would not let Hiccup come near him, feed him, sketch and touch him, nor trust him enough to give him the prosthetic tail and ride him. They create something which McReynolds calls a prosthetic relationship or “the joining of two living bodies in order for one or both of the bodies to perform a specific task, where both bodies share agency in the performance” which “requires cooperation; both bodies must consciously work together” (116). The disability allowed to create their flying partnership in which they both absolutely depended on each other. Hiccup, obviously, would not be able to fly at all without his dragon, but the same goes for Toothless who needed assistance from his rider because he couldn’t fly on his own.
Later on, when Hiccup wasn’t initially able to walk properly by himself on the new prosthetic leg, Toothless returned the favor. I already discussed the scene from the end of the first film when Hiccup realizes he lost his leg, and Toothless is there for him both physically and emotionally. According to the director,
[o]riginally, this scene was actually played in private, where Hiccup wakes up and he realizes that his foot’s been replaced, and he dealt with it in private. And, then we had a screening where we showed Steven Spielberg where we were on the film, and one of his main comments… He was very complimentary, but one of the comments he had was that he so loved being part of the secret and this bond Hiccup had with this dragon. He felt like in the last part of the film, the third act of the film, that relationship has been reduced to something of like a cowboy and his horse, and so he was advocating having Hiccup wake up with Toothless in the room, so that as he takes his first step on his new foot, that Toothless would be there to support him. And it was a great idea. We put it in and it worked like gangbusters.
(Dean DeBlois quoted in HTTYD Film Commentary)
It’s interesting that the crucial scene in their relationship was supposed to go down very differently in the earlier version as it was the first marker of a prosthetic relationship fully working both ways: “Previously, Toothless was reliant on Hiccup in order to perform as a dragon, and now Hiccup must rely on Toothless to perform as a Viking” (McReynolds 126). This is strengthened by the fact that they both worked as an extension of the physical prosthetic to each other. Their relationship speaks volumes about the need for support and connection – as, after all, does the entire trilogy.
TL;DR: The portrayal of disabled people on the silver screen is, even in contemporary times, almost non-existent. If featured, the characters are mostly stereotypical. However, the main hero/heroes of the animated trilogy How to Train Your Dragon disprove these stereotypes by treating a disability as a part of life, but not a defining characteristic of the main character, motivation to turn evil, or become the object of pity. The representation of disability is not only empowering but it serves as an unobtrusive narrative technique to establish the bond between Hiccup and his dragon Toothless, highlighting the importance of physical and emotional support.
Don’t have enough of How to Train Your Dragon? Then read the review of the trilogy.
“Old-fashioned” sources:
- How to Train Your Dragon 2. Dir. Dean DeBlois. Perf. Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, and America Ferrera. 20th Century Fox, 2014. HBO.
- McReynolds, Leigha. “Animal and Alien Bodies as Prostheses: Reframing Disability in Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon.” Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure. Ed. Kathryn Allen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 115-130. Google Books. Web. 18 June 2019.
After the Credits 