Latest ‘Dragon’ revisits empowering depictions embraced by amputees

Hiccup wasn’t always going to walk with a prosthesis. He was going to be free of physical injury until his filmmakers decided that this boy-hero needed a trial by fire.

What the director behind the entire “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise did not foresee, though, was the degree to which Hiccup would be embraced by some amputees, including those who felt moved to dress up as the young character.

“How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World”returns viewers to the isle of Berk, where a Viking clan once bent on fighting fire-breathing monsters is now flying them, led by Hiccup and his fearsome pet ride, Toothless.

This third film in DreamWorks’ $1.3 billion Oscar-nominated franchise, based on Cressida Cowell’s book series, features a pivotal scene involving Hiccup’s left leg prosthesis. The high-stakes moment offers a distinct echo of the original 2010 film, when the underestimated hero survives an inferno.

“As we finished the [first] film, in the storyboard version, it ended a little too cleanly,” says Dean DeBlois, who has directed all three “How to Train Your Dragon” movies. “For all the peril and consequence we had introduced into their world, we felt like our hero was getting away unscathed and without having really sacrificed anything.

“So we decided to integrate this idea that he lost a limb,” continues DeBlois, who guided the first movie with his “Lilo and Stitch” creative partner, Chris Sanders. “And we felt confident doing it knowing we had this Craig Ferguson character [a blacksmith named Gobber] with a couple of missing limbs, so there would be precedent in our world.”

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.

The creative decision was potentially controversial, DeBlois says by phone from Toronto, partly because of how some animated films have historically depicted the idea of “physical disability” (in some cases even as a symbol of villainy, such as with Captain Hook in Disney’s “Peter Pan”).

“So we tested it with an audience. It was a focus group that actually rose to defend it,” the Canadian director says. “Parents were saying they’d be disappointed if it wasn’t in the final film. And one little boy, about 8 years old, said that Hiccup ‘lost something, but he got so much more.’

“And several disability interest groups celebrated that the character thrives despite the loss of limb,” the director notes.

Back when DeBlois made that decision, he was also following the news about the toll of two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I was aware of so many veterans coming back from service abroad and having lost limbs,” DeBlois says. “The idea of heroism, sacrifice. And I wanted a character to reinforce that you’re no less a hero for having lost something.”