In the world of animated movies, there generally stands two pillars: Disney/Pixar and DreamWorks. Within one of the studios, namely DreamWorks, there exists two movies at the top of the animated movie world, those movies being “Shrek” and the “How to Train Your Dragon” series.
In my opinion, the “How to Train Your Dragon” movies are far superior to the “Shrek” movies. This is for a myriad of reasons, but the biggest one that I want to bring up first is the tone of the movies.
Both movie franchises are for kids, but what each of the movies bring to the table when it comes to tone is like night and day. In “How to Train Your Dragon,” the tone of that movie is refined; that is to say, it takes itself seriously, and doesn’t break that tone, and the story only benefits from this decision.
The jokes in “Shrek” involving references to fairy tales do serve to make the audience laugh, and the admittedly witty jokes that you don’t get until a decade after watching it make the writing in that way superb. But these jokes only go so far in the plot as the characters are compelling, and if I am being honest, Shrek isn’t that compelling of a character.
This is probably me being a snob about my movies and my characters, but for me, Shrek is a character who serves as little more than somebody who is just meant to be funny. By contrast, Hiccup in “How to Train Your Dragon” is an incredibly compelling character because of the relatable struggles he goes through, of wanting to be someone, be something, and have everything and everybody else in your life is contradictory to that desire.
Tldr; “How to Train Your Dragon” is better than “Shrek.”
