Welcome to Little Dragon, a blog about dragons! The subject for today is dragons in movies, and who knows, perhaps you’ll find inspiration for a Christmas Gift for someone special?

You have heard of them and maybe seen images of them in your childhood. From the childhood, you might remember the cute little dragon named Mushu from the movie Mulan. A friendly dragon with the size as a full-grown cat and not able to fly. But you also might remember the terrifying large black and purple colored dragon in the end of Maleficent. Probably the first sign of dragons for most of the population. Both dragons were made as cartoons but for the audience they brought up two completely different moods. Mushi taught us that dragons can be friendly and helpful when humans are in need. The dragon in Maleficent is the opposite of Mushu since the dragon is large and would probably be over 65 feet. Compare to Mushu the dragon in Maleficent can also fly if she wants to. Her flame is almost killing the prince while he tries to rescue the sleeping beauty. Already in the childhood we got to learn to know two different types of dragons. It might be a bit confusing how two creatures of the same element could be so different. There is no coincidence that Disney introduced the world to two different types of dragons. The history of dragons go back over 300 years and bones from a T-rex discovered by the Chinese historian Chang Qu started it all. Since the discovery of the bones, the dragons can be spotted in almost all religions. From China and Japan to America and Scandinavia. Wherever you go, you will find a difference between the dragons in both temperament and appearance. For some it means luck and fortune while other see the dragon as a fire breathing beast representing Satan. It is described in fairytales and stories as protective and valuable but also a dangerous and unpredictable animal. It might be one of the most popular mythologic creature but the legendary animal has brought some mixed feelings to the population of the world.

Therefore, in movies you can and will come across both good and aggressive dragons. The size and the imagination of dragons have always been different all over the world. If you ask a person to imagine a dragon, some may see a reptile look alike creature with wings. Others may refer the dragon like a relative to the snake with no wings. However, the dragons seem to never go out of style or be boring. One excellent example of showing this is the series: Game of Thrones. You can spot three baby dragons in the beginning and you get to follow them while they grow up. In the series, you will have difficulties to decide whether the dragons are good hearted or bad. But you will see one thing and that’s loyalty. They are very protective of the people they know but can easily get angry if they are threatened by an enemy or anyone else. Another interesting detail is that the smaller dragons get locked in under one mountain to protect the population. The Queens hand later release the dragon since they shouldn’t be locked up because it can hurt them. One dragon who doesn’t mind living under a mountain is the 65 feet long Smaug who you will find in the movie: The Hobbit. He is guarding a large amount of gold and specially the stone called The Arkenstone. Smaug would probably be the modern dragon of Disneys old Maleficent. Just as terrifying and careless who takes what he wants. His hobbies is to kill everything attempting to take his gold and to burn down cities.

Another movie that got great ratings and where the main character is a dragon is in the movie “How to train your dragon”. A modern cartoons movie where the storyline takes place during the time of Vikings. The movie became very popular, so popular the first movie got two sequels. The dragon in the movie can fly but is friendly and gentle to its rider. But if you look at the storyline of the movie you will find out that the dragons in the beginning is believed to be evil and dislike people. The movie demonstrates the imagination and the different images of the dragons. You will see dragons of all sizes, color and characteristics. Some are as small as a human paw while other are large as a mountain.

When it comes to dragons in movies it isn’t the easiest to make them look real. However, there are no look which is consider to be right or wrong when it comes dragons. This gives the movie directors and writers a lot to work with and you can make them how terrifying you want or how charming you want. It’s all up to your own imagination and fantasy. That is a luxury to not be able to get judged since every single person have their own opinions and thoughts of how a dragon look like.