How to Train Your Dragon's Heroic Arc Is One of Cinema's Best

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, in theaters now.

Hollywood's recent splurge of animated film has certainly presented audiences with plenty of heroes. There's the endearing Ralph and Venellope from the Wreck-It Ralph franchise, the villain-turned-selfless hero Gru from Despicable Me and Miles Moales from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse's Miles Morales, to name only a few, proving that as much as we love live-action protagonists like Captain America, Superman and Wonder Woman, these animated leads can be just as inspiring.

In How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) doesn't merely step into the ring -- he takes a giant leap. And by the time the film concludes, and reflect on the young Viking's journey over the course of the trilogy, it's clear his heroic arc is one of cinema's best.

Hiccup's story comes full-circle as he ushers the dragons away to the Hidden World, where they can live in peace until the day humanity is ready to accept them as part of society. It fittingly caps off the journey he embarked on in 2010, but what really stands out his his growth, both as a Viking warrior and, yes, as a peace-faring hero.

He started out as an inventor and outsider, bullied as the black sheep of Berk. Even his father, Chief Stoick (Gerard Butler), wondered whether he could succeed in a community that wasn't fond of "the other." Hiccup persevered, however, evolving from an awkward nerd to an outspoken champion for uniting the Vikings the the dragons they'd so long hunted. Even if that meant rejecting the lessons of his upbringing and opposing his stubborn father, Hiccup was determined to stand up for what he believed was right.

He's always represented the ideal of peace, and even when it comes to saving the dragons, war is always the last resort. His devotion to that principle, which flies in the face of Viking tradition, is what makes Hiccup such a good leader.

Even after Toothless killed Stoick, and after learning that his mother Valka (Cate Blanchett) abandoned him to embark on a dragon-saving crusade, Hiccup put the creatures first. He devoted himself to helping the helpless, not because it's his job, but because it's his responsibility. When he's empowered as Berk's chief, he dedicates himself to creating a utopia for dragons and Vikings alike. And when that dream is endangered, he make a sacrifice by choosing to abandon Berk and seek refuge for them elsewhere, all to avoid war.

Hiccup's heroism is solutions-oriented, and reliant on brains over brawn, as perhaps first evidenced by his creation of prosthetics for both Toothless and himself. He always finds a way, which all the more remarkable for someone who has known loss his entire life. Yet he's never wavered and grows into the warrior, husband, father and leader audiences have always known he could be.

He evolved from a bumbling kid and a hopeful amputee into someone with a relentless vision for peace. He proved himself true hero, unwilling to budge even when the world tells him to move.

Written and directed by Dean DeBlois, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World stars the voices of Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Kit Harington, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T. J. Miller, Kristen Wiig and F. Murray Abraham.