JOHN POWELL - How To Train Your Dragon

Some film composers become forever linked to a specific fantasy world. For John Williams, it was Star Wars; for Howard Shore, Lord of the Rings. Little did John Powell know that, when he wrote the score for How to Train Your Dragon in 2010, he would be branding himself with the crest of Berk for the next fifteen years and counting. Two sequels, a theme park, and a live-action remake later, the musician and Toothless the dragon are bonded for life.

Powell was a favorite of Jeffrey Katzenberg’s, the man who oversaw feature animation at DreamWorks. But Powell had always been teamed with another composer, and “there was always this question,” he says: “Will Jeffrey ever actually believe that I could do this on my own?” The composer had proven his chops with a series of clever, colorful scores for animated films and emotionally kinetic scores for the Bourne movies, redefining the action genre, so when Katzenberg asked Powell to score How to Train Your Dragon on his own, the chief was getting an A-list talent—but for the composer, “there's probably a slight father figure thing going on with this. I probably was trying to impress Jeffrey. It could be that it turned out well because I tried harder to do that. Or it just turned out well because the film was good. You can write a much better score to a good film.”

Initially Powell took the story’s Viking milieu literally, and started researching Scandinavian folk tunes and musical traditions, which he says are “wonderfully cold and warm at the same time. It’s like saunas and ice dips.” But one day Katzenberg pointedly asked if he could “just throw some Enya at it,” which made Powell laugh. In the film, the adults all speak with a Scottish brogue, whereas the kids have American accents—which Powell saw as a subtle symbol of generational shifts. “So there’s this kind of mismatch of Viking theory going on. But what I got from that comment, about ‘throwing some Enya at it,’ was that Irish, Scottish, and to a certain extent Old English folk songs, can have a warmth to them that perhaps I wasn’t utilizing, because I was being a bit too intellectual.”

The original Dragon film was directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois—who went on to helm the next three films by himself, becoming a close friend and collaborator with Powell. “Neither Chris nor I are very well versed, in musical terms,” says DeBlois, “but every time John would play a melody, we would point at something and say, ‘That’s really great.’ Maybe it’s just a phrase within the larger piece he was playing. But we were always encouraging him to find that one little melody, and repeat it enough and emphasize it enough so that you could go out whistling it. That was really my hope.” Powell isn’t a big fan of the literal leitmotif approach—this theme is for this character—because “there’s nothing more irritating, I think, than hearing a tune happen every time a character walks in,” he laughs. Instead, he likes to write tunes for story themes, which are often represented by particular characters, but are larger than the characters themselves.

How to Train Your Dragon came out on March 26th, 2010, and was received enthusiastically by critics and audiences alike, becoming the tenth highest grossing film of the year. The score remains a highlight of Powell’s impressive career, and it has now spawned an entire vast universe of Berkian tunes. “Chris and I quickly realized that John has a very strong story sense in his own right,” says DeBlois. “And when it came to filling the movie with tunes and motifs, he was finding his own way through the story that was almost like a harmony to the main themes that we were tackling on the surface with dialogue and visuals. It’s a really unique ability, and something that I’m thankful for. Because the music itself is not just supporting the storytelling... it’s deepening it.”

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE

“Test Drive” - Early on Powell identified that he needed a theme to capture the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless, which would necessarily convey the feeling of flight. One of his first experiments was scoring the “Test Drive” sequence, where the pair go on their first joy flight with Toothless’ new prosthetic tail fin. “I just had an idea, and I put it down, and it had heavy guitars in it and big drums, and it had a very simple tune,” he says. “I think I managed to get the tempo right, and the groove right, and enough of a feeling of floating to feel right for flying. Just that little clip was the key to flying—which we had to really crack, because there’s a lot of it.” This tune became the theme for the movie, in a sense, which is all about the joy of flight and the rewards of collaboration over conflict.

“Romantic Flight” - It’s only after the fierce warrior Astrid finds out where Hiccup has been sneaking off to and learning the art of dragon-training—and after he persuades her to take a breathtaking ride on Toothless—that their love theme flowers in all its splendor. “Romantic Flight” features a virtuosic performance of the melody on solo violin, skimming along the clouds of a female choir, as Hiccup and Astrid glide gently into a setting sun.

“Sticks & Stones” - The film ended with this original song by Jónsi, frontman of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. (Another Sigur Rós song was used as the temp track for the unforgettable “Forbidden Friendship” scene, which Powell ultimately scored in his own way.) DeBlois was a longtime fan and friend of the band; he directed their 2007 documentary, Heima, and he now actually owns Jónsi’s former house in Iceland. (Jonsí would go on to collaborate with Powell on both sequels.)

“Dragon Training” - This track is a perfect emblem of the mix of lighthearted fun, danger, emotional depth, and lyricism throughout the entire score. Powell used his stoic, battle-mode Viking theme for the training montage, amping it up with war drums and warpipes. The music turns melancholic as the other kids make fun of Hiccup, strings churn with rising anticipation as Gobber shouts out each of the dragons they’re about to meet, and then it turns propulsive as the dragons are unleashed and the young trainers awkwardly try to fend them off.

DID YOU KNOW?

John Powell earned his first Academy Award nomination for this score. (It lost to The Social Network by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.) He received his second nomination earlier this year, for Wicked.
Growing up, Powell played the fiddle and often played speys and reels—ancient Scottish folk tunes beloved by his grandmother, who grew up on Scotland’s Hebrides islands. When How to Train Your Dragon author Cressida Cowell was growing up, she spent her summers on a remote island in northern Scotland, dreaming up stories about Vikings and dragons.
On every animated film he scores, Powell has what he calls the “Stalling scale” (named for Looney Tunes composer Carl Stalling), which lets directors decide how hyperactive or more smoothly dramatic they want their score to be.
Powell was heavily influenced by the operatic, storytelling scores of John Williams, and in 2017 he got to collaborate with Williams on the score for Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Erik Heine, a musicologist and the author of The Music of the How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy, has counted more than 25 themes by Powell across the three animated Dragon scores.