#i hate the hidden world

[nartml]

I'd add another billion reasons why this movie was a massive disappointment, but I'm honestly still too frustrated to write it all down.

I’m going to say it.

I don’t think How to Train Your Dragon 3 was good.

Not when you compare it to literally either of the other movies. Certainly not as a conclusion.

I mean, the first movie was about a boy who manages to understand a hostile dragon species and bring peace to two warring factions, which is a parallel for his relationship with his father. The second film was about how sometimes, peace has to be fought for, and Hiccup’s whole identity was in contrast with that—because while his mother ran from conflict and his father leapt at it too eagerly, he had always been the one to stop the fighting. Then he has to learn that the things we love are worth protecting. 

And after he learns that humans and dragons can learn to understand each other and coexist—after he learns that it isn’t enough to run and hide or fight out of fear, but instead you must protect the things you care about—

After those two natural, powerful progressions are clearly worked for in the first two movies—

How to Train Your Dragon 3 comes along and says “‘No actually, sometimes all it takes is one madman whom you defeated with no loss of life to convince you that the things you care about should just crawl into a very pretty hiding hole, because you don’t feel like spending the rest of your life fighting for them.”

And I can say more. Below the break. 

Keep reading

[thecosmicmap]

“Night Furies can’t fly long distances without rest.”

— Grimmel the Grisly.

The “Night Fury killer” everyone.

[thereweredragonshere]

I want to hit Dean DeBlois over the head with a gift of the night fury shaped frying pan

[laughingwith-bluelips]

I finally got why I love so much the "dragons are gone" ending in the books while I hate it in the movies:

The books set the dragons free.

The movies simply sent them away.

That's basically the idea but I had a vision yesterday at 3am so I will be getting into detail below the cut.

The books have a very strong message about slavery. Some would say that it is a concept that is only important within the context of the last five or four books, but the ones that have been paying attention to the saga as a whole knows that there are things happening in the background. You know, stuff like

People eating dragons

People stealing dragons from their families so

The dragons can serve the vikings

And they're expected to obey because

People threaten to turn them into bags.

That's mostly the first book.

Dragons are constantly showed as unsatisfied with the status quo trough out the books, some more annoyed with the vikings than others. We have complete monologues from different dragons before the war is even a possibility. Sincerely, when it happens, it feels natural.

The idea of freeing the dragons is not one that comes up in the last book, not even close. The first time it is considered an option is in book 9 (I think), and, by the time being, we've already stablish lots of concepts as slavery within human beings, the dangers of a war, how this could lead to the end of all and freeing the dragons is the only option.

It is fatalist to say the least, but it's not going out of nowhere. There is a lot of worldbuilding (more on that later), but it is also the right thing to do. By the time Hiccup is presenting the option, Cowell has made us root for the dragons to be free and wild and do whatever they want, even if what they want is to hide under sea for thousands of years. Or if they don't want, or if the want to but just not in that moment, they can do it.

Oh, yes, because they leave GRADUALLY.

It is a sad ending, but still manages to get as satisfactory because, yet again, we know this happens and the books remind us this will happen eventually every time they can. “There were dragons when I was a boy” is literally the first phrase in the saga.

And then we got the movies.

The movies never followed the books. Like, not very much. The writers decided that they wanted to tell a story of a broken relationship between a father and a son while using dragons, the heroic and prophetic aspects of the books were getting on the way of that and they scrapped the idea. So, no, you can't tell me the movies actually follow the books.

However, if you're very technical, you know the Hiccup we see in the movies resembles Hiccup I, the one that stopped the war between vikings and dragons in the books, stablishing an equal relation between the two races. And this idea of the movies being a prequel can work for the second and specially the first movie, disregarding the fact that there are no prophetic or magical elements at all.

But THW exist and... Exist.

Suddenly the writers and producers decide that they want to follow the books and want to get rid of the dragons, something that is completely against the message of the other two movies.

(I am just talking about the movies, the shows-books relationship is very different and I will someday make a post ranting about it)

The movies do NOT talk about the dangers of dragons being with vikings or how the vikings mistreat the dragons or how bad is slavery or anything like that. The second movie does, yes, but the second movie also sends a message about how people benefit of being with dragons. They have their dragons and they're strong because of that friendship. Being at war with one another only brings loss and suffering for both bands while being together promises an actual future. A bright future that no one imagined before the first movie and that now they cling to.

Dragons and vikings are friends and together cand do basically anything.

That's a very strong message, you know?

And you know what? The third movie decided that such a strong and important message about friendship should leave the franchise completely.

“Free the dragons” it's a concept that doesn't fit with the movies. They're not slaved, they're not away from wildness and, most importantly, they CHOOSE to be with the vikings in the first place. They are already equals, they can do what they want and, you know, they are with the vikings because they want to.

But no, let's do a movie about letting friends go as if it could actually fit in the saga.

(I know it could actually fit but the execution was terrible).

As I said before, the movies resembles Hiccup I befriending dragons and we know how it ends. And someone who has never read the books will go and say "well, it was bound to end that way, why are you mad?” I tell you the difference right now: there's 1000 years of difference between the befriending and the parting in the book, 1000 years in wich we witness the deterioration of said friendship (from being friends and equals to being slaves). That's no what happens in the movies. The films give us 6 years and the only deterioration is within Toothless' character and how they made him a horny dog.

The dragons shouldn't have leave. This was a whim from the writers that thought that ending both stories the same way would be cool. It isn't. At all.

Long story short, it doesn't fit thematically. The movies and the books have different themes with different concepts and different characterizations of the dragons. While the books got story building and present the theme's since the beginning, the movies get it out of no where ignoring the themes in previous works.

Anyways, go read the books they're jewels and the ending isn't as shitty as thw make it look

[grayyylake99]

Hate the nine realms but THE POSSIBILITIES

Hiccup with Valka’s staff????

He visited the hidden world how many times???

Did he take the village kids on field trips???

WAS HE A LOONY OLD MAN

“Back in my day there were dragons! Dragons I say! Some with Pokémon lookin claws and others that spewed fire out of their ass!”

The village kids must have a blast with his stories:

“What’s ol’ chief on about today?”

“Who knows”

[airplanecrashingtowardstheground]

gege akutami created such a well thought out, well written, tragic, and multi dimensional character in satoru gojo and his response to said character is "i fuckin' hate this guy"

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

MY GODDESS MY EMPEROR ETC

[countlessofvoids]

Randomly came across one of the trailers for HTTYD: THW and watching it I realized; What you learn in the movie, is something you'd already know if you watched the trailers.

The Hidden World itself is supposed to be main mystery of the story and it's reveal is meant to take your breath away — yet it was already shown in the marketing material.

The reason why the dragons left is not really explored beyond " We reduced them to instictual animals Toothless gets a girlfriend and they have to fight another bad guy." You'd think there will be some big plot twist, something that'd change the formula a bit. Like doing something else with the antagonist(s), instead of pretty much what was already done with previous one (Drago)? Why not have it so every movie has an unique take on it's antagonist, instead of "evil man abuses dragons pt. 2: electric boogaloo"? (I'm getting a little off-track here sorry).

Then there's the characters — the same amount of depth given to them in the trailer, is the same amount they get in the final product. I mean, the side characters get more scenes, but that's about it.

The biggest surprise I can think of would be some scenes/lines being altered or removed.

[re-knights]

fem julius.. call that... uhm... julia ?

[thecosmicmap]

Strap in folks this is gonna be a long one.

So as we know Dean Deblois is the writer of HTTYD2 and 3. As a writer you have a list of rules you should follow. One such rule is “show don’t tell.”

Dean disregarded this rule and we mainly see it with Grimmel and the Night Fury genocide. In the movie he tells us “I hunted every last night fury except yours” yet Grimmel has nothing to show for it. No trophies, no night fury hide cloak, not even a claw. The most we get is a few “facts” about Night Furies that aren’t even true, or can’t be proven to be true because we’ve only ever seen one Night Fury.

“Night Furies can’t survive the cold.” Yet Hiccup tells us (in GOTNF which is canon) that winter in Berk lasts for most of the year.

“Night Furies can’t fly long distances” Yet Toothless’ wings are large and wide, which allows him to glide for long periods of time.

“Furies mate for life.” We would never know because we only see one Night Fury in the entire franchise. And if we take a look at other dragons, it seems they only see their mate during mating season.

And why would Grimmel know that if he’s trying to kill off the Night Furies forever? What’s the point in knowing their mating habits if there’s never going to be any Night Furies again? Did he just look at a Fury pair and go “yeup. They mate for life.”

Now another thing about Grimmel is that his hunting method is unreliable. One, he left his bait without any restraints. Imagine if the Light Fury woke up minutes before and just left? Boom! No more bait. What if Toothless wasn’t horny and was mad at the Light Fury for trying to kill Hiccup multiple times? Boom. He wouldn’t be trying to deal with her and the plan is ruined because the bait isn’t appealing to the target. What if Toothless didn’t smell her and never showed up?

Lots of plot conveniences. It happens in the entire movie. Dean also had to confirm that yes, Grimmel did kill all the Night Furies in an INTERVIEW because people didn’t believe that Grimmel genocide the Night Furies. And Dean only did this because he thinks Toothless is special because he’s the last Night Fury.

Now we could be here forever talking about how stupid grimmel is as a villain and how stupid it is to even entertain the thought that ONE man and his six, drugged dragons were able to commit genocide to a species of intelligent, elusive and fast dragons, but let’s just continue.

Another rule Dean disregarded is having good characterization. Or ANY characterization!

The Light Fury immediately comes to mind. Name one personality trait she has that we actually see in the movie. You can’t, can you? Because Dean actively wrote that out. There was a deleted scene of Light Fury and Toothless’ romantic flight which gave her much more personality, yet Dean wrote it out and gave us the boring one we have now.

Also, can we just talk about how she doesn’t have a name? Her name is literally “The Light Fury.” Which is the same as naming a Golden Retriever Golden Retriever.

I know Hiccup would’ve named her. Hell, anybody would’ve named her! But no, Dean decided that she didn’t need one because “how else would she be wild”?

Dean says this in an interview, “We intentionally try to keep her [The Light Fury] wild and elusive, to kind of represent something that is pure dragon, that hasn't been tainted by human beings by domestication.” Which just goes to show that Dean doesn’t know what domestication is.

(Dean also doesn’t know what a subspecies is because if he did, then he would know a Light Fury can’t possibly be a Night Fury subspecies because they have too many differences).

1. this means that Dean thinks all of the dragons that have benefited from human companionship (Toothless, Cloudjumper, Meatlug, Stormfly, etc) are tainted.

And 2, there is nothing “dragon” about the Light Fury. She has small feet (Hiccup’s head is literally bigger than her feet), small claws, a small mouth, her wings are weirdly shaped, she’s curved, she has no protective scales and her tailfin is in the shape of a heart, which would actually mess up her flight.

Many people have said this is because she’s semi-aquatic. But this is disproven by the fact that we’ve never seen her in the water and the art book.

Here’s two direct quotes: “We had to explore how the Light Fury would walk and make her feel like a female.” “We had to control all the shapes while keeping her both powerful and graceful so she didn’t fall too much into the reptilian category.”

The Light Fury is a plot device, a “agent of change” in Dean’s words.

Now while we’re on the topic of characterization, let’s talk about our main cast. We’ll start with Toothless.

Toothless is Hiccup’s best friend, who will do anything to protect him no matter the costs. He’s sassy, intelligent, curious, loyal, protective and playful.

Now take all of this, and throw it in the trash because this isn’t the toothless you’re going to see in THW. In THW Toothless’ playfulness is shot to the max, making him more like a slobbery puppy than the lethal panther he was in HTTYD1.

Toothless isn’t protective of Hiccup at all, his intelligence is below hell itself and we don’t see a lick of sass. Httyd3 Toothless is physically incapable of looking scary because his face has been deformed to to look blocky and smushed together. He lacks any aerodynamics and we can even see it in his flying. He looks like he’s struggling.

Toothless and Hiccup’s friendship is so watered down in this movie, just for the sake of romance. That’s not how it should be. Romance and friendship go hand in hand, one is not more valuable than the other.

Astrid is nothing but Hiccup’s emotional support, yet she also puts him down. “you gave him [Toothless] his freedom, what were you expecting?” This implies that the dragons are being held captive and Toothless doesn’t want to be with Hiccup.

Which he does, as we see in GOTNF. Toothless only left to get Hiccup’s helmet, then he broke the auto-tail. But why would Astrid even say that? Thats so insensitive 😭.

The twins are dumbed down (despite proving to actually being intelligent), Snotlout is flirting with a woman who’s 20 years older than him (and might be his aunt, depending if you see Hiccup and Snotlout as cousins) and Valka outright tells Hiccup that they can’t hide away from the world.

Which is true, they can’t. Because eventually they will be found. Now remember this, it’ll come back later.

Now, when writing a story it’s important to move the plot along in a way that doesn’t seemed forced. When I think of this, I think of Trollhunters: tales of Arcadia.

The protagonist (Jim) goes into the villain’s home in order to rescue his friend’s baby brother, yet he gets trapped there. His friends have to get him out of there, which allows the villain to be freed from the Darklands. This happening allows the story to move forward in a way that makes sense and isn’t forced.

Now back to HTTYD3. Let’s look at the scene where Toothless and the LF get captured. The Light Fury smells grimmel, she calls to toothless, runs towards Grimmel and gets shot.

Toothless runs over (ignoring Hiccup’s warnings) approaches Grimmel, takes forever loading a plasma blast while sloooowly walking towards Grimmel, allowing the man to shoot him and make him go night-night.

Hiccup runs over, also taking forever. And the next time we see grimmel he’s already tied up two dragons (BY HIMSELF) in these complicated straight jackets. The other dragons come around (finally) ready to attack, yet Grimmel threatens the light fury and tells Toothless to call of the dragons.

“But isn’t Toothless asleep?” I hear you ask, and to that I respond with “no, he’s not. He miraculously woke up in time to call the dragons off, despite the light fury still being knocked out cold.”

The dragons are called off and grimmel leaves on his quad-copter. The dragons follow them, even though Grimmel didn’t tell toothless to make them follow.

Do you see how forced this is? There’s many more forced plot points, but we’ll be here forever talking about it and this post is long enough already.

Next up on the broken rule list, Dean let the antagonist win. Now it’s okay for an antagonist to win, but never in the third act.

Grimmel’s ultimate goal was for dragons to disappear. Dean himself says “he does not want a world in which dragons roam free.” And what do we see at the end of HTTYD3?

The dragons disappearing into the Hidden World forever. Exactly what Grimmel wanted.

Finally, the last rule Dean broke is having a consistent plot. Now the plot of each movie is a bit different. Httyd1: Hiccup shows Vikings that while dangerous, dragons aren’t monsters. And it’s better to work together than working apart.

Httyd2: Dragons are being captured and enslaved, we need to save them and fight for our friends.

Httyd3: toothless needs to get a girlfriend. He HAS to, despite not ever showing to want one, but he’s horny right now so YES, he HAS to.

But the franchise has an overarching narrative about humans and dragons coming together. That no matter what, they will prevail because they’re working together.

Well in HTTYD3 yes, they prevail. But the dragons leave. Why, you may ask? Because no matter what they’ll always be bad humans so there’s no point fighting.

Hiccup sends the dragons to an underground glittery cave that doubles as a prison, and six years of friendship is thrown down the drain for a female Toothless met three days prior. Hiccup tells the audience that dragons will hide until humans learn how to get along (despite the many humans that already get along with them).

And that’s it. The end. No more.

“But wait!” I hear you ask, “Won’t the dragons eventually be found again?” And to that I say, “Oh, you remember!”

Because yes, the dragons will eventually be found out again. And because Hiccup gave up on fighting for change, these humans think dragons are dangerous monsters and will undoubtedly enslave/kill them.

We even see this with his own kids! Zephyr thought dragons were monsters and was ready to hurt them in order to “protect her family”. Humans of the future will no doubt act like this as well.

Humans and dragons will never learn to get along if they are never around each other. Change won’t just happen, you have to fight for it. Like the end of slavery, or the Women’s Rights Movement. Those things didn’t just happen, people had to fight for change and they had to keep fighting because if they gave up then nothing would change.

And when the dragons are inevitably found once again, it will be Hiccup’s fault when they’re either killed or enslaved.

[yutamayo]

[thereweredragonshere]

What’s your favorite Httyd… thing? As in which movie/show is your favorite? Whats your opinion on the original How to train your dragon book series? Which Httyd property is your LEAST favorite?

My favourite httyd property will always be the first film. Masterclass of animation that will never ever get old. It’s perfect in every way and I want to wrap it in bubble wrap to protect it from corporate greed🙏

Rtte is a very close second. Elite humour and amazing character development (that dreamworks proceeded to ignore in the following films???)

I sadly do not really have an opinion on the book series since I’ve never read it :( I want to one day though!

SDBUYEVDW LEAST FAVOURITE IS HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3 THE HIDDEN WORLD. GAR.

And that also includes Rescue Riders and The Nine Realms. I dislike how to train your dragon 3 more than those two. Rescue riders is for like 6 year olds and is ultimately harmless, and the nine realms takes place 1000 years later and is honestly just very easy to forget. BUT EIDYGEYJDGEIUDH HTTYD3. I could rant about that film for hours honestly to god.

[eemoo1o-tfrmoo]

Well, that’s a sucky way of looking at things, Dean.

[acourtofquestions]

Overhead, the stars shone clear and bright, and though Mala had only once appeared to him at dawn, on the foothills across this very city, though she might be little more than a strange, mighty being from another world, he offered up a prayer anyway.

Then, he had begged Mala to protect Aelin from Maeve when they entered Doranelle, to give her strength and guidance, and to let her walk out alive. Then, he had begged Mala to let him remain with Aelin, the woman he loved. The goddess had been little more than a sunbeam in the rising dawn, and yet he had felt her smile at him.

Tonight, with only the cold fire of the stars for company, he begged her once more.

A curl of wind sent his prayer drifting to those stars, to the waxing moon silvering the camp, the river, the mountains.

He had killed his way across the world; he had gone to war and back more times than he cared to remember. And despite it all, despite the rage and despair and ice he'd wrapped around his heart, he'd still found Aelin. Every horizon he'd gazed toward, unable and unwilling to rest during those centuries, every mountain and ocean he'd seen and wondered what lay beyond... It had been her. It had been Aelin, the silent call of the mating bond driving him, even when he could not feel it.

They'd walked this dark path together back to the light. He would not let the road end here.

[malachitezmeyka]

Sometimes I go like “I’m fine” and then remember that one friend whom I loved dearly who did a complete 180, told me to fuck off and essentially split apart our entire friend group in 2022 simply because I was Russian and she was Ukrainian. We didn’t talk politics, didn’t discuss the news too much, nobody held any anti Ukrainian opinions. We showered her in nothing but sympathy and support. And yet somehow, it was all our fault. We were 15 and it was our fault. Because we were Russian, so how could it not be?

I’ve never been the same since

[countlessofvoids]

You hate the third movie because you can't stand endings that aren't "and they lived happily ever after". I hate the third movie because it actively destroys the first movie's message in favor of a lazy "humans bad, animals good" narrative and fumbles every interesting idea it presents. We are not the same.