#how to train your dragon 3 the hidden world

[artist-issues]

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. 

Because I’ve waited a long time to talk about this. Everybody around me was saying that the third HTTYD movie was sooo good, how could I not love it, what was my problem, they’re crying in the theater seats around me, they’re all moved, but nobody can tell me why. What makes HTTYD3 so good, STORY WISE? What makes the fact that Toothless, who is established as “Hiccup’s Other Half” and his character’s support, leaving, a good conclusion?

And it’s not just that my feelings were hurt at the idea of this iconic duo being split up in the finale. 

It just doesn’t make any sense. Because the main thing that the whole series was built around was the adversity Hiccup and Toothless were always going to come up against, because they shouldn’t be friends. The whole first movie is like “dragons and Vikings hate and kill each other, there’s no way to get over this fear, nobody can be around Night Furies without dying,” and Hiccup and Toothless literally fly in the face of that. Then the whole second movie is “dragons either have to be left completely alone to themselves and their ways in the wild apart from man, or they have to be brutally enslaved as war machines under man’s boot” and then Hiccup and Toothless fly in the face of that. They stick together as their own, unique partnership, and it changes the world in HTTYD and in HTTYD2.

And then in the third movie, boom, Toothless suddenly doesn’t belong with Hiccup anymore? Suddenly it’s essential that he live completely separate, alone with “his own kind?” Suddenly it’s too hard and too dangerous to protect this dragon-Viking way of life that the whole first and second movie worked for?

I mean. They even abandon Berk. They fought so hard for Berk throughout three television series and two excellent movies. 

And I get it. The idea is that, they left Berk because Berk is a people, so no matter where they go Berk is still alive, just like no matter where Toothless goes, his friendship with Hiccup is “still alive.” And that’s a fine theme, I guess, except it totally makes the first two movies seem worthless. It makes Hiccup’s mom seem right for abandoning her family and giving up on the idea that humans and dragons could ever live peacefully. According to HTTYD3, Hiccup and Toothless never should have interacted again after he cut Toothless free of the net. Because Toothless should’ve just…gone on to live with his own kind.

Oh except he couldn’t, because Hiccup knocked his tail fin off and Toothless needed Hiccup. Just like Hiccup was weird and innovative in a time of traditional brutish Vikings, and he, in his own way needed Toothless. So they couldn’t live among their own kind without one another. 

And I see that HTTYD3 is trying to say “‘yes, they needed each other, but now they’ve grown up and the only thing left to learn is how to let go and move on.” But you know what, if you were going to tell me that, you shouldn’t have made the driving motivation for these characters to leave one another: “too many bad guys keep inevitably attacking us.”

You also shouldn’t have made the secondary driving motivation: “Toothless likes a pretty girl dragon and he can’t be with her and be with Hiccup because she’s Too Wild.™” Because guess what? The other thing that all of the previous canon content set up was that Hiccup can basically tame and befriend any wild dragon.

There are very few dragons, even in the TV show, that he cannot make friends with and live side-by-side with, and the ones that existed were basically just big, angry killing machines who presented themselves as way more threatening in mannerisms than the Light Fury does in the third movie. The Red Death eats other dragons; the Light Fury warns other dragons of traps. The Skrill tries to lightning-fry every human around it; the Light Fury only ever plasma blasts at humans that surprise her while she’s actively snooping around their camp.

I am willing to buy a story where a dragon needs to be free of his human master if he wants to have a future with his own kind, but you can’t do that if the dragon in the story is Toothless and the master in the story is Hiccup. Because those characters’ relationship was established as the future of their kind. Viking’s way forward was dragons—dragons’ way forward was Vikings. 

And that brings up another bone of contention with me—the first reason for the finale split-up—what made Grimmel so terrifying that it convinced Hiccup to uproot his whole tribe from their ancestral home and eventually give up on fighting for his dragon/Viking way of life, and Toothless himself? Was it that Grimmel was a better strategist than Hiccup? Because Grimmel lost and died, so there’s no reason for that to remain the reason. Was it because Viggo had a whole army of people that were slapped together to hastily represent “the rest of the world” and a bunch of dragons—again, DRAGONS, Hiccup’s specialty—to attack them with? Because again, all of them lost. And Berk sacrificed nothing in the process, unless you count, like…stress.

And DON’T give me any crap about the epilogue. Don’t tell me “‘Oh, OP, you totally ignored the part at the end where Toothless and Hiccup’s new families visit each other, they’re not gone forever, they’re just Friends From Afar, living at peace, protecting the peace by staying apart.”

That is 1) a terrible cowardly step back from any emotional impact that the big goodbye and sense of sacrifice that living apart from each other should have given the audience, and 2) still doesn’t negate the fact that Hiccup and Toothless WERE fighting for their way of life, which was living together, since movie 1, and the fact is whether they visit each other or not they still don’t get to have that anymore. For no good reason. I could say more. I could talk about how silly I think a lot of the Light Fury plot is, how poorly set-up the Hidden World was as a conclusion piece, blah blah blah. But instead, I’ll just leave this quote from the end of How to Train Your Dragon 2, and you tell me how the logical conclusion to this quote was “let’s abandon our home and stuff our dragons in a hiding-hole because the enemies and armies that have never once actually defeated us are just too much hassle to keep fighting with.”

“This is Berk. A bit trampled and busted and covered in ice, but it's home. It's our home. Those who attacked us, are relentless, and crazy. But those who stopped them, oh, even more so! We may be small in numbers, but we stand for something bigger than anything the world can pin against us. We are the voice of peace, and bit by bit, we will change this world. You see, we have something they don't. Oh, sure, they have armies, and they have armadas. But we... we have... OUR DRAGONS!"

[the-book-of-dragons]

So I wanted to ramble about the odd design choice of the Light Fury from How To Train Your Dragon 3 The Hidden World. It comes off as the basic stereotypical making the female different from the males, and imposing human characteristics to animals. So first off while the HTTYD series is fictional, especially with hexapod reptiles not existing in reality. But the series still tries to ground it's dragons by giving them shot limits and treating as well animals. Only needing you to suspend your disbelief a bit with size and behavior at times. Continuing on just like birds and most notably reptiles, dragons throughout this series from the movies to the shows the dragons remained identical whether male or female. With no problem calling the Nadders, Gronkles, and the Red Death female dragons or ever needing to resort to changing their designs to be more stereotypically feminine. Dragons in the series don't really have a spectrum of dimorphic traits between male and female dragons like many actual reptiles. The only one that could exist based on birds and reptiles is sometimes the females are bigger than the males, or males having traits meant to attract mates such as color, though not exclusive to males and females. So the Light Fury has shorter antenna which is what I'm calling it, less obvious scales, has rounder features, and is smaller than Toothless. This also isn't Night vs Light Fury adaptations because we see a male and female Light Fury in the movie with the male being larger, having longer antennae, and a less round appearance from what we can see. So the difference is definitely based on the fact they are a female dragon, which is disappointing since the series never did such things with any of the other dragons like Meatlug. Continuing on it has been pointed out by others that the Light Fury's design has a while not obvious pink pattern on her, and in the center of her head it makes the shape of a pink heart. This alongside the sparkly looking skin and the rest of her design is meant to signify she's the girl dragon, while ignoring what has already been established in this world. All while playing into old and the best way to put sexist stereotypes.

[flufflyskrill]

the twitter art meme 🛸🐉

[shellysketches]

Toothless sketch

[thesillay]

expert baker v2!!!!!!! the bakery has a new hire ^_^

[domesticatedpigeonsoup]

WHY DID THEY GIVE TOOTHLESS A BROW LIFT LIKE-

first movie:

cute reptile, peak creature design

THIRD MOVIE AND HIS HEAD IS A CUBE, THEY MINECRAFTIFIED MY BOY

HIS EYES ARE ABOUT TO CONSUME HIS ENTIRE FACE

he looks like he uses his forehead to traffic cocaine bricks allover the archipelago

[rosiethedragongeek]

HTTYD is so special, how often do you get to spend this much time with your main cast??? Watch them GROW UP???? Consume literal HOURS of material in the forms of movies, shows, comics, games, shorts, etc????? We're so SPOILED

[tempest0]

Give him his fish 🤲🥹

[vyanace]

More of Toothless

[howtodrawyourdragon]

I'm gonna say it; Hiccup did nothing wrong. We're treating him as the biggest problem of THW when literally his worst crime in is somehow losing his freckles and that's not even something he has control over. Oh and that kind of incredibly stupid plan of literally moving an entire people by going "let's just fly straight until we hit something :) even though I, Hiccup Haddock, somehow don't believe the world is round."

The entire rest of the movie is everyone else around him being horrible and out of character.

Berk is a mess in the beginning of the movie, yes. But it was also just a year ago that his father was horribly murdered in front of him because Draco Bloodyfist-Or-Whatever decided to sent his mind controled best friend after him. Everybody expects Hiccup to be put together and solve all problems immediately and remain a Dragon Rider when he should be buying a therapist a mansion and a yacht with all those billed sessions.

Then there is being told more than once that he's putting Astrid second when he literally isn't. And told he should meet her standard.s

There is all that stuff about how he's been a horrible pet owner to Toothless when he had legitimate and real fears about Toothless not making it out in wild and about the Light Fury turning on him and about him not coming back. (Like... he's a disabled dragon, for Gods' sake??? Toothless will literally NOT make it without human intervention)

He's called out for not embracing change when his name was literally synonymous with change before THW and every bit of change he proposes in the movie is met with backlash unless Astrid, their not-chief, says it's okay.

His mother, who abandoned him for 20 and came home with him after the traumatic loss of his father spends most of the movie not being the mother she promised him to be in the second movie and even advocated for the Riders to be less dependent on dragons when she was with dragons for the entirety of those 20 years.

And then there is all the bullying. Making fun of his voice, telling him- a disabled person- to LOSE THE LIMP, telling him he's not worthy of Astrid the warrior goddess (completely forgetting how Hiccup is both parts warrior and diplomat in at least the previous two movies, let alone the movies and the shows) and these three things are all said by Tuffnut! "Forgets he has a sister in THW" Tuffnut!

And let's not forget Snotlout's "who died and made you chief?!" when Snotlout was literally crying at Stoick's funeral. And then proceeds to hit on the dead man's wife and his best friend's mother while also putting said best friend down!

Like... none of the things said to him in the first movie were as bad as some of the things said in THW.

The entire movie is also basically Hiccup being pulled from one direction to the other.

It's "You're a bad chief because you're not changing anything" yet it's also "how dare you make this change!"

It's "you should step up as chief" yet it's also "we will only listen if Astrid says it's good."

It's "you were literally keeping Toothless captive for 6 years :/" yet it's also "Uuuhhh, time to cut the umbilical cord, don't you think? 🙄"

It's "you let Toothless go free, what did you expect?" yet also "uh, you let him go???"

It's "you are literally nothing without Toothless, sorry :/" yet it's also "Toothless only showed you what was already inside."

It's "you should put Astrid first for once" yet it's also "I, Hiccup, will literally listen to every single word you, Astrid, says even if it's hurtful."

It's "I, Astrid, will suggest to you, Hiccup, that we go find Toothless in the hidden world" yet it's also "I, Astrid, will blame you, Hiccup, for deciding to go to the Hidden World, making the Light Fury, who you have no control over, to follow us back home"

It's "hey man, can you help me with this dragon tail? :(" yet it's also "I will literally not listen to you when I'm about to break this branch that I and the dragon tail are on."

I mean, my God! I'd sent the dragons away if I had to listen to that for the past year after I watched my father die a gruesome death.

And that's not even the worst part. The worst part is Toothless abandoning Hiccup for the most shallow reason there is; chasing dragon tail that doesn't even want anything to do with him unless he does something that impresses her when he's the king of the dragons.

So yeah, probably an unpopular opinion, but besides one bad plan, Hiccup did nothing wrong besides listen to what all the people around him were saying, no matter how much they contradict themselves.

Really, what he needs is a hug. A Real one. :(

[artist-issues]

Some Ambush doodles for the fun of it. Got lazy and didn’t bother shading them right. Her patterns are based loosely on a Clouded Leopard instead of Toothless’ panther designs and her shape is more axolotl in detail than Toothless’. She also has a more sharply defined snout.  Unlike the original Light Fury, Ambush loves to fight. The Fury Flock spends thirty years in the Hidden World, where they mate, and then migrate on the thirtieth year to Grimmel’s Archipelago. (This is about three weeks’ flight from the Barbaric Archipelago, where Berk is.)

The Fury Flock’s ancestral nesting place is on Grimmel’s home island. Usually they nest together in a big, protective group and lay eggs, which hatch and grow up on the surface world for around twenty five years. Then the Fury Flock migrates all the way back to the Hidden World to start the mating cycle all over again.

 However, in the year Hiccup was born, the Fury Flock returned to the nesting grounds to find a human settlement had sprung up. This started a war between Grimmel’s people and the Fury Flock. The Fury Flock managed to burn one of the villages on the island down and nest, but they spent the entire twenty-five years defending themselves from the other half of the island’s humans.  So basically, Ambush was literally born in a nest made from the ashes of a human village and grew up hunting people. She climbed the ranks of the Fury Flock’s social hierarchy, which is based on who performs the fastest on the hunt, thanks to her gifts in speed and cunning. To her, diving in and out of cloud banks to sink Grimmel’s People’s ships is a normal part of hunting. But to Grimmel’s people, the young, fast female Fury was a terror and became known as “‘Ambush.”  When Ambush meets Toothless on their long-awaited return journey to the Hidden World, she, like the other Furies, is interested in him because he’s new, strange, and a Night Fury. However, Ambush’s curiosity about Toothless turns to rivalry when he proves to be an even better human-raider and hunter than she is. Then it turns to suspicion when she catches glimpses of human gear and even a human rider during a few hunts.  One day Ambush pushes herself a little too hard trying to beat Toothless to the “first kill” during a raid and gets trapped by Grimmel’s machinations. Hiccup, who’d been observing Toothless’ progress trying to integrate himself with the Flock from safe hiding distances, revealed himself to help. After this, Ambush accepted that a human could be more than a hunting trophy or an enemy. He unlocked that curious half of her personality, and she became the human’s shadow, obsessed with his peg leg and helmet and gliding suit.  Like I’ve said in other posts, when Toothless is stripped of Hiccup’s help and his rider is captured by Grimmel, it’s Ambush who leads the other Furies in following the Night Fury to the rescue. 

[toothbrushfingers]

some chaotic hiccup’s for you m’lord

[flufflyskrill]

give meatlug her edgy punk bf <3

context:

[shellysketches]

[thesillay]

FIRST EVER POST YAHOOO

enjoy art of the sillies i love them sm

[andreacelestemoreno]

I love the factor that Astrid always participates in Hiccup's inventions.