IronGut's Tumblr of Randomness

In How to Train Your Dragon 2, when Hiccup and Toothless reunite and everyone is cheering them on for their second fight with Drago and the Bewilderbeast, pretty much everyone has dismounted from their respective baby dragons and are now standing on Berk, either on sheep duty or helping the citizens, apparently. Astrid’s “TAKE ‘EM DOWN, BABE!” is shouted from the ground.

Someone didn’t dismount, though. Valka shouts her encouragement from the back of the wild, baby dragon, rather than from the crowd on the island.

Valka stayed in her comfort zone and away from Berk, even now: on dragonback, in the air. She’s there, supporting her son, but she’s staying right where she feels she belongs, far above her old life on Berk… until Hiccup and Toothless get ice blasted.

This is the first time Valka’s set foot on Berk since the Cloudjumper incident, and under similar circumstances: she’s afraid something is about to happen to Hiccup. 

Toothless loves Hiccup through and through and through. I feel like the entire franchise manifests this love in depth. 

Toothless demonstrates clear affection, from his intentional, soft physical touches…

to trusting Hiccup…

to excitedly clambering toward Hiccup…

to teasing Hiccup…

to playing with Hiccup…

to protecting Hiccup in dangerous situations (such as saving Hiccup in Defenders of the Wing Part 1), even when it put him in danger, too, and he didn’t have to be there otherwise…

to imitating Hiccup…

to helping Hiccup walk…

to going out of his way to be kind to Hiccup (think about fishing in the ocean for days to retrieve Hiccup’s helmet in GOTNF)…

to even being willing to die for Hiccup. 

Over. And over. And over again. Sacrificing himself for his beloved rider.

Toothless holds an utmost loyalty to Hiccup which is apparent in these actions, emotional expressions, and choices. Toothless wouldn’t intentionally break his tail in GOTNF unless he had a desire to continue flying with Hiccup and spend time with the human. He wants to be with Hiccup more than he wants to be able to do a basic dragon life function.

Toothless wouldn’t have been able to break out of the Bewilderbeast’s hive mind except that Toothless cared so much about Hiccup. His love broke mind control!

Toothless wouldn’t have broken out of the Bewilderbeast’s ice and started to fight the Bewilderbeast except that he cared so much about Hiccup. Toothless chose to fight a mountain sized dragon because of Hiccup.

Toothless doesn’t just love Hiccup.

The guy who has no idea how brooms work:

This guy that is pretty sure he was just kicked:

This guy who has no control over his arm movements:

too hot? change into thinner clothes!

still too cold? put on another layer!

still too hot? uh, get naked I guess?

still too cold? put on another layer!

Avoidance techniques for the cold:

-more coats, fire, hot food and drink, stay inside, fuzzy sweaters, ear muffs, become a burrito

Avoidance techniques for heat:

The hyper realistic style is actually limiting the animators, rather than freeing them. The style makes it much harder to have memorable character designs and good expressions. Real lions don’t need to do things like emote in a way that humans can understand – but characters in a film do. The original movie was more cartoony not due to animation limitations of the time, but because that style genuinely serves the story better.

To show you what I mean, compare these two shots of Simba, from right after Scar says “run away and never return.”

Here is a clear reaction, with a strong beat for us to connect with before the character makes a decision. Even without any dialogue, even without any context, you can understand the emotion there just by the expression and the mannerisms. Is it realistic? No! He’s bright yellow and has eyebrows. But do we empathize with him? Yes!

Meanwhile, here is… a lion. Turning and running. No expression, no beats, no character moments, nothing. He actually can’t express himself because the animators are locked into the realistic style. If they tried to animate a strong expression as warranted for the scene, it would look terrible. Is it realistic? Hell yeah! Look at those textures! Look at that fur! But do we empathize with him? …nah. Not really.

To conclude: when you’re retelling Hamlet with a bunch of animated lions, cartoonish-ness is your friend, not your enemy.