#httyd commentary

I love the tiny tidbits that they add, the snotlout depth, the amazing bg's.... but the direction, the pacing, the way lines were directed to be delivered... they were all.... ugh. And this isn't exactly my biggest gripe, I could not see shit.

It's probably because I'm someone who wears glasses, but I could not make out ANYTHING from scenes in the night, and by god, I HATED THAT.

Another thing, is the change of time during the scene where Hiccup shows the other teens the dragons so they could catch up. It was night, I can't see shit, but that made things confusing. Because what, Hiccup waited until NIGHT, to get the dragons and the teens to the NEST? NIGHT??? Really???

It didn't make sense. They removed the part where Hiccup realized that dragons arent fireproof inside, so it doesnt make sense that he was able to defeat the red death.

I would have a loved a LA movie of HTTYD... if it expanded on the characters WELL, on the world BETTER, and hey! Maybe be a make-up for the third movie.

It was probably pretty awkward at first, cause like, Stoick was eager to hear what Hiccup had to say, because he could only get so much from what little Astrid knew during the time that Hiccup was unconscious, but there were probably also times when he got frustrated or angry because Hiccup had broken a rule or done something so unbelievably reckless and dangerous - though it probably couldn't be much worse than thinking Hiccup was dead after fighting the Green Death. But old ways of behavior are hard to break, even with good intentions behind them, and so Stoick had to work hard to calm down and actually listen to what Hiccup had to say, reminding himself that it was alright in the end.

As for Hiccup, well, it was definitely strange to have his father's attention without the "disappointed scowl on his face" that he was so used to, and uncomfortable, too, because he kept expecting Stoick's disapproval for the things he did. Again, old patterns of behavior don't change easily. Hiccup in turn had to remind himself that Stoick wasn't looking for places to criticize him or dismiss his unusual actions and interests.

So yeah, it may have been rocky at first, with both of them walking on eggshells around each other, but the important thing is that both Hiccup and Stoick tried to communicate with each other, without Hiccup trying to live up to Stoick's expectations and without Stoick judging his son for not meeting them.

this

they even animated the same freckles in older!hiccups design!!

to come up with this?????? design for a dragon??????

it looks like basic af!!!

i mean especially for a dragon design in a httyd movie it looks like shit i mean  

LOOK

AT

THESE

DRAGON

TEXTURES???

even the fucking 2bit bad guy’s dragon has really cool texture detail and design

and when compared to how textured and detailed toothless is, makes this look even worse.

like feminization of her aside, it just looks bad in general, she looks like she was made by some b-rated studio trying their hand at computer animation for the first time. SHE LOOKS LIKE A NOODLE?! LOOK AT THIS?!?!?!?!

she looks like she was designed by a small production studio that doesnt have the budget for shading nevermind rendering detail texture, not by a big studio like dreamworks in a huge franchise like httyd.

It’s easy to focus on the tension Toothless faces between choosing Hiccup vs the Light Fury, but that’s an oversimplification of the film’s central conflict. At its most basic, the story of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is a three-way fight over Toothless. It focuses on Hiccup and the Light Fury both wanting Toothless to be with them, but there’s a third member of the battle as well: Grimmel, who wants to “finish what [he] started” and kill Toothless. Hiccup is willing to work with Toothless so he doesn’t have to choose between him and the Light Fury, and maybe in another world the Light Fury could have stayed on New Berk, but unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

Of course, this only looks at HTTYD 3 at the plot level, but it makes even more sense if you look at it on a more symbolic level. Hiccup, Grimmel, and the Light Fury all stand for different perspectives and outcomes. Hiccup, representative of Berk’s world, wants peace between dragons and humans. Grimmel, representative of the warlords’ world, wants to kill Night Furies and enslave the dragons. The Light Fury, representative of the Hidden World, wants Toothless to leave a dangerous world for dragons and join her where he can be safe. And Toothless, representative of the dragons caught in the crossfire, stands for the conflict over what should happen with the dragons: stay and fight a losing battle, risk being killed or enslaved, or leave what they love behind in order to be safe and free.

The first half of “As Long as He’s Safe” sees this three-way pull play out. As Hiccup is hanging off the Light Fury, watching an unconscious Toothless fall from the sky, Grimmel says, "You'll kill both of us! That's your plan? Fighting over a dragon?" To which Hiccup replies, as he takes the muzzle off the Light Fury, "This is." Then he lets go. Hiccup realized that the only way to save Toothless was to let the Light Fury do it. Hiccup couldn't, not with a damaged suit, not with Grimmel hanging from his legs, not with Toothless unconscious. In that moment, only another dragon could save Toothless. No one else.

And see, here's where how writing of this scene - even with such little dialogue - is absolutely brilliant. Grimmel's line, "That's your plan? Fighting over a dragon?" frames this in an entirely different way than if he had only said "You'll kill both of us!" If Hiccup had continued to fight against Grimmel over the Light Fury, Toothless would have died. The only way to save Toothless was to stop the fight, even though that meant Hiccup had to give up his life. Thank the gods for the Light Fury.

The talk that Gobber references is the one between him and Stoick right after the latter makes the motion for “one last search, before the ice sets in.” He’s reluctant to let Hiccup join dragon training, primarily out of concern for Hiccup’s safety (”He’d be killed before you let the first dragon out of its cage.”) Gobber, of course, argues that Hiccup won’t be killed.

From this scene in HTTYD, the line that is most important is when Gobber says to Stoick

You can’t stop him, Stoick. You can only prepare him. Look, I know it seems hopeless, but the truth is you won’t always be around to protect him. He’s going to get out there again. He’s probably out there now.

We know that the most significant revelation Hiccup has about himself in HTTYD 3 is that he doesn’t need Toothless to be the Chief of Berk. Toothless just made it easier for him to be that way. But the opposite of this is also true, and equally as vital to Hiccup’s journey in HTTYD 3.

“What if...he needs me?” Hiccup came to the realization that Toothless doesn’t need him either. Toothless doesn’t need Hiccup to be the Alpha, and he (mostly) doesn’t need Hiccup to be able to fly, at least not when he has the updated prosthetic. Most importantly, however, is that Hiccup realized that Toothless doesn’t need Hiccup to protect him. Or, at least, he doesn’t always need Hiccup to protect him.

A major part of Hiccup’s sacrifice during As Long As He’s Safe was to relinquish his control over protecting and saving Toothless and give it to the Light Fury, which he then repeated when he asked Toothless to take the dragons to the Hidden World. Though Hiccup had already made the decision to let Toothless know it was okay for him to leave for the Hidden World with the Light Fury, watching Toothless fall from the sky, unconscious, and being utterly powerless to save him was the final nail in his coffin of realizing that the sentiment Gobber told Stoick (that we know, but Hiccup doesn’t) is true.

While the two contexts are different - Toothless is not some twiggy runt of a Viking - Gobber’s main point stands true for both scenes: “You won’t always be around to protect him.” It’s not possible for Hiccup to always be there to protect Toothless. The world of Vikings is too big for that. Toothless doesn’t need (just) Hiccup and he can’t need (just) Hiccup. Hiccup had to learn to trust that Toothless will be safe in the hands of another.

For reference, that's this post anon is referring to.

The end of How to Train Your Dragon centers on a concept that I rarely see in the fiction I consume but is one I really like, and that's the concept of the hero yielding the fight to someone better able to win it.

Hiccup realized that he and the Berkians were fighting a losing battle. The warlords were far more powerful and had more resources to enslave dragons that the Berkians had to rescue them, even with the help of Toothless the Alpha. Hiccup had already been thinking along these lines during the meeting after Grimmel's attack:

Grimmel is just a sign of the times. Our enemies are getting smarter, more determined. We're not just overcrowded. We are exposed, and vulnerable. Short of full-blown war and risking everyone we love, I don't... I don't see a way of staying here any longer.

In particular: "Short of full-blown war and risking everyone we love...."

What Hiccup wanted most was to avoid a war with other humans. He grew up in the middle of a war between dragons and humans, and that was one of survival, not domination: "They raid us because they have to! If they don't bring enough food back, they'll be eaten themselves." The Berkians' response was primarily defensive, with Stoick's attempts at offense literally blowing up in his face. Even then, Stoick's offensive attacks were more about driving the dragons away than annihilating them. (I wrote about this more here.)

But Hiccup learned first-hand how devastating a war with a person who wants war is when Drago used Toothless to try and kill him and Stoick pushed Hiccup out of the way. There was no good outcome for any of the Berkians. Stoick died. Toothless was forced to kill him. Hiccup watched both happen and was powerless to stop it. Not to mention how much of Berk was destroyed when Drago attacked it.

And a year later, things haven't improved. In fact, they've gotten worse. Grimmel shows that, as Hiccup explained. He was able to get past their scouts and install a large trap for Toothless, leaving the Light Fury there as bait. He broke into Hiccup's house to threaten him, and even if Hiccup anticipated that, he didn't anticipate the Deathgrippers on the roof and how much they'd damage Berk (an attack eerily similar to Drago's attack on the gathering of Chieftains from Stoick's flashback).

The only solution Hiccup had was to leave:

Hiccup: If we want to live in peace with our dragons, we need a better plan.

Gobber: So, what are you saying, Chief?

Hiccup: I'm saying we have to disappear. Off the map. Take the dragons to a place where no one will find them.

That's it. Leave Berk and hope they can find the Hidden World. Staying and fighting would risk war.

But even before Hiccup saw how inhospitable the Hidden World would be to humans, it wasn't shaping out to be a feasible idea to move everyone there. The Vikings liked New Berk a lot, as evidenced by the party they threw:

Gobber: Don't say I thought you were a little off your raw for this but it isn't half bad.

Hiccup: This is supposed to be a temporary solution.

Eret: It's unanimous. Everyone agrees we've definitely traded up. Well done, Chief.

Hiccup, really, was the only person convinced that moving everyone to the Hidden World was the best solution. Very few Berkian Vikings had heard of the place, let alone believed it existed. Even Astrid, Hiccup's most staunch supporter, doubted his plan.

And as he learned, they were right. The Hidden World isn't a place that humans can easily live in. It's a world of dragons.

Hiccup knew this even before Grimmel kidnapped Toothless and the Light Fury from New Berk: "You belong there, with her. We don't." It's important to note that, before he says this to Toothless, he glances up at the buildings the Berkians had started to put up. They're happy there and are already getting settled. Uprooting them again would be immensely unpopular, even if the Hidden World could support humans.

Of course, Grimmel finds them. The warlords bring an armada. Even though New Berk is "defensible" and "hidden," the Berkians aren't safe there. They're not safe anywhere.

This brings me back to the concept of yielding the fight to someone else better able to win it. Hiccup realized that he and the Vikings were fighting a losing battle. Continuing to fight risks a new war that would be even more deadly than the one between Berkian Vikings and dragons. I think that Toothless falling from the sky, unconscious from Grimmel's dart, was when it really hit Hiccup that this wasn't something he could continue to fight. It was the first time in the entire trilogy when Hiccup was completely powerless to save Toothless. 

Even in HTTYD 2, during Toothless Lost and Stoick Saves Hiccup, Hiccup wasn't nearly as powerless as he was during As Long As He's Safe. Yes, Toothless fell from the sky into the ice, but he was conscious, and Hiccup could at least yell at Valka about going back for Toothless (even though he'd already been rescued). When Drago takes Toothless, even though the dragon is being mind controlled, he's at least not at risk of dying immediately. But when Toothless is falling from the sky, unconscious, he would die if he hit the water.

In the context I'm talking about, yielding is not the same as giving up, or conceding defeat, or fighting on until you're at your last breath and letting someone else save you. It's making an active choice to yield the fight to someone else because you know it's the only way to succeed as best you can. Hiccup's only option to save Toothless was to yield the rescue to the Light Fury. And as I wrote about in my three-way fight analysis, it's mirrored a short while later, when Hiccup's only option to save the dragons is to yield their safety to the seclusion of the Hidden World. 

Personally, I find this immensely satisfying, though I'm aware not everyone does. So often, I'm bombarded with stories about characters never giving up and fighting on until they either win or are forced to give up. There's something to be said for perseverance, but I think it is also an incredibly dangerous way to think and act. Knowing when to yield and realize that continuing towards a certain goal or dream is an incredibly valuable skill to have. I've watched too many people I know, and read/watched too many stories in fiction, continue on a path when it's damaging them more than the end goal will benefit them.

Quite frankly, the only time I've seen this concept of learning when to yield a battle to someone/something else explicitly part of a character's arc is in the Last Olympian, the final book in the original Percy Jackson series, and coincidentally the book-equivalent of the HTTYD films in how much it impacted my life (which is a lot). Percy was advised to yield Pandora's Box to someone better equipped to protect it instead of fighting for it (and against the temptation to open it) himself. And at the conclusion, the "single choice [to] end his days" that Percy was prophesied to make was about choosing to let Luke end the fight with Kronos instead of making it his fight, as you'd expect the hero to do. 

I've been enamored with this concept since 2009 and wished for more of it in my media, and found it lacking. And yet, in the artistry of fate, I found it in the conclusion of the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. It's a very similar execution of the concept, though less explicit than in PJO. Despite it being Hiccup's goal to live in peace with the dragons, and despite the fact that he's the hero of the story and thus expected by common narrative conventions to win at all costs, he chooses not to continue the fight because he knows he can't win it. (I talk about this more at length in this post.)

The end of HTTYD 3 is laden with irony. We expect Hiccup to fight until he wins or die trying, as part of common narrative expectations. And it's set up in the repeated emphasis of how stubborn Hiccup is, throughout all three films:

"We're Vikings. We have stubbornness issues." (Hiccup, HTTYD)

"Every bit the boar-headed, stubborn Viking you ever were!" (Gobber, HTTYD)

"Boar-headed! Just like his mother!" (Stoick, HTTYD 2)

"You know what he's like. He won't give up, Gobber. And if Hiccup finds Drago, before we find him…" (Stoick, HTTYD 2. Stoick's tone greatly contrasts that of the previous line, here expressing serious concern about Hiccup's stubbornness, for the first time showing that stubbornness can go too far.)

"You are the bravest, most stubborn, most determined... knucklehead I know. Toothless didn't give you that, Hiccup." (Astrid, HTTYD 3)

So the end of HTTYD 3, with Hiccup not continuing with his stubborn determination to bring peace between Vikings and dragons, is heavily ironic, and I think a lot of people dislike that, either because they wanted to have a happy ending (not unreasonable) or because they see it as Hiccup being out of character instead of Hiccup undergoing character development in an unexpected way.

In addition to personally really liking the concept of yielding and knowing when to stop following a certain path because it's how you started, I also agree entirely with you that it's not Hiccup "giving up" on peace (if I hadn't already made that very clear). And ultimately, while "peace" is what Hiccup has been fighting for, especially in HTTYD 2, "peace" isn't really what matters to Hiccup. I talk about this at length in this post, but to summarize: what matters the most to Hiccup is that Toothless and the other dragons are safe and free. He mentions both of these things in his goodbye to Toothless:

Go on, bud. Lead them to the Hidden World. You'll be safe there. Safer than you could ever be with me. It's okay. I love you too. And I want you to be free. Our world doesn't deserve you... yet.

The title of the music track at this moment, "As Long As He's Safe," emphasizes this, as does Hiccup's willingness to literally die in order to let Toothless live. The cinematography of the scene really enforces that Hiccup's primary concern was about making sure Toothless was safe, which I've written about here. By being okay with letting the dragons go to the Hidden World, even if it meant leaving the Vikings behind, it shows that Hiccup ultimately didn't care about peace between the Vikings and dragons. He cared most about letting the dragons live in safety and freedom, without threat to their lives or autonomy.

It's for this reason that I don't like to say that Hiccup didn't "win" at the end of HTTYD 3. Sure, he didn't achieve his goal of peace between Vikings and dragons, and so in that way he lost to Grimmel and the warlords (even though they didn't win either). Instead, Hiccup and the Berkians won in the way that they were able to succeed in what matters most to them, and that's the well-being of the dragons. And because this is what matters most to Hiccup, I don't see his actions at the end of the film as out of character.

It makes me think of the line in the original film, when Hiccup says to Stoick,

Dad. It's not what you think you're up against. It's like nothing you've ever seen. Dad, please! I promise you that you can't win this one! For once in your life would you please just listen to me?!

I don't count this as foreshadowing, nor am I sure of how much of a parallel it's meant to be, but the same thing happened to Hiccup as he told his dad. He learned he couldn't win this fight. Luckily, he listened to that fact and didn't engage in a futile battle from which there would be no way to win. No Hiccup ex machina to save them. The only way to come close to winning was to not continue the fight.

All in all, do I think that HTTYD 2 and HTTYD 3 are a little too subtle in how they show these themes? Perhaps. Do I think that people went into the final film anticipating a different ending, though a combination of conventional Hollywood narratives and an expectation of how an animated "kids" movie is "supposed" to end? Absolutely. Will I be talking about this in my PhD dissertation? Almost certainly. 

Am I aware that not everyone agrees with my views in HTTYD 3? Yes. Do I think that I'm biased in my opinion about HTTYD 3 because of my own personal preferences, my skill in literary and cinematic analysis, and the fact that I've watched all of these films multiple times and have spent years analyzing them so I know these films more in depth than the vast majority of the world? Certainly. 

Do I also think that the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy is an incredibly well-crafted masterpiece of literature of the highest degree? Yes. And do I think that Dean DeBlois should have been nominated for and won all the major awards for best screenplay for HTTYD 3? Also yes, and I will be forever pissed off that he wasn't.

I think that, with any piece of media, there will always be some lost potential. There are storylines that could be focused on more than another, or details left unexplained, or characters that aren’t fully developed. But a piece of fiction, despite its vast capabilities, is always going to be limited in how far it can go and what it can focus on. Time constraints and size constraints are probably the two biggest things that limit what a story can tell, but the influences of its creators (which is almost never just a single person) and the constraints of the medium itself are going to have an impact as well.

In truth, I’ve never given much thought to lost potential in the media I consume, or actually in my life overall. I don’t like to focus on “should’ve would’ve could’ve” type things in a regretful or “I wish things had been different” kind of way. I only use them as a way to work on improving myself for the future, like “I could have done this, which would have (likely) made this better, and so I will incorporate this into future actions.” This mentality is been something I’ve deliberately worked on for about a decade of my life now and is something I continue to practice today.

There’s a limit to how far criticism of what I (or someone else) could have done better that I’ll let myself take, however. Too much of “if this had been different then this would have happened” is dangerous, in my view. It’s okay to speculate, but there are so many variables to any given situation that it’s almost impossible to predict how things could have turned out differently. Things like “I should have proofread my paper because otherwise I wouldn’t have lost points for spelling errors” is a lot different than “If I hadn’t decided to join a theater troop this semester, I would have been able to study more and therefore gotten a higher grade in my class.” There’s no guarantee of that. And what happened happened. I don’t find much use in dwelling on “what could have been” based on what happened in the past other than to work to not make them in the future.

(For the record, this philosophy comes from a hyperfixation I had on several specific time travel series in high school and so I got really into learning about various kinds of determinism and time travel tropes and how they might play out in them.)

When it comes to media consumption, I try to take a “no expectations” approach. If I don’t have any expectations, then I can’t be let down if they’re not met. In practice, though, I often do have expectations, but they tend to be very loose. Generally, I’m of the mind of “whatever happens, I want to enjoy it” and if that comes true, I’m satisfied. It doesn’t even necessarily mean that I thought whatever it was is good, in a critical sense, just that I liked it. There are sometimes things that I want to have happen, but I’m also okay with those things not happening as long as I enjoyed whatever it was I consumed.

With all that in mind, when it comes to HTTYD 3 and lost potential, I don’t really have any thoughts on it. Sure, there are things that would have been nice to see, like the film passing the Bechdel Test, but those things didn’t happen. However, there were many things that I really did like and enjoy, and for me, those outweigh the things I wasn’t as pleased with. So I just focus on the things I liked instead. I can’t change the film, only how I interact with it.

This isn’t meant to be like, specific advice or me saying people should be like this. I’m not sure everyone is capable of it, and I’m not sure that it would be a good thing if everyone had this philosophy, though both of those are far beyond my ability to adequately assess. But in order to understand my point of view on lost potential in HTTYD 3, it’s a necessary background to cover (and also I like talking about myself).