How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World Review

(Please see my review for the second movie in case you haven’t. Or be a rebel and read on. Either way, cool with me.)

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, confusingly not titled How To Train Your Dragon 3, is the third and final film in the Dragon series. (Unless DreamWorks decides on a great idea for a fourth movie that absolutely needs to be told 9 years later.) Briefly summarizing, The Hidden World takes place a year after the second (so six years after the first). Hiccup is now the chief of Berk, and his close dragon friend Toothless is the alpha for his kind. A new threat comes to Berk which has become overrun with dragons. Hiccup seeks the Hidden World where he believes his people and the dragons can finally live in peace, and Toothless comes across a rare Light Fury that shows him the route to going away from humans.

Did you ever see that episode of Pokémon called “Pikachu’s Goodbye” where Ash, Pikachu, Brock and Misty find this hidden society of Pikachu, and Ash’s Pikachu becomes friendly and content with the wild Pikachu? Ash couldn’t really bond with the wild ones because they were easily scared of humans, and Ash starts to wonder if Pikachu is better with his kind, and even mentally battles (haha … wait, this was a sad episode) the idea of going their separate ways.

The Hidden World is basically that episode stretched out to 90 minutes with more fighting, romance, (slightly) less goofy villains and, in my eyes, a less enjoyable ending. But we’ll get to that.

Let’s talk new characters.

There’s the Light Fury named … they actually never name her. I suppose because naming her would be indoctrination? But that won’t do, she needs a short-hand, it’d get boring to call her the Light Fury.

So I’ll call her “Angel 2.0”, because she reminds me of Angel from Lilo and Stitch: The Series who was also the female counterpart to the already popular dangerous yet adorable creature that was Stitch. (Chris Sanders, incidentally, was involved in both films. I wonder if he was the one to suggest a gender flip of Toothless?)

Angel 2.0 just the love interest, honestly. I mean, it was adorable all the scenes they showed of her and Toothless flying together, flirting on the beach, cooing at each other. I also like how she ends up saving Hiccup at the end. I don’t know why the villain and his lackeys released her though. It seems stupid on every front. She can attack them in vengeance, she can fly away and never be seen again, she can join Hiccup’s crew and then they have TWO all powerful dragons. Wouldn’t it have been much more interesting if they used the mind control juice the “bad dragons” on Angel 2.0 and she had to fight against Toothless who was battling his love for her with his duty and loyalty to Berk?

Nah, the story stays safe and make Angel 2.0 a morally good creature all throughout. It’ fine, but boring. Like Hiccup comments in the film when making the sketches, “Just make her a white version of Toothless.”

I already started the villain talk, so let’s discuss Grimmel the Grizzly, the dragon slayer who is surprisingly is not Malcolm McDowell.

This isn’t the exact scene I wanted to use this quote with, but regardless: “He’s climbing in your windows, he’s snatching your dragons up.”

I think Grimmel as a character is pretty interesting and funny. He really reminds me of Bog King from Strange Magic. (Yes, I saw that movie and willingly read some fan fiction, that movie is “so close yet so far” but I think it is somewhat decent. I digress.) Or for a more pertinent comparison, Grimmel is like the lead Scroll in the new Captain Marvel. The villain in The Hidden World is obviously an imposing figure, but at the same time he’s able to throw in some dry sardonic humor. He does not like Ruffnut (as do quite a few of us, especially in this movie.) He is suave and we’ll spoken, but then he also constantly has his patience tested.

As a villain though? I think he falls short because there’s little gravitas to him. For example, I feel like there’s an undisclosed history Grimmel has with Berk. With Drago, it was made clear that Stoic knew him. Yet with Grimmel, when he comes to an abandoned Berk, he notes something along the lines of, “It’s good to be back here.”

What does he mean by that? It’s never explained. Why did he decide to start killing all dragons? He mentioned how his village praised him after his first dragon kill, but was that village Berk? If so why did he leave? If not how the heck did Hiccup and anyone else NOT hear about the other village that holds “Grimmel the Grizzly”? Why is this coming up now?

And wouldn’t Hiccup have learned his lesson than to try and negotiate with crazy dudes like Grimmel? Especially because in the second movie his dad gets axed off because of his try-to-do-good nature? I know he’s a pacifist but still.

Grimmel’s lackeys are brain dead. I don’t know how Grimmel doesn’t sock all of them in the face. He could totally do it too, if he has the physical fitness to sneak into Berk without being notified and also the ability to, you know, kill dragons single handedly.

Speaking of brain dead characters someone should clobber: Ruffnut.

Is she really that stupid? Did she really think the villain would let her go with no repercussions, or that he wouldn’t follow her back to the new island?

“I never look back, Hiccup”? What the heck?! No wonder the others weren’t jumping for a rescue mission, Ruffnut makes it a mentally frustrating time.

There aren’t many young women in this village, just Ruffnut and Astrid. Let me say, Ruffnut makes Astrid, even with her flaws, look like a GODDESS in comparison.

I am happy to report that Astrid has really come around from my initial impressions. She is still supportive of Hiccup while maintaining her edge. Given that this movie has a flash forward, I understand why Hiccup and Astrid get married and have kids, but, ehhh…. It’s so nice to see her initially be liberated. She starts off not really pushing commitment and in fact acknowledges she and Hiccup are still too young for tying the knot.

But then it happens, and they have kids, then we see that Toothless and Angel 2.0 are “babies ever after too”, gah, it’s just so sappy. I understand this is the Viking times, so marriage and kids are expected, but I don’t know if we needed to see that.

This movie’s ending can be good or bad, and that really depends on how you feel about Hiccup and Toothless splitting apart to do their own things.

I like the idea of “follow your own path” being applied to even the dragons. It shows how much the Berks, especially Hiccup, care and respect these creatures. I really like how the opening scene narration in this movie is now a speech Hiccup gives the dragons he saves, keeping consistent with the previous movies but also showing he understands how to communicate with them. I also enjoy the look of the Hidden World too, even if we don’t see it for too long in the film. It reminds me of the color scheme of the Land of the Dead from Coco mixed with the function of bat caves.

Everyone giving up on dragons, though, is really unfortunate and telling of a bigger problem. Berk just … gave up reforming the world and instead chooses to let the dragons hide away from the truth. That is, the truth that they aren’t monsters but rather creatures that hold no vendetta against people so long as the humans are kind in return.

I mention in my second movie review that peace and unification is not a black-and-white issue, there are levels in between which typically means those who want peace need to fight to defend it.

Yet I also felt that Hiccup should have learned that among his own people, if people like Stoic and Eret could be swayed, then a good chunk of the other villages could follow suit in his “don’t kill dragons” mentality. Part of the education process is understanding that some people like Drago and Grimmel may be too far gone due to their own stubbornness. But! I’d also argue that those people are in the minority, and over time most people would come to see dragons as friendly within reason.

Letting the dragons hide away makes sense in the movie’s narrative. I get it; Toothless became the alpha in the last movie and wants to rule his own kind in the Hidden World. It also stops treating them as pets for the villagers and starts treating them as creatures able to control their own kingdom.

But it’s sad the dragons have to do so in secrecy, and not alongside humans who could have come to respect their intelligence like Hiccup and his people came to do. As the case is, other outside villages may follow suit in Grimmel’s philosophy of killing all dragons because the counterexample of Berk no longer domesticates and befriends them. It’s just a case of “separate but equal”, and even the flash forward scene suggests humans and dragons can only rarely see each other.

So I can go on and on about if the ending works, but overall, I did like this movie. I think my personal ranking goes 2 being my favorite, then 1, then this movie. But none of them are bad movies by any means. This is one of the strongest trilogies in the animated world, and I am so proud that DreamWorks knew when to end it. Do I believe they’ll stop at three films? I hope they do.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Review

(Please see my review of the first movie if you haven’t already. But if you like spoilers, more power to you, you might be a dragon rider.)

Last time we saw Toothless, Hiccup and his (unbecoming) friends, the kids were all fifteen year old teenagers, dragons were revealed to be a non-threat with enough practice, and the Vikings of Berk ceased to kill the beasts. Five years later, Berk has drastically changed; dragon riding is the new sport of choice, and seemingly everyone has a flying reptile of their own. The village under Hiccup’s lead and his father’s support has become a big sanctuary for rescued dragons. That is until Hiccup and Toothless stumble upon a large Oasis for hiding and protecting dragons, and all of it’s being run by a mysterious woman connected to Hiccup’s past. But another person connected to Berk arrives, and he’s not as pleasant to deal with. Hiccup now needs to step up his game to prove his dragon pacifism is simultaneously the least intrusive and the most powerful of methods, and learn some new things about Toothless and the other dragons along the way.

As I understand it, while the original Dragon came out in 2010, How To Train Your Dragon 2 came out in 2014. DreamWorks pretty much did what Sony Pictures Animation did with LEGO Movie 1 and 2 by having the time gap between movie release dates be about the number of years as the time gap between the stories within the movies. As I mentioned last time, and by the nature of this blog, I didn’t necessarily grow up with these movies. But either way, I always find it a nice meta choice to have matching time gaps, as it allows the audience to age up with the characters they enjoy, and it also allows for more interesting story opportunities with aged up characters.

Let’s talk characters.

Hiccup, Astrid, Toothless, Stoic, and others come back.

Also, I took the time to learn the other kids’ (er, young adults’?) names in this movie. “The Twins” are the blonde pair of twins (as the nickname suggests). The male is Tuffnut, and the female is Ruffnut. “Try-Hard” is the short black hair guy and is named Snotlout. “Brute” is the blonde big guy and is named Fishlegs. I’ll admit these characters have more memorable parts in this movie, so I’ll be fair and name-drop as needed.

Toothless in this movie acts more like a “cartoon dog”, which isn’t my favorite choice, but at least there are other dragons to balance him.

As for new characters, we have Hiccup’s mom Valka.

I appreciate her love for dragons and ability to become a one woman band is sorts.

What’s less enjoyable is her initial thought that, “No one can change, that’s why I left.” She talking with emphasis on how Berk was violent towards dragons in the past, but obviously she herself was capable of change by going from the village chiefess to crazy dragon lady. (Okay, that’s mean, she’s not crazy and she can walk on on dragons while flying which is cool.) But my point is that she believes other people can’t make steps to a new future when that’s basically what she did when she was already adult.

Perhaps it was a thing she could control within herself but not others, but even that doesn’t add up because Hiccup was a baby when she got away. Baby humans may be like baby dragons in that they don’t pay attention to people, but she just kinda chose the dragons over her own family.

Plus there’s the issue where, you know, because Stoic and Hiccup and everyone in Berk thought Valka died in the raid, that likely fuelled the desire to kill all dragons. Which kinda goes against her whole point in leaving, you know?

Being a dragon saver is epic and all (actually, Valka looks like an older version of the daughter from Epic… hmm…). But my opinion still stands, she’s not the best mother in animated history. She subverts the “dead mother” trope, at least?

Then there’s Drago, the villain that’s connected to Berk.

He reminds me of Shan-Yu from Mulan (why I keep bringing up that movie in my Dragon write-ups, I don’t know.) But like Shan-Yu, Drago is a unit of a man, leads spectacles of violence, and screams a lot. I think half of Drago’s lines are just screams.

For someone who was established to be connected to the history of Berk, there’s barely anything there worth mentioning. I know the idea, as Hiccup’s father mentioned, is that Drago was fueled by control and domination which eventually led him astray. Which in turn means he’d be less open to negotiation and peace talks, unfortunately for Hiccup.

But if you really think about it, in a broad light, Hiccup and his people releasing other people’s dragons from captivity can be seen as forceful. While dragons are well established to be sentient and emotional animals, it’s similar to the idea of hunting or poaching. While one society may see one or both as wrong, for another society it may be the norm and may even be party of their culture or economic well-being. So Hiccup boldly practicing his “gotta release ’em all!” ideals is less noble when we realize that he’s probably forcing his personal philosophy onto others without any talks.

Of course, dragons are well worth the dangers and I do agree they’re meant to be treated better than being locked in a cage. But a part of foreign relations is the ability to agree to disagree, and not to force our ways onto others.

It’s a complicated issue that can’t be summed up with, “They’re bad, we’re good.” I mean, here it is because Drago is unfortunately two-dimensional and bland and just wants to rule the world, but I can see that his character could have potentially shown some connection to Hiccup’s lineage, and maybe show the audience that a group leader does not and cannot always account for each group member’s personal beliefs. That not all fights can be talked down.

In fact, the entire climax of this movie where Toothless challenges the alpha and wins is essentially telling the moral, “Sometimes you can’t talk your enemies down, but instead you need to be the stronger person and beat them.” At least Toothless is on the “good” side and has history with humans treating him well, so his alpha status can’t be abused by Hiccup or anyone else.

To be fair, Hiccup does get jaded and doubtful of his beliefs in this movie, and I’m sure after what happens to his father he does come to realize that, confusingly, he needs to fight to defend the unity and well-being of dragons that he wants. So weirdly enough Drago teaches us all the importance of not having a black-and-white mentality, we sometimes must make exceptions to support the bigger picture.

Next there’s Eret.

If it means anything, this was the only scene in two trailers he appeared in. Let that sink in.

I know he’s supposed to have an arc where he learns the error of his ways, but as I mentioned earlier, nothing is quite as black and white as one would like to believe.

So the arc he goes through isn’t that interesting. I’m glad he goes to Team Hiccup, but we as audience members need to acknowledge that we are biased to be on the main character’s side.

What I do like is less with Eret and more how other characters react to Eret. for example: Snotlout is trying to win Ruffnut’s favors, but she keeps getting swept away and willingly roped into Eret’s schemes. That’s funny. Eret in general plays a straight man to the choices around him as well. I like that. This movie can get quite somber so we need the humor somewhere.

I didn’t mention this in my last writing, but considering what happens in this one, I think it’s a fair point to bring up now.

These movies can really punch you in the face with how real and tragic they get. Toothless loses a part of his tail at the start of the first film, then Hiccup loses his leg at the end.(To quote George Lucas, “See, it’s like poetry, it rhymes.”)

In the sequel, the villain’s dragon gets his tusk blown off, but dismemberment is far from the worst thing to happen.

Let’s start off with Hiccup reuniting with his long thought to be dead mother after 20 years. They quickly realize that even apart they developed to be quite similar.

Or how about the fact that Stoic’s first reaction to seeing his wife isn’t angry or sad, but relief and soft joy. Which then makes Valka’s fear of coming back home for two decades all for naught.

Or the fact that just when family is about to come back together it all gets broken when Toothless fatally injured Stoic.

People in this movie get so close to peace and happiness before it gets challenged and taken away. And I absolutely love how DreamWorks is willing to go there, present the idea emotions are not permanent, but you know, bodily harm disappearances typically are.

I don’t like the part where Hiccup lashes out at Toothless after attacking Stoic. Toothless was clearly under control of the alpha and Drago at the time, yet Hiccup gets angry at Toothless directly and tells him to go away. I guess it was to drive home the point of, “Oh no, they got Toothless and the other dragons, now what?” That, and I am sure having your father die before your eyes is horrible, but wouldn’t the attack make Hiccup more angry at Drago rather than the Night Fury?

On a less depressing note, I really like the relationship between Astrid and Hiccup here. In the first movie, as I mentioned in my write up, I felt they were just dumb teens who got together because he thought she was cool and she was impressed mostly by the dragons. Neither are wrong or immoral, but I never sensed anything deeper than that.

In 2, both are five years older, so they thankfully stepped out of superficialities and gotten to (I would hope) know each other much better. I adore the scene in the start where Astrid and and Hiccup have a heart to heart while playing fetch with Toothless. I feel that Astrid is still persistent and unafraid of confrontation, yet she shows she can slow down sometimes and give Hiccup emotional support every now and then. Hiccup also shows a lot of care her way as well; these two obviously respect one another on a deeper level than in the first movie.

This review is going all over the place. But to sum up, I do like this movie willing to take risks. Not many animated sequels would kill off a main character and essentially say peace is impossible to maintain permanently, This one did, and it’s nice that DreamWorks is taking the idea of “Vikings mixed with dragons” more seriously and realistically than the title would suggest.

Next time, the third and final chapter. Until and unless they decide to make a part four. But for now, number three will be the last one in the series. Till soon.

How to Train Your Dragon Review

This how-to video has colorful images so far.

DreamWork’s How to Train Your Dragon, based on the series of children’s books by Cressida Cowell, is about a young boy in the age of Vikings named Hiccup. Living in the village of Berk in a time where men and women alike must constantly fight off against countless dragons, scrawny Hiccup worries he cannot ever match with his clan’s ways nor ever make the chief proud to be Hiccup’s father. That is, until, circumstances allow Hiccup to tame and learn more about dragons through a Night Fury he names Toothless. Hiccup uses his newfound knowledge to become the top student in his dragon lessons while making sure to keep Toothless a secret from the others. Eventually a bigger threat emerges and Hiccup has to prove to his people that with right mindset dragons can coexist with humans and together they can soar to new heights.

So some personal backstory. The first exposure I ever had with How to Train Your Dragon was via a trailer before The Princess and the Frog. My dad and I went to see that movie around Christmas 2009,  and the trailer played at the start. I don’t recall much of the initial impression beyond, “That black dragon is way too cute to kill.”

That being said, the first exposure that I ever had with How to Train Your Dragon that remember being consistently engaged in (somewhat unintentionally) was The Big Four craze of Tumblr a few years ago.

Four CGI characters (Merida from Brave, Rapunzel from Tangled, Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians and Hiccup from this movie) join together with some portal magic to fight some evil force and they represented different seasons and …

I actually don’t know much else about the crossover honestly. At the time people seemed to romantically pair Merida and Hiccup, which was strange because even I knew one of them wasn’t single in their own universe. I guess The Big Four was a crossover story with no boundaries; there were crossovers of this crossover with other crossovers (Harry Potter and Avengers references were common), manipulations of images to join the characters so they could be in the same scene, music videos, tribute videos, parody videos, and fanfiction galore.

I didn’t join in partially because at the time I had only seen Tangled and Brave, and partially because there was some confusion on how The Big Four was supposed to exist (if it was these four stories blended together by purposeful plot points, if it the characters were always together in this world, or if The Big Four was just a codename for meaningless images of these four characters together). Regardless, it was a fascinating period of my online life.

… This post was about dragons, let’s get back to that.

Let’s start with the characters.

Surprisingly, for a wimpy apprentice, Hiccup has some good verbal zingers throughout the film. I personally love his foreboding, “There’ll be consequences!” If he wasn’t in the Viking age, he’d make a decent retortist or witty Twitter user in today’s society.

That’s a thing that this movie balances well: the dialogue. When characters speak, they do not necessarily speak like Vikings. I mean, many have the looks and accents down pat, though Hiccup sounds pretty modern American. That’s besides the point. This movie could have gone too far in the other hand and made everything a modern day tone to the point that we’re questioning the setting of this world. Hiccup and his peers speak like modern day people but it’s toned down just enough to not be “try-hard”. Plus part of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of modern speech in a loose historical setting.

Hiccup in this movie changes mainly in the sense that he stops being driven by fear and more willing to act with his own agency. He doesn’t automatically know how to handle dragons or how to communicate with them or how to fly on them. Rather, he make the choices to learn more, to try new things and to push the boundaries between the known and the unknown. It’s a coming of age tale for him, where he learns that not everything his dad says is the right way and that his own ways are not tested but may be the better choice.

I’d argue that he doesn’t develop so much internally, as he’s always on the side of not killing dragons (which most audience members undoubtedly would root for after seeing Toothless). Hiccup is an important character less because of how he grows and more because of how he serves as a catalyst for his village to change for the better.  I like the type of story where the main character is not the one that really needs to change (though they definitely do learn more about themselves), it’s more so the society around them that has to change to match the main character’s ways. Mulan is another great example of that story. A revolution often involves large groups of people, but are often started by a small number of critical individuals.

Wimpy Hiccup can be annoying to some people; him asking questions about dragons in the middle of dragon training was a bit much. But aside from an issue related to the romance between him and Astrid, which I’ll mention later in this post, he’s pretty enjoyable.

Toothless reminds me of a giant Stitch. Which makes enough sense; Chris Sanders of Lilo and Stitch helped design the dragons here.

Part of the mystery behind Toothless’s kind of dragon was that no one had ever been in close enough contact to handle one. Hiccup manages to do so by luck of the straw (or dragon net, as the case may be.)

What I like about Toothless is his nature. He’s understandable and approachable once researched, but is still undoubtedly feral. Now, “feral” does not equal “evil”, and really like how Toothless doesn’t become a cartoon dog (i.e., too cartoony and anthropomorphic) as Hiccup domesticates him. There is nothing wrong about making a giant animal into a dog-like creature in order to play up friendliness and/or kindness, but I feel that it has been done a lot. Especially in the age of the silent animal companion that a lot of animated movies chose these days, it’s refreshing to see the balance between feeling “He can hurt you without trying” and “Who’s the good boy?!”

Hiccup is constantly trying to win his father’s approval, but also doubts his own ability and morals to live up to the dragon-killing Viking ways. The father himself, Stoick the Vast, tends to push Hiccup away without care. It’s not so much disdain or disgust for his son, but rather confusion at how to deal with someone who doesn’t fit into the Viking culture. It’s also being unsure how to communicate well. Leading is Stoic’s strong suit; listening, not so much.

I mentioned before that I’ve seen Brave, and this dad really reminds me of that one. Both are bumbling yet bold, sentimental yet serious, and have lovely red hair. But whereas Brave dad has his wife, Stoic is going solo, which also accounts for his uncertainty in dealing with his son.

The fact that Stoic would disown Hiccup seems a bit out of place, and it breaks me that it happens at all.

But hey, as flawed as this dad is, he’s much more identifiable and understandable than the dad from Chicken Little. When Hiccup wants to do dragon training, Stoic lets him start with some outside persuasion. Hiccup doesn’t need to become awesome at dragon training and win the big game to get some approval, Stoic is trying to meet him halfway. Effort is always a plus in my eyes; it’s better to try and flounder than to assume your son is a lost cause and will always bring you shame (Chicken Little flashbacks…)

Astrid, the bad-to-the-bone blonde that she is, is in my eyes another “she can take care of herself” character. Nothing horrible, it’s just not my favorite personality to see in a movie. I am curious now, where are her parents in that clan? Hiccup is the only one to have his parent on screen.

Anyway, I do like how Astrid was the first one to learn about Toothless, and it was through Hiccup and more through sneaky shadowing. I wonder why she didn’t figure out sooner though — I thought the eel trick Hiccup used was so obvious!

Not strictly about Astrid, but I do not like how the relationship between Hiccup and Astrid goes down in this movie at all. They become the poster couple for the Dragon series, and I am sure it gets better over time, but something wasn’t fully realized with this relationship in this movie.

I get it, he’s a dorky wimp, she’s a brash tomboy, and they’re both teenagers around 15 years old. A relationship at this age isn’t going to be Thomas Hardy levels of nuanced.

But it seems as though Astrid only starts liking Hiccup after she finds out about Toothless and goes on an (admittedly pretty) sky ride, and it seems that Hiccup doesn’t learn anything new or deep about Astrid to make his interest anything more than a physical infatuation.

And okay, maybe Astrid can arguably be seen as someone who realizes Hiccup is an inherently good person and that being physically weaker than others isn’t bad, different people have different strengths, etc.

Here’s the thing, though. Hiccup started off with a crush on Astrid. The first scene we see of her is when she walks away from a burning shack in slow motion as seen from Hiccup’s point of view. Basically, he thinks she’s pretty and tough and popular — all surface level things that he’d probably be into because he’s lacking in those departments. (Well, okay, I personally think Hiccup, as far as animated boy characters, is cute, but that’s besides the point.)

From the start Hiccup was decent to her without intentions for specific situations, yet she doesn’t treat him with any care until after she finds out he’s hiding the pet (well, Toothless isn’t really a pet, but nuance.)

Hiccup is totally okay with this too. He never calls Astrid out on the less than nice ways she treated him before, or questions why she started liking him (it’s totally because of the dragon).

Yes, Hiccup taming and learning from Toothless shows how keen, curious, and risk-taking he is, which would all be good traits for someone in a Viking village to have and explain why Astrid would be into that.

The thing is, Hiccup was ALWAYS keen, curious, and risk-taking. He was the one begging to be involved and help out with the dragon fights. He was the one to stay into the night reading old books about dragons. He was the one to sneak away from his apprentice duties to try and capture a dragon. He’s already everything that he is later revealed to be, if that makes sense. Astrid never saw this because she never gave him the time of day.

See, I don’t get why Hiccup doesn’t have any doubts that Astrid’s interest in him isn’t anything more than shallow fascination that he can “talk” with dragons. If a girl lost weight and a guy suddenly starting liking her, or if a man won a million dollars and a woman started talking to him, an outsider would question intentions just a bit. In this film, it never gets called into attention by anyone. So I guess Hiccup is shallow too, if he doesn’t seem to mind why the pretty girl he liked suddenly sticks around.

I’ll give her this: Astrid didn’t abandon Hiccup after his father disowns him. It’s the first sign in the movie where I felt her interest is genuine. I’ll grant, too, that sometimes a big event needs to kickstart the relationship, and over time the people get to know each other better in sincere ways. It’s just a bit harder to swallow here. Maybe the relationship was too rushed and not given enough breathing room?

Teenage love. Sometimes the couple is happy but the situation is nonetheless insipid.

As for the other teen characters, I never really bothered to learn their names because I saw them as more pointless versions of Astrid. I honestly just thought of them as “The Twins”, “Brute”, and “Try-Hard”. Not the worst, but nothing memorable. I feel like if the modern dialogue can get frustrating, it’s because of these four being delivered as the de facto bullies. Thank you, next.

“I believe in learning on the job.” Hey, that’s the motto for most college grad entry-level work!

Minor role, but I like Gobber a lot. He’s the one to convince Stoic to let Hiccup start dragon lessons, and he has this nonchalant attitude I really enjoy.

On the whole, I really liked this movie. 2010 for me was The Year of Tangled for me, but in hindsight I wish I had made time for this one too. Given that there are two sequels now, plus a TV show, specials, and other media, it would have been nice to grow up alongside Hiccup. But in my adult eyes, I can also better understand the moral of the story, which I feel is best summed up as, “When life gives you fire breathing dragons, make friends with the beasts and conquer your fears to make a better tomorrow.” Or something thereof.

Next week, the sequel that may reach new heights.