"How to Train Your Dragon" Talkback (Spoilers)

I just came back from a 2D showing of this movie and, it became my second favorite DreamWorks flick next to Kung-Fu Panda and Shrek. Really liked the story, thought that everything look great, from the humans to the dragons designs. Gobber got most of the laughs out of me, but that is expected. I also thought it was interesting how Hiccup left the final battle with a major war scar, and with news of a sequel, can't wait to see what he does to improve it.
 
1. Yes, but only if you don't actually read anything that we write. My post above, which helpfully linked to lots of reviews, was being sarcastic. I was kind of hoping you'd go follow those links to see cases where we don't genuflect at the altar of Pixar or where we praise non-Pixar CGI animated movies (Speedy Boris has had nice things to say about the Ice Age movies as well). It's easy to draw the wrong conclusion when you look at a highly selective sample set.

2. We're overly critical of EVERYTHING. Percentage-wise, I'm sure you'll find as many bad reviews of hand-drawn animation as you will of CGI. I think stop-motion does better than average, but that's because the stop-motion films are rare and have people like Henry Selick and Nick Park doing them (and even so, I wasn't bowled over by the latest Wallace & Gromit and our take on Corpse Bride was only lukewarm).
 
Ah no, I've read them. It's just an impression and the tone. And in my first time in this site, I was a lurker, and was turned off by the MvA review back then (there was a topic regarding DW hate back then which had this focus, after all). So I had a certain disposition regarding the site as a whole.
 
Just saw it again and man, does it hold it well! I may have even liked it more this time and unlike the first time, I felt tears welling up at the end. Funny thing that happened: When Stoick said "I have no son" the person next to me said "Oh, no he didn't!" :lol:
 
Saw this over the weekend in 3D. The 3D made me sick as all hell and the movie was only just okay. It was beautiful to look at but not something I was able to have a lot of emotional connection to for some reason. I was never a sucker for boy and his dog stuff, though, and those kinds of sequences that are tailor made to make people who are melt just kind of leave me cold.

I also just couldn't get over the stuff with killing the big dragon. The most obvious explanation for the big dragon is that it's a queen and very important to the dragon's life cycle, so it makes no sense the other dragons would quickly turn on her and help out the people who have been killing them and putting them in cages so they could use them in gladiator games. The only evidence we see of the queen being in any way "evil" is that the other dragons feel compelled to feed it and that makes them steal food from the village. Uh, that's what you do for a queen, she can't get out and feed herself. What happens in the movie is matricide.

The movie bends over so far for a happy ending in this regard it breaks its back.
 
No. The dragons =/= a single species - they are different. The dragon queen is not a matriarch/mother but more of a controller - the queen name just served as a quick name. The Green Death (it's proper name) usurped the hive, and that it used its "singing" (as seen later in the movie) to control dragons, hence Toothless being afraid. It can feed for itself, but would rather command lesser dragons. Killing the queen would actually "free" the dragons.

And no, they were actually fine with humans so as long as they don't see you hold a weapon or iron. It's pretty much evident from the start.

So yeah, it really felt more like you misunderstood the movie. Everything was properly explained and shown. Some were subtle and some were quickly given.
 
How do you figure? Toy Story 3 doesn't come out until June. It's not like the two will be competing against each other in the theaters. Unless you're talking about stealing TS3's thunder in regards to awards and such.
 
Is that from the book? Because none of that is in the movie. All you get in the movie is, spoken out loud, speculation that it's like a beehive and the big dragon is the queen. The thing that makes the most sense is that all the various dragons stem from that one. They don't even seem to have genders so I don't see how they'd reproduce otherwise.

And the dragons the kids ride at the end are basically POWs who are captured and used for training exercises in which they are killed. That's really sick when you think about it and it makes no sense they would suddenly turn on their own race like that after such cruel treatment.

Edit:

No, I looked it up and that's not in the book at all. There's no attack on a hive-like nest in the book so there's no real reason to assume that the big dragon is even the same dragon as the Green Death. Seems like Dreamworks changed the storyline to be nearly unrecognizable except for a few character and place names, honestly.
 
I do not think there's much of a chance of seeing HTTYD winning awards except for special consideration awards (Cinematography in an animated film, Best use of 3d, sound design [unlikely]).

On topic:
The highest praise one can offer to a CGI animation studio is to say they have quality like Pixar. For the first time I can say that about Dreamworks, and there is one distinct reason for that: The most important part of this movie is the relationship between principal characters.

Those scenes are conveyed without words.

Their plots and characterization are still not up to par with Pixar's current fare, but this is the first movie where I thought Dreamworks Animation was actively working on their non-technical quality. What is more impressive is when one realizes that the story team had only a year to work on HTTYD after it was handed over to Chris Sanders. He changed it completely, and it came out this good. I cannot imagine how good his next Dreamworks fare will be.
 
They did show that the dragons are from different species though. Think of Monster Hunter - where each monster is different despite being "Wyverns".

And sure, they were POW's, but they were also freed, so it's a fair deal. And they didn't turn on their own race - they defeated the king overlooking them.

And the change is quite frankly the best. Originally it wasn't supposed to be dark and touching, but the change did it well - so much that the author even loved the change.
 
I didn't -cough- :)

I did not think of it in that context before, but I guess that is another nice change for them and something I would attribute to Sanders and Dean.
 
You're speculating like crazy here to cover for flaws in the movie. You can only go by what you see on screen, and on-screen we have a hivelike dragon society with a queen. She's a cruel queen but even the characters recognize her as such and say it out loud.

All of the dragons could take different shapes, but that doesn't mean they're different species. Maybe they just have different roles in "hive" and take on different forms because of that. Again, they don't seem to have genders.

Also, that's not a fair deal. Ask John McCain if it was a fair deal. Ask any abused POW. Many of them were also apparently killed in the training exercises over the years. And they certainly did turn on their own race by killing their queen.
 
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