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Why the hell did everyone seem to love this movie? All over the internet, I’ve searched for reviews and analysis’ of this third installment in the dragon franchise, and I come across nothing but positivity and praise, with the occasional comment within that praise about one or two aspects that were off. Yet when I was sitting in the theater watching this film, I found myself groaning and fighting the urge to outright yell at the screen at almost every turn save for a few key moments. To me, this movie was a betrayal of everything the series had built up over the past two installments, both of which are in my top ten favorite movies of all time, and genuine classics that I doubt I will ever outgrow no matter how many times I rewatch them. The throwing away the cheat sheet moment in the first movie still makes my hairs stand on end, Hiccup falling into the flames of the Red Death still makes my heart stop, the first moments seeing Hiccup and Toothless flying together in the second movie still takes my breath away, I still get so pumped when Astrid yells “TAKE HIM DOWN BABE!”, and I still feel chills through my entire body when Toothless explodes out of the ice and challenges the alpha for Hiccup. This is a franchise that hits every note beyond perfectly and yet, why didn’t the Hidden World make me feel these things?

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Before I go into why I feel like this movie sucked, I want to point out the three scenes right up front that I DID in fact love in this movie, because there’s no piece of work I’ve ever found that hadn’t had some redeeming qualities or fantastic moments to it, and they deserve highlighting, always.

Hiccup helping Toothless woo the Light Fury: This scene was absolutely the high point of the movie for me, and even the second time watching I still found myself breaking out into laughter. It’s odd, because usually I don’t enjoy awkward humor, it’s steered me clear away from entire genre’s and series in fact; I will never watch the Drew Carey show ever again because the humor and situations get so tense for me. But just something about Toothless having no idea what to do, and Hiccup ALSO having no idea what to do, but the two of them secretly trying to figure it all out without the light fury catching on is adorable in the dorkiest of ways, it’s so innocent and charming.

Hiccup releases the Light Fury, telling her to Save Toothless before allowing himself to fall: Yes! This is the moment I’ve been waiting for the entire series, Hiccup sacrifices himself to save his dragon. Or at least in the end, proves to the light fury he’s willing to sacrifice himself for Toothless, in order to finally prove to her that he isn’t like other humans. There’s still some flaws with the setup of this moment, but I won’t nitpick them this time, because all the important parts of this scene were handled just right. The decision to put it entirely in slow motion, the editing, the score, it all came together in a moment that gave me the biggest emotional charge of the entire movie. Well, save for one other moment.

The Reunion Post Credits Scene: Yeah I know this scene actually came BEFORE the credits, but I’m calling this a post credits scene because that’s what it feels like. It feels like this scene was so detached from the rest of the movie that it was an add-on created after the first test-screenings showed that the audience hated the movie without it, and I wouldn’t blame them if that was the case. I feel like if this scene wasn’t here to end the movie I’d have burned the theater down out of spite for reasons I’ll soon be getting into, but again, seeing the moment when Toothless recognizes Hiccup again, to see them fly again with their new families, sharing the sky with each other as only dragons and riders can, you can be damn sure I was crying along with the rest of the theater.

Alright, that’s all the positivity this movie is getting out of me. Now that I’ve buttered it up and marinated it properly, it’s time to stick it in the oven and cook it alive like it deserves.

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So my hopes for this movie were dashed by the very first scene, which doesn’t happen often, especially after the first few shots were so amazing.  That fog, the light shining through it, the dramatic way Hiccup emerges and then how Toothless stalks his prey with Hiccup through the flames, Ohhh so cool!  And thennnn, Hiccup opens his mouth. Oooook, so you go through all this effort to be dramatic and intimidating, only to immediately try and calm down and explain it all to your enemy?  What the hell? What kind of sense does that make? Pick a strategy! Are you trying to intimidate someone, or are you trying to reason with him? And furthermore, you say this is an attempt at a STEALTH mission?  Why the hell are you allowing yourself to be spotted in the first place?!

And then it gets even WORSE when the rest of the riders show up.  Remember how in the ending of the second movie, after the years of practice they had gone through, they were all competent badasses when it came to flying and fighting together?  Well cross that all out folks! They’re back to being the bumbling idiots they were at the start of dragon training in the first movie! WORSE even. All that character work and growth undone for the sake of comedy, comedy which doesn’t even land because I’m too busy thinking “ Who the hell are these dumbfucks and what the hell did they do with Snotlout, the twins, Fishlegs, and, well Ok Astrid is still competent thankfully, but that’s cause she has never been anything EXCEPT competent from the very first time we saw her. ”  Then we pan up to Valka and Cloudjumper, just watching on, making a quip about how they’ll “ Get it together eventually ”, which fine it’s a decent quipp, but, shouldn’t she be, you know, HELPING.

So we manage to get through THAT scene, are introduced to the mysterious light fury, and then we get…. To Berk.  Am I the only one who has a problem with this?! LOOK AT THIS! JUST LOOK AT IT! Does nobody else understand how this is wrong on so many levels?  If you’re lost over what I’m talking about, Berk is completely overcrowded with dragons! Why does nobody seem to care? Either in the audience OR in the film?  Ok. I get what I think they were trying to get across with this. That Hiccup has a gaping hole in his life from Stoick’s death and is trying to fill that void by finding and rescuing every dragon he can from everywhere around Berk, he’s got a personality flaw that he needs to solve therefore, and that by the end of the movie, he will have grown up enough to fix that hole in himself and thus be willing to give up on his need for dragons, thus, Hiccup has an arc for the movie.

The only problem is, Hiccup is SMARTER than this.  BERK is smarter than this, and too stubborn to allow this, Valka and Astrid are smarter than this!  None of them, especially Hiccup, would have allowed things to get so overcrowded on Berk that a single dragon accidentally bumping into something literally destroys about a third of the village!  They would have tied him to a boat and sailed him off the damn island, chief or not! Even if Hiccup WAS collecting this many dragons, the rest of the island of Berk is huge, with plenty of space outside of the village for the rescued dragons to settle, and if not, expand to some of the other nearby islands, we saw your map in the second movie Hiccup, don’t tell me you couldn’t find a place for all of them!  All this is also ignoring the fact that Hiccup had gotten over Stoick’s death in the end of the second movie! There were no giant, gaping holes in his life he needed to fill! He was CHIEF and he accepted the role, he had won over Astrid as not just a girlfriend, but as a fiance to be as soon as they felt they were ready, he’d found his long lost frieking mother , Toothless had become the alpha of the dragon pack, he was building a monument to honor Stoick bigger than life itself, and ALL of Berk was living with and accepting of dragons and in fact celebrating Hiccup for leading them to their current utopia.  What was possibly missing from his life that he needed to resolve in a possible sequel? This Hiccup at the start of the 3rd movie, is not the same awesome, battle hardened, chief of the tribe, leader of the land of peace between dragons and humans that we saw at the end of the second movie, and this is supposed to have been less than a YEAR into his reign as chief that he’s gone and slipped so far down as to have lead Berk to near ruin through overcrowding!  And the problem is, that this only gets WORSE as the movie goes on, not just because Hiccup has more times where he’s as stupid as a bag of rocks, but because he’s not the only one who’s not the same…

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Toothless has been reduced to being nothing more than a damn kitty-cat in the Hidden World, and it pisses me off.  Remember our first moment seeing Hiccup and Toothless alone together in the second movie after they landed? How they bantered back and forth like two, yknow, people?  Two folks who could think clearly and fluently and have a conversation about how Toothless is annoyed that Hiccup is so reckless and getting more annoyed that Hiccup isn’t taking him seriously when he brings it up?  Yeah, the first moment we see Hiccup and Toothless alone in this movie, Toothless just wants to play fetch with Hiccup’s prosthetic leg, and tosses it back to him for him to do it again while he’s in the middle of his map-making, totally ignoring said map-making instead of actually being a participant in it like he was in the second movie.

Throughout the movie this problem persists, where time after time it seems like Toothless is just a passenger in the story, except for the moments when the light fury is there and he’s trying to court her.  At no time does Toothless do anything to help Hiccup, or push Hiccup to do make a decision, change, anything. The only thing Toothless is concerned with throughout the entire movie, save for two fleeting moments, is following his dick to try and get with the light fury.  Those moments being after his new solo-tailfin is completed and put on and he looks back to Hiccup before flying off, and when he finds and gets Hiccup and Astrid out of the Hidden World. The former we can see him, for the first time in the movie, show concern for Hiccup, thinking “But what about you?” before Hiccup ushers him to fly off after the light fury, and the latter where we see him and Hiccup both understanding that this might just be the moment when they have to say goodbye to one another, and neither of them want to.  Which is how Toothless SHOULD be acting, he is Hiccup’s partner, brother even! And yet the entirety of the movie it feels like Toothless couldn’t care less that Hiccup even EXISTS except for the fact that Hiccup can help him win the heart of the light fury by making him a new tailfin. This is the thing that undermines the entirety of the previous two movies, which the entire point of, was that Hiccup and Toothless were stronger together than they ever were apart, that they were so inseparable that it could be said they need each other, and not just because Toothless can’t fly without him.  That’s what the best moment in the entire franchise was about, in Gift of the Night Fury, after Hiccup gifts Toothless with a tailfin that allows him to fly on his own, Toothless uses it to find Hiccup’s lost helmet, and once that deed is done, he pulls out the old equipment and saddle, and destroys the new tailfin right in front of Hiccup to make his point when Hiccup doesn’t get it for a moment. Toothless doesn’t want to fly, unless Hiccup is there with him. It’s sweet and wholesome and perfect and always brings me to the happiest of tears whenever I watch it. It’s the core of their relationship and it’s fine if you wanna challenge that notion and focus the movie around Hiccup and Toothless growing to the point that they don’t NEED each other anymore, but that’s an entirely different thing to have Toothless ignoring hiccup and even FORGETTING about him, as he seemed to do once he got his new tailfin that let him fly by himself once again.

Which brings me to the Hidden World, and while many will take this as a nitpick, I don’t, because to me it’s a big one, and further goes to show how bad the writing is in this movie.  After Toothless flies off on his own and we see him finally winning over the heart of the light fury, we go back to Hiccup and Berk, and we stay with them for a day, watching Hiccup being a worrisome parent type because Toothless hasn’t come back.  So he and Astrid go off to find him and end up finding him, in the Hidden World, and in that time, over the course of a single day, apparently Toothless and the light fury apparently not just became inseparable and so infatuated with each other that Toothless had forgotten about Hiccup, but apparently had also become the king of all dragons.  WHAT!? Ok, I mean, WHAT?! HOW?! How in the hell did Toothless, even being the alpha of his pack, either usurp or gain the trust of every wild dragon he had never met before and become a king? This makes no sense at all, especially considering the second movie. It took Toothless challenging a bewilderbeast and defeating it to earn the respect of his pack and become alpha in the second movie, and he only was strong enough to defeat that Bewilderbeast because he had become so enraged by it’s attempt to kill hiccup that he effectively went super saiyan.  It was earned when he became alpha in the second movie, in this one, we’re just supposed to accept that Toothless did something offscreen, or even worse, expect that because he might be “The last night fury” he has the birthright to be the king of all wild dragons, and do remember, this is after already being shown he has no knowledge of how dragon society works, because of his first fruitless attempts to court the light fury. Now I did notice Drago’s Bewilderbeast makes a cameo in the hidden world, so it is possible HE was the king for a while until Toothless showed up, he recognized the night fury and yielded the throne to him after being defeated once before; but again, all this happens OFF SCREEN, and I only noticed the cameo at home watching on DVD, and put together that this might be the case while thinking about it recently, the movie gives no indication this could be what had happened at all.  Plus if it is what was intended, it still doesn’t address the other stumbling blocks like Toothless having no knowledge of dragon society, the other dragons accepting him as the new king so easily, or how it wasn’t JUST Toothless who defeated the Bewilderbeast, he just delivered the first volley and then the final blow. This checks just about every last checkbox of lazy, contradictory storytelling that I can think of, whether we infer the “Drago’s Bewilderbeast angle” or not, and we still haven’t even gotten to the BAD stuff yet.

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So I’ve already mentioned how the main characters were stupid, but I’ve only briefly mentioned the side characters so far.  Let’s dive into why they were a huge step down and more annoying than they were worth. Probably the worst of the bunch was Snotlout, who rather than being a begrudging friend and playful rival to Hiccup, instead is now outright antagonistic to him, arrogant, and looking to steal Hiccup’s place as chief.  Tuffnut is a moron who is obsessed with his own fake beard and with being Hiccup’s wingman, all of which is beyond forced and beyond grating, every time he was the focus of a scene I would be wishing I could skip the movie forward past him, especially when he fails to notice that his own goddamn sister has been left behind after a failed attack on the bad guy.  Fishlegs honestly is the least changed of the riders, except for that AWFUL moustache he’s grown (yes I can be petty), except his mommy factor has been turned up to 11, and he does nothing but worry about the baby gronckle he’s carrying around for the whole movie, and that’s about the extent of his character here. Valka does absolutely nothing in this movie, after being the capable and experienced dragon riding badass she was in the previous film.  Here, she gets two moments where she gives a verbal prod to Astrid to make her go give Hiccup a pep talk, and then at the end strokes Snotlout’s ego for no apparent reason. She is completely uninvolved apparently in both the life of Hiccup, and the entirety of Berk throughout the movie, and half the time in the movie you forget that she even existed at all.

About a third of the way through the movie, we see that when Hiccup is faced with the threat of the villain gaining the upper hand on him, decides the best thing to do, is to have the run away and move all of Berk to the Hidden World, unsure if the place even exists at all.  Once again, the entire village is fine with this clearly wrong-headed, desperately grasping for straws plan .  Two movies worth about how this island was their ancestral home, how they defended it no matter what from anything and everything, be it human or dragon, and suddenly “Oop!  No, Hiccup says we have to leave, so we’re leaving! Oooo, what’s this new island we’re stopping on, we like it! It’s official, this is our new home!” I know I make it sound like I’m dumbing things down, but that’s about as deep as the movie goes into explaining the logic of the town too!  It’s incredible.

One more thing to mention before I get into the biggest of my complaints, Grimmel.  As a character, he’s ok at best. Oh he’s menacing absolutely, intimidating definitely, a threat, you better believe it.  Is he compelling? No. I can see what they were going for, that he’d be the logical outcome of if Hiccup had indeed killed Toothless when he first was shot down, and went on to life this empty life of endlessly seeking dragons to kill to prove himself to everyone, and that being the only thing he ever knows, but the movie doesn’t do a good enough job of really showing that, so, he’s more of a force of nature than he is a foil for Hiccup.

But now we come to the ending of the movie, and with it, to the two biggest strikes that for me doomed the movie forever.  Even if the rest of the film had been epic and equal to, if not better than the previous two movies combined, these two key points in the ending were so badly written and so forced as to undermine the entirety of the series in about ten minutes of screen time.  Hiccup’s last gambit, and the farewell to the dragons.

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That’s the only way I can describe the logic of the event that kicks off the finale of the movie.  To summarize, Grimmald has once again bested Hiccup, capturing both the light fury again and Toothless, and by essentially holding a gun to the light fury, was making Toothless control the other dragons into not fighting back under the threat of the light fury’s life, and was now sailing away from New Berk with his capture of all of Berk’s dragons, along with Toothless and the light fury.  Ok, fine, a hostage situation, straightforward enough. Of course Hiccup feels like an idiot again and labels himself a failure, needing a pep-talk from Astrid as usual to spurr him into action. What does she say in this pep-talk? “You are the most determined, stubborn knucklehead I know. Toothless didn’t give you that, he just made it easier. And Now it’s gonna be a lot harder.   So what are you gonna do about it?”  Ok cool! So clearly we’re setting up to see Hiccup and his gang FINALLY be badasses without their dragons to help them!  Great! This is precisely what I’ve been waiting for this whole movie!  “Suit up gang, we’re going to get them back.” Aaaaaaand RIGHT out the window with that idea!  Nevermind how wonderfully setup it was to see Hiccup and the gang, if not possibly all of Berk, going to fight Grimmald themselves or come up with an ingenious way to distract him and end the hostage situation, nope!  Just “We’re nothing without our dragons after all!” Sure later on in the finale they do in fact get to fight without their dragons and do a good enough job of it, the problem is that besides it being undermined a scene before, they’re also too busy continuing to hammer in jokes about Ruffnut’s “beard”, Snotlout getting caught on a corner by his armor again, and making every quip they can while the battle is going on, and it just removes all the badassness it could have ever possibly had.  I cannot remember a single epic action moment from that fight, only the incredibly bad and forced jokes they’d been hammering in with all the riders for the past hour, and it’s a damn shame.

And see the thing is, that’s not the worst of it.  In the clifftop scene, after a brief cut back to Grimmel gloating at Toothless as he makes him command Cloudjumper into a cage, we cut back to Hiccup and the gang, in their wingsuits.  Ruffnut said it all too well for me. “Sooo, jump off the cliff, in these…  That’s the best you’ve got?!”  And not even a second later, they’re off!  Doing exactly that, no word to us about what the hell the plan was, if there even is one!  All I could think as I watched him dive off the cliff was, well, the title of this section.  And the worst part is, it was so easily avoidable too! Let me add just a few lines of dialogue right here after Astrid says “So what are you gonna do about it?”

Hiccup: “But, Astrid…  Grimmel took the dragons…  Not just toothless, ALL of them.  What can we-... Wait a second! Haha, oh wow, he did , he took ALL of them!  He took ALL the dragons!”
Cue the confused look from Astrid and an excited, arm-flailing Hiccup.
Hiccup:  “Don’t you see?!  They have no idea what kind of a powder keg they’re sitting on!  All we have to do is light a match!”
Astrid:  “But, what about the light fury?  How can we strike a match without Grimmald shooting her?”
Cue the moment of pondering from Hiccup.

Hiccup:  “Toothless.... We just need to give him a distraction he can use to save her and himself.”

Astrid:  “What if he can't break free though?”

Hiccup:  “He can, and he will. For her . Trust me. Trust HIM .”

What do you know!  An actual fucking PLAN!  One that not only makes SENSE to them as the ones executing it, and to us watching it, but it also sounds badass, makes Hiccup seem actually SMART for once, and it’s a plan that doesn’t involve just getting the dragons back so they can rely upon them, but rather revolves around how they can help the dragons by giving them the moment they need to help themselves .  This also highlights Hiccup’s trust in Toothless, not just trusting Toothless to save him this time, but to save his mate instead.  It’s the perfect moment of acceptance for Hiccup, about Toothless’s needs having shifted away from him, to the light fury and his own kind, and if you want to end the movie the way you did, you need to set that up.  But, once again, that’s not the movie we got…

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So after the riders fling themselves off the cliff, and get lucky when Toothless does indeed break himself free and save the light fury; Grimmald is defeated when Hiccup, in the aforementioned GOOD scene of the movie, tells the light fury to save the tranq-darted and falling Toothless, letting go and sacrificing himself and Grimmel to a watery death, only for Hiccup to be saved at the last moment when the light fury decides to swoop in and save him too at the last possible second.  Hooray! Hiccup is alive, Toothless is alive, Grimmel and the rest of the bad guys are all defeated, and all the dragons are free again to settle on New Berk and live happily ever aft-... Wait, what’s going on? Why is everyone taking the saddles off their dragons? Grimmel is defeated, the other hunters ships are all on fire and sinking, the dragons are safe again, why the hell is everyone saying goodbye? There’s no reason! What the hell is going on!? The light fury had followed Toothless back once, they can stay here on New Berk with Hiccup!  Let some other dragon be the king, they got along just fine before didn’t they? Even if Toothless DOES decide to go and be with the light fury, why the hell are all the other dragons being made to leave too?! They clearly don’t want to leave either, but clearly nobody is thinking about giving THEM a vote! Once again, the dragons aren’t PEOPLE in this movie, they’re just plot points and macguffins! What the hell is going on?!

“ There were dragons, when I was a boy ”

So wait, it wasn’t just Toothless and all the dragons on BERK that went back to the Hidden World, it was ALL the dragons in the entire goddamn world?!  REALLY?!

“ Some say the dragons never existed at all ”

Oh, and to further add to the implausibility of this you’re saying that everyone just forgot all the times they ever encountered a dragon before and thus believe they never existed?  This isn’t some, two or three generations down the line kind of thing, it’s clearly not even more than a decade or so later you’re telling us this Hiccup! So what? Everyone on Earth just developed radical short term memory loss?!

“ The dragons are waiting for us to figure out how to get along .”

OH!  So the world isn’t good enough to have dragons in it then huh?!  It’s because of us shitty humans and our wars and our insecurities and everything, that’s the reason we can’t have nice things like dragons huh?  Nope! Doesn’t matter that YOU are an awesome, amazing person who deserves to have a dragon best friend who will make your life infinitely better, the rest of the world sucks and because of that, YOU can’t have nice things!  Life is shit, get used to it! FUCK YOU MOVIE. FUCK YOU SO HARD.

This, this ending, right here, is the reason why this movie was SO OFFENSIVE to me, that I had to spend, let’s see, 4000 words and counting writing about why the hell I hated it, tearing it apart, and why this franchise deserved so much better than this ending.  These morals, the lessons it’s inadvertently teaching in this last movie, I reject every single one of them. Lessons like “No matter what you do, it will never be good enough because there are still bad people out there ruining it for the rest of us.” or “You have to say goodbye to the things you love because of a woman” or “Give up on your dreams, because they might not be the same dreams as your friends”.  This movie undermines every single lesson the previous two films have tried to teach, lessons that were so important to learn and so inspiring! “Fight for your dreams, even if you have to fight the whole world!” and “Your friends will make you stronger than you ever thought you could be!” and “Even if it seems like you’re alone, you will find a friend, if you take a leap of faith.” Call me naive if you want, call me a dreamer who hasn’t grown up, call me anything you want, but if the lessons the Hidden World is teaching me are the lessons of adulthood, then screw that, I’ll gladly stay a child forever.

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Yeah yeah, I can see where this is going.  You wonder how I think it could have been done differently in order to make it better huh?  Welp, alright, I suppose it’s only fair after all. The first thing I’d change, the theme of the movie.  I realized as I was watching an interview with the director that everything wrong with this finale came from them trying to reach an end-point for the series.  “I thought back to the book, and the line, “There were dragons, when I was a boy”, and how could we get there?” The creators of this film didn’t set out to write something based off of what they had already done with the series and build it to a logical conclusion.  They instead started with a conclusion in mind and tried to write their way into that conclusion, regardless of what it meant the movie would end up saying.

I want to go a lot deeper and fix so many of the problems, but rewriting the whole movie from scratch isn’t something I wanna do, at least not yet.  Instead, let me change one major idea of the movie and branch from there. What is it I’d change? I’d make it so that Toothless doesn’t want to leave Hiccup, it’s just that simple.  The rest of the movie stays mostly the same until the first time Hiccup actually finds the Hidden World, save for also maybe making the dragon riders a bit more competent and less annoying and giving Valka something substantive to actually do, until we get to the scene where Hiccup and Astrid are flying through the hidden world, at which point there’s a transition to a new scene when they fly through the dark tunnel.  We see Toothless and light fury are together at the base of the waterfalls of the hidden world, happily nuzzling each other for a moment, and we can tell from the transition and the vignette on the frame like when Hiccup is remembering Stoic, that this is a few hours in the past, and toothless is looking up forlornly at the top of the waterfalls. After a few moments of being happy with the light fury yet still staring up towards the outside world, she gets up to answer perhaps another dragon's roar from behind the waterfalls.  Toothless starts to take off, but the light fury suddenly intercedes, flying in front of him and roaring at him to stay put, which Toothless begrudgingly does after a brief bit of arguing with her, whimpering as he lands and slumps down to the ground, and the light fury looks back up at the outside world herself, then back to Toothless, confused. She can’t possibly understand why he’d want to go back there to the outside world, but she drops down and nuzzles at her mate regardless, trying to cheer him up, and while he does reciprocate somewhat, smiling a bit and leaning into the nuzzle, Toothless is clearly still morose about what to us is obvious but to her is still uncertain.  Thus we see Toothless is indeed happy with her, however he’s conflicted and wants to go back to Hiccup, but isn’t being allowed to, which is why he hasn’t returned for the past 2 days. Then we fade back to the present and to Hiccup and Astrid landing in the main chamber of the hidden world.

In this version, they see that Toothless and light fury are NOT the king and queen of all dragons, instead it’s some other dragon, perhaps another friendly bewilderbeast like from the second film, or maybe if you want you can keep the cameo of Drago’s bewilderbeast in the hidden world and make HIM be the king.  Either way, Toothless and light fury are just two more dragons among the flock, and Hiccup and Astrid spot them and watch Toothless and her doing their mating dance and then settling down and laying against one another in a secluded spot of the chamber. It’s then that, like in the movie proper, Hiccup is dejected for a moment before they are noticed and called out by a random dragon.  The king lets out a roar, at which point we see Toothless snap his head up in awareness, spot Hiccup and Astrid, and shoot up to standing in a panic. He leaps into the air and flies fast to intercept them, fighting off other dragons in the process as the light fury watches on in shock. She still cannot understand what her new mate is doing, fighting seemingly the entire hidden world, instead of just ordering the other dragons to back off as in the movie proper, in order to carry Hiccup to safety as Stormfly does the same for Astrid, openly defying the king of dragons and the light fury in the process.

Again the movie continues much as it did in reality, and we get the awkward moment where Hiccup tells toothless it’s ok, that he belongs there, only this time, Toothless doesn’t look sad and accepting, he looks pensive, as if he’s warring with himself trying to think about what to do while Hiccup keeps talking, oblivious to Toothless’s mood, until the light fury pops up in the grass.  Once again, both Toothless and Hiccup are ecstatic for a moment before Ruffnutt arrives and Grimmald attacks, the ending battle and hostage situation play out as they did, with my additional dialogue of course from chapter 6, and then we get to Grimmald shooting at Hiccup from atop the Light Fury when he dives at him from Toothless's back.  Instead of Toothless getting hit with the dart and passing out, instead, Toothless sees it as well and tries to dodge, yet the dart hits and tears apart his prosthetic tailfin, leaving him to cry out and fall from the air once more.  Hiccup, now having knocked Grimmald off the light fury's back, spots Toothless crying out for help and staring at him, then glancing his eyes to the light fury and then back at Hiccup, suggesting an idea.  Hiccup then releases the Light fury and let's go, with the "Save him" line, and like in the movie proper, we play out in slow motion as Toothless watches her come at him, grabbing on as she tackles him onto the cliff just in time and saves him.  Although now as soon as Toothless hits the ground, he gets back up and scrambles to the cliff edge, staring over it in panic at Hiccup, falling to his death with Grimmald tearing apart his wings.  He watches as Hiccup looks back into his eyes and calmly says "Goodbye bud..."  to him from afar, and his eyes go wide as he shrieks, turning back to the Light fury and roaring at her in panic to save Hiccup too, as the camera turns to show us that she was already dashing for the cliff to leap off and do just that.  She catches him just in time, and brings him back up to Toothless, who after a moment of nuzzling Hiccup and pulling him against his chest for a hug, turns back to the Light fury and pressed his forehead to hers in thanks as Hiccup watches on, smiling.

So we cut to a few minutes later to see Hiccup finishing attaching the spare auto-tailfin he'd been working on to occupy his time while Toothless was away, and then pull back, and now we have Hiccup facing Toothless again.  This time however, when Hiccup tells him it’s time to go on without him, Toothless pauses for a moment, staring back at Hiccup in thought, then shakes his head no, and adamantly sits down in front of him.  It startles both Hiccup and the light fury, who look at each other for a moment in surprised confusion, Hiccup turning back to try and convince Toothless. “Budd, you belong there, with her.” He argues, gesturing back to the light fury again, “It isn’t safe up here, there’s hunters, and trappers, and you’ll never stop having to fight if you stay here!  Grimmald proves that, like Drago before!” and then gesturing to the ships currently burning in the ocean. Once again though, Toothless is steadfast, making a show of planting himself down again on his hind. He clearly doesn’t care whatever problems it’ll cause for him later on, he’s staying. It’s at this point Hiccup turns his attention back to the light fury behind him to make a sarcastic quipp while gesturing at Toothless “Can you believe this guy-”  At which point he is interrupted by Toothless pressing his nose to Hiccups hand once again. Hiccup turns around to look at Toothless again, and then at the dragons behind him, and all the other dragons bow to Hiccup on their own the same way they did for Toothless last time. It finally dawns on Hiccup that none of the dragons want to leave, not just Toothless, and we see him slump his shoulders in defeat and mutter at Toothless, “Stubborn reptile… Alright fine, you win...  But what about HER…” he turned his gaze back to the light fury again, who’s been watching everything intently from behind Hiccup. Toothless pulls his head away from Hiccup’s palm and looks at her. He walks up to her and she stares at him, then turns her head to gesture back towards the direction of the hidden world and lets out a questioning mew, to which Toothless responds with a shake of his head and a light snarl, patting the ground with his forepaws to tell her he’s staying right here. He then gestures with his head towards Hiccup while looking at her.  The light fury looks to Hiccup again, confused for a moment, looking as though she might fly away as her wings begin to spread, before Toothless gently nudges her forwards to awkwardly get her moving towards Hiccup instead with a yelp of surprise, and she ends up sitting right before Hiccup. A moment passes as she looks back at Toothless, who makes a show of closing his eyes and pushing his nose forward to meet an invisible hand. Hiccup makes a shrug at the light fury when she looks back at him and warbles a bit of a question, before Hiccup closes his eyes, turns his head away, and extends his palm, and just like Toothless in the first movie, there’s a moment of hesitation, then an aborted attempt, before the light fury closes her eyes and presses her nose to Hiccups palm.  At which point the rest of the Berkian’s let out a cheer, which startles the light fury into snapping her eyes open with a squawk and tumbling onto her back, where Toothless catches her and the Berk vikings let out a laugh, including Hiccup, who quipps “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to them… eventually…” She looks up at Toothless, who nods at her before looking back at Hiccup with a smile.

Cue the music as we cut to Toothless flying with hiccup atop his back once more, the Light fury on one side of him, brushing her wingtip against his once again, Stormfly and Astrid flying along on the other side, and both look as content as can be.  Hiccup closes his eyes, tilts his head back, and he takes a deep, happy breath as they pass through a cloud, and as they emerge on the other side of the cloud, we’ve transitioned through time to see the older, bearded Hiccup, still flying atop Toothless, older Astrid and Stormfly at their one side, the light fury at the other side, and she looks back behind her and the camera turns with Hiccup’s gaze to see Toothless’s and her kits flying behind the light fury.  We turn back and pull out of the close up as Hiccup looks down with a smile to see Hiccup is holding onto his child atop the saddle, the other child of his popping their head up to peer over his shoulder. He smiles and starts to playfully toss his kid into the air as Toothless dives and arches through the air to help launch the kid further, Toothless’s kits playing with Hiccup’s kid in midair, as the monologue plays over the extended dragon and human family playing together in the sky.  “Dragons. The world sees them as devils, demons, some are even called the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself. But we know better. I learned that when I shot my future best friend out of the sky on a cold dark night long ago. Yes, the world may never accept us, and that’s ok. Because sometimes the things you love, are worth fighting the whole world for. And if you keep on fighting, and never give up, then maybe, just maybe…” We pull back the camera slowly as Hiccup, after having handed his kids off to Astrid, turns his gaze back to see that not only is it Hiccup and Toothless’s families flying with them, but emerging from the clouds below and behind them are humans of seemingly all different ethnicities and cultures riding atop dragons, filling the sky with dragon riders from clearly all over the world, including the king dragon from the hidden world too, who lets out a big roar before the monologue concludes “...a part of the world will learn to change too.” and Hiccup turns back to pat Toothless and they smile at each other before the music swells and they dash ahead of the camera into the sky while Toothless unleashes a mighty roar with a final giant drumbeat that cuts us to the title screen, and the credits begin.  Clearly Hiccup and Toothless have not only started families together, but they have indeed changed the world, bringing peace between dragons and humans from both sides, and THAT is where we end the series.

You cannot tell me that that is not both heartwarming and inspiring.  None of this downer, cynical ending the real movie gave us where “someday the world will be good enough” and instead, the message is “If you dig in and stick to what you believe in, you can MAKE the world good enough.”  I don’t know about you, but I want my kids to learn to be hopeful and empowered, rather than learning to be jaded cynics who are dour about having to give up on the world.  I want to see a movie where your friends will refuse to leave you, even if you think they should, even if you try to push them away. I want to see a movie where in the end, you aren’t punished for what you believe in, you are rewarded for it.  This is the ending I wanted from the series, and I’m so mad that we didn’t get it, because this series has already changed lives, has showed kids and adults alike what standing up for yourself looks like, and the Hidden World took that all away just so that the ending could match the book and the line “There were dragons, when I was a boy.”  Screw that. There are still dragons, and to me, there always will be.

Chapter Text

About midway through the movie, there was a joke.  It was a joke that seemed pretty insignificant, and was meant only as a little fun moment.  But here's the thing, those kind of throwaway pieces of writing are the perfect types to analyze because other pieces of writing have to serve things like furthering the plot or providing exposition, but these one-off jokes do not, and thus, are the most pure and clean example of what a director/writer it trying to do with a character and how hard they are actually trying.

If you hadn't figured it out from the title, the joke I'm going to be analyzing is when the Berkians decide to live on the new island instead of just using it as a rest stop, and Tuffnut declares the following while claiming a plot of land for himself.  "Yes!  My own place!  I plan to build a HUT!  Only for the bearded!  Ruffnut!  You gotta stay out!  Chin whiskers don't count!"

This joke is awful for a number of reasons, but the main one is because it does not reflect the character who said it.  If Tuff had stopped at "Yes, my own place! I plan to build a HUT!" and stopped there, that would have been a fine joke!  The joke is essentially that Tuff's ambitions are completely contrary to what you would expect from any other viking or even a normal person.  That they are completely mundane aspirations as opposed to "I plan to build a CASTLE!" or "I'm gonna build the FINEST house in all of Berk!" or "I plan to build a three story tree-house with rope swings and fire poles!"  Nope, it's just "a hut!" Like a kid excitedly exclaiming he plans to get a C- on his English test, it's just not at all what you'd expect.

Which is what Tuffnut and Ruffnut's characters are entirely about, being unpredictable. That's supposed to be the only predictable thing about them in fact, is that you never know what their logic is, that it's entirely different from anything sensible.  A similar example to another Tuffnut joke being mishandled by being predictable and simple instead of highlighting who he is as a character is the "How could you have not noticed Ruffnut was left behind, you ride a 2 headed dragon!" event.

To this, in the actual movie, Tuffnut responds "Ohhh yeahhhh, I feel like how Ruffnut is every day.  Dumb." Which is a joke about a character being stupid. But that's not who Tuffnut is as a character.  He's supposed to have a contrary and unpredictable logic. A far more Tuffnut answer would have been "Well of COURSE I noticed!  I just thought that YOU (points to Hiccup) told her to stay behind so she could be a spy or something. I mean, nobody's THAT stupid to leave themselves behind on an enemy island, right?"  And then we hard cut to her being stupid in her cell at Grimmel's jail to layer the joke further. But you can see now how the FIRST joke in how Tuffnut responds is about how he had made odd assumptions and was using weirdly sensible logic to explain his actions, instead of just "Hurr durrr, I'm dumb and I have a fake beard!".  One is a good, layered joke with nuance that reflects who two characters are and reinforces said characters while setting up for a bigger and better punchline, the other is a lame, one-note joke that doesn't fit, and didn't even get a peep from the audience in the theater I was watching the movie in.

This whole issue about the writers not being consistent with a characters character is why the only half decent moment for Tuffnut in the movie is another throwaway joke to kill time while the Berkians are flying to New Berk, about how the world is round, because the stars, sun, and moon are all round, and nobody believes him.  It's a joke that has 2 angles to it, about how nobody believes him when he DOES have the right answer because this is taking place in "the before time", and we're so much smarter than our ancestors nowadays, and the other angle being about how his logic has nothing to do with the Earth or math or seeing the horizon curve, but rather just assuming a similarity to other celestial things.  It's the ONLY TIME where the joke he makes has got nothing to do with "I'm dumb" or "I have a beard". Thus, it has to be a joke that actually comes from Tuffnut because it's like something Tuffnut would say, aka, it fits with his character. Snotlout or Fishlegs couldn't make the same joke about the Earth being round, as where I could easily see either of them making fake beard jokes after failing to grow one and pretending their hair is a beard out of desperation.  Snotlout out of arrogance would do such a thing if he got in his head that a beard was a requirement for masculinity, and Fishlegs would do it if he felt it made him either more distinguished looking, intimidating in battle, or to try and impress Ruffnut, which would actually be BETTER then Ruffnut's fake beard because THAT joke would have already been set up in the previous movie!  When Ruffnut is fawning over Eret and Snotlout and Fishlegs say "But baby, I grew facial hair for you!"  "Me too..." That would have been a fine follow up joke to double down on, but instead, it's Tuffnut who gets the fake beard for no reason whatsoever.

While we are on the subject of jokes that don't work and how I can fix them, there's another giant glaring one that I swear gave me a mini aneurysm in the theater because it was so profoundly awful I couldn't stand the disbelief at what I'd just heard that I would like to fix.  One that came from the same issue that made Tuffnut's jokes so awful, and that's that they didn't come from who a character was, instead merely being nonsensical and stupid in the hopes that "Ha ha, I'm smarter than that idiot" would be the reaction of the audience.  Ruffnut's "I never look back, Hiccup".

Again, a character's jokes should always be informed by their CHARACTER, and like Tuffnut, Ruffnut's character is mostly the same as her twin brother.  She's an unpredictable agent of chaos who's only predictable trait IS her unpredictability.  SO, like we had fixed for Tuffnut before, let's change her logic and give her a REASON for why she would act the way she does that would not occur to anyone else.  Or in simpler terms, make the joke a joke that it only SHE would believably tell.  Why would she either not look back to check if she was being followed, or not care that she was being followed if she did notice?

Well the latter is harder to justify, because she wouldn't go "Ohhhh, those are GRIMMEL'S SHIPS?  I thought they were X!" Because there's no other thing to fill in the X with that makes any kind of sense.  If ships were following her, they must have been enemy ships, anyone would know that, no matter how stupid.  So let's focus on the former.  Why would she never look back?  Well, she wouldn't think she NEEDS to look back is the only plausible reasoning. So what reason could she have for not thinking she needs to look back?

"Oh I flew high enough they couldn't see me, Hiccup."  Is a plausible reason, and one that could easily lead to another joke or two layered on top of it, where Hiccup responds by holding up his spyglass with a deadpan "I can't believe you" look on his face.  To which Tuffnut responds "Ohhhhhhh. Unless they had one of those..." which would be a decent joke, much better than what we got.  Though it does need to be setup earlier in the film, because how would Hiccup know Grimmel has a spyglass unless he noticed him using one?  So we have to show Grimmel using one in a moment that the gang can easily see, but that's not too hard.  Hell you could even just show it on his desk in the scene where Hiccup confronts him and gets trapped.

Here's another potential response that suits Ruffnut's personal brand of logic.  "I'm on a dragon Hiccup, and we all know that ships can't keep up with dragons!"  To which the next layer of the joke is that we see Grimmel's flying dragon-quadcopter suddenly emerge from behind the cliff behind them, and they all stare at it.  Ruffnut then follows up with "Oh.  I guess he wasn't using a ship..." This one does have the problem of that the gang has seen Grimmel having the Deathgripper dragons before, so they'd know he uses dragons, but it's plausible Ruffnut could have forgotten about that on her flight back because she was smugly proud of herself over her "annoying him into letting me go" plan going so well.

Or my personal favorite, use that same setup as the last one with a different punchline.  "Oh there was no way he could have kept up with me with all those ships Hiccup."  They look out towards where she came from and see the approaching armada, to which Ruffnut yells in disbelief "How the heck did he keep up with me?!"  Which is a fine smash-cut joke and also hangs a few lampshades on things like the fact that the armada kept up with her and tracked her to Berk, which was a problematic fridge logic already that I pointed out in earlier chapters, as well as makes Ruffnut NOT be a dumb-ass for literally no reason.  This time, it was entirely because of who she is as a character that means she was followed, unlike Fishlegs or Astrid Who WOULD have checked, or Snotlout who would NOT have checked because HE would have plausibly been too stupid and arrogant to check.  Again, the character drives the jokes.  That's how it's SUPPOSED to work.