HTTYD Blog Editorial
Wow, how quickly time flew by! I certainly haven’t given up on this fansite – on the contrary.
There are more blog posts waiting to be posted, all discussing amazing fanart, news and other interesting goodies. For today there’s the latest “There Were Dragons Here” blog post, which was already written back in 2019, but never posted.
Quite a bit of official HTTYD stuff has happened in the meantime, since the last update:
This 2019 version of “The Lion King” is truly a visually lush and beautiful 3D computer animated movie, that shows us just how amazing traditional 2D hand animated movies can be in comparison. A flawed remake, with some interesting and sometimes disturbing changes, for a new generation of (easier to upset and influence) children and adults.
Most reviews that are currently available for this movie, criticise the limitations of photorealistic 3D animation, in telling a story with talking animals as the main characters.
This review will also touch on the subject of 2D VS. 3D animation, but it’s too easy to leave things at that – it seems that a lot of this movie (the voice acting, music and also story) not only didn’t “evolve” along with the new 3D medium, but also went backwards.
The overall result is a visual feast and marvel, but a total package being less “cohesive” and lower quality, than the smash hit 1994 original of “The Lion King”.
There’s more to it than that though, because other things were changed and added as well – some of those changes having apparently malevolent reasons:
Basic Internet browsing and safety tips for kids, teens and adults that will help boost overall safety and privacy online.
I make an effort to only allow links to quality websites from this fansite, but there are still untrainable and unfriendly dragons out there, so it’s always good to be aware.
Hiccup loved dragons, but even he was mindful with new ones.
Due to safely working with (high-voltage) electronics and computers since I was six years old (without getting badly zapped) and Internet-stuff now being my profession, this is a pretty important and big subject for me; I want to share some good advice to help keep you safe as well. Safety is metaphorically, one of my middle names (along with “hairy” and “handsome” haha).
It’s best not let the few bad guys on the Internet make one overly cynical or too careful. Overall, the Internet is an amazing, useful and even fun tool. Learning from quality, balanced and independent sources of information about how to deal with the potential dangers, frees you up to enjoy the good things when you find them.
Sometimes it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the warnings and advice out there, but there are some basics that almost everyone can agree on. Here’s some basic good advice from myself and by experts-in-their-field that I’ve collected, looked over and grouped, for browsing the Internet better.
Part of creating a nice fansite, is looking at the best of what fellow fans have come up with, and finding quality sources of information. Starting out as a curious fan myself, I’ve tried to find as many unique sources of Dragon-goodies as possible.
I’d like to share with you some of the most useful and interesting websites I’ve discovered, on my own journey to find out more about HTTYD (come back soon!):
The final instalment in the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy has already hit the cinemas in most countries around the world, and passionate suggestions for alternate endings and even versions of the story, are surfacing within the HTTYD community.
The movie’s creators and Dean DeBlois (who wrote the movie’s script) were careful to prepare fans for the inevitable “goodbye” between the vikings and their dragons; a goodbye destined to bring the story told in the movies and several shorts and long-running TV series to its conclusion.
Fans of Cressida Cowell’s “How to Train Your Dragon” book series know that the book begins with an adult Hiccup, looking back on his life and saying “There were dragons when I was a boy.” Readers were “prepared” for the ending, before the story began.
After movie audiences witnessed such a strong and caring bond developing between the dragons and their riders – especially Hiccup and Toothless, it was clear that any ending to their friendship would need to be handled sensitively.
Way back in 2012, in an interview with the author of the original books Cressida Cowell, she mentioned that the Vikings and dragons would separate at the end of the third movie. (Source)
How did fans react to the dragon and rider friendships they’ve come to enjoy witnessing, finally coming to an end? Some fans are writing their own endings!
What name should we give the Light Fury, from the “Hidden World” movie? We know that the Light Fury was intentionally not given a name, from interviews with the movie’s creators. This is what the screenwriter said in regards to her name:
“The Light Fury is a species name given to her by Hiccup and Astrid. We deliberately didn’t give her a personal name, because we wanted to keep her wild. She isn’t a Night Fury, she’s a variation of the species with her own traits and abilities. Unlike Toothless, she is not the last of her kind. — Dean DeBlois”
This of course didn’t stop fans from giving the Light Fury a name! The most popular one so far seems to be “Luna”, followed by “Nubless” and then “Toothpaste”.
Personally, of those three I like “Luna” the most, as “Luna” is the Goddess of the moon in ancient (Roman) religion and myth.
The Light Fury, while mostly white, certainly has blue hues that can resemble a moon’s bluish appearance at times. The name “Nubless” and “Toothpaste” are good for a laugh, but probably not something one would like to call out loud with other people watching: “Toothpaste, where are you?!”
Only a very few minutes of this final HTTYD (The Hidden World) movie, make sense in the context of the entire story up to this point, starting from the first movie in 2010.
Whatever remains, appears to be dedicated towards somehow legitimising unusual personality changes to the Viking and dragon characters.
These personality changes, appeared to have been required in order to push an unusually large amount of modern-day mainstream-media-style themes that simply don’t fit into a “mythical Viking and dragons story from long ago”.
An entire hour of this movie, is spent watching the Dragon Riders either running away like panicked insects and leaving their ancestry, friends, lives and livelihoods behind, or farewelling their dragons.
In the real world, the toxic compromises and concessions the characters of this movie make, would mean the collapse of the society that gives in to them.
The Dragons TV series used to be officially described as the events between the first and the second movie. Unfortunately, the unusual changes in this final movie appear to be so major, that now the TV series was “supposedly” never canon (not part of the official “universe/story”), after all.
Even ignoring the TV series, doesn’t help in explaining the now frequently daft and nonsensical actions made, by this movie’s Berkians.
The Hidden Shrek? Or: How to Flush Your Dragon?
Living in Australia, I managed to see the movie when it was first released to theaters here on January 3 2019. One of my first impressions was, that it was made so blatantly clear in the film trailers what the story was about, that there weren’t too many surprises left. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as anything new that wasn’t revealed in the trailers did keep the story chugging along, and also helped prepare the devoted big and small fans for the so-called “bittersweet ending” that we were told would happen.
At the end of the movie, around a third of the children in the cinema on the day were crying and inconsolable.
Along with the predictably positive professional reviews for this movie, at the time of writing this review (January 5), there are already several glowing moviegoer reviews on the biggest movie reviews and information website.
The reviews were mostly from people with accounts that are apparently many years old, but they had never left a review for any other movie or made any other real contribution to the movie information website. I’m not entirely sure what to make of that, but let’s move on…