HTTYD 3 was TERRIBLE

I know this is a horrifically old take from some odd 4 or so years ago, but i recently came back from vacation while watching two of the entries from the series from Netflix as well as a couple episodes from the Race To The Edge series.

and oh, good god do you notice the blaring differences when you watch them back to back.

i wont bash you for liking THW, it's good as a standalone film; but literally JUST as a standalone. it doesn't try to match the other narratives the other two films are told through. 

in HTTYD 1, the plot goes as hiccup helps mend the bridge between Vikings and dragons. the moral is that they're better together.

in HTTYD 2, the plot follows this; through hardships, staying strong together helps to prevail 

and in HTTYD 3... jack frost's emo grandpa with like 6 ''''evil''' dragons seems to be enough to make hiccup throw in the towel and get toothless to go. 

speaking on Grimmel first because his whole character annoys me-- I don't see him as as "the night fury killer". his ass does NOT earn that title.
Not a scale, not a wing, not even a hide or talon, not even some sort of visible scar to prove what he does. He looks like Viggo's uglier cousin. And stupider, and a rip-off.

Not to mention the amount of things they try and retcon in about night furies; "cant stand the cold", yet toothless lives in berk. yk, berk... "snows nine months of the year and hails the other three" berk. (ignoring the fact we hardly see snow or bad weather, lmfao)

"they cant fly long distances"  the Night Fury design was quite literally CATERED TO being the most aerodynamic one out of all dragons. This thing is fast and persistent, dive bombs for fun, and has great aim, and you mean to tell me it gets tuckered out flying for too long when we see a ton of examples of it flying for long periods? (rtte, flying from the outpost/edge to berk, etc)

"furies mate for life" and we're supposed to just... take his word on that? i find it hard to believe he followed some mated pair around for months to come to that conclusion. Sure, he might've kept them before killing them, but then that brings up a point on why he killed all of them when he had a hold of deathgripper venom. Surely he'd know how strong these things are, and want to keep at least one or two around as slaves? Then again, this guy got 2 out of 3 things wrong about the dragons he's meant to be so good at killing, so counting on him to plan things out isn't too reliable.

That leads me to another thing. His whole "as intelligent (if not more) than hiccup" is so hammered in it's impossible to take seriously. the only way this ever worked is because they dumbed down all the characters in this movie to disgusting lengths.

Hiccup's relationship with toothless is suddenly wrong and "too clingy" and that he feels wrong for wanting his best friend and other half around him. 

Astrid and the rest of his supporting cast just.. becomes such A-holes to him? Astrid's comment on "look at you, embracing change!" as if hiccup's whole deal wasn't him changing the centuries-long animus between Vikings and dragons in the first movie.

Snotlout hitting on his mom... oh lord. TERRIBLE to sit through. This guy cried upon seeing the chief die and then decided to start lusting after his wife?? so much for that whole development. Considering this book just wanted to make out with the books so bad, it's interesting to me why they didn't make it canon as well that Snotlout and Hiccup are cousins in the book; making Valka Snotlout's aunt.

And Valka... oh good lord Valka. They smoothed her down so much and thought they could just make her look older by throwing in some strands of grey hair. and she let cloudjumper go so easily?? I'd have joined them and became a feral dragon lady again, no way.

but the worst characterization by far was toothless. As a fun fact, his references for the first movie were big cats and bats; he was sleek and graceful but equal parts cunning and terrifying to go up against. but he was also sassy, and playful, and an intelligent beast.

in the third movie... all of that is gone. He's a slobbering and clumsy dog that's suddenly lusting after a mate even though we never see any hint that he could want one; just wanting to see another of his kind, not to have kids by any means. His reference points moved to dogs and horses, with the original references moved to the light fury.

his design was also butchered. His eyes got squished together and he basically has eyebrows and he's all blocky- and do NOT try and feed me the idea that this and his behavior was the result of "domestication", because then you sound like a moron. 
Domestication spans centuries of breeding and selecting traits to cultivate. If I tamed a wolf, it isn't going to act like a dog, because its a wolf and not a dog and those two species have very big differences. Dogs are inclined to be friendly while wolves are wary. 

In the second movie upon meeting Valka for the first time, Toothless was wary and growling. (before she did that really particular night fury whisperer thing which was.. don't know, honestly, but its a crazy dragon lady so who am i to say otherwise)

and the Light Fury. Right off the bat, I hated her. And everything I learnt about her made me hate her more.
Her whole personality and character dedicates to being Toothless's mate. Everything she does, is something related to him; and he eats it up because he's dumbed down to being a dog in a rut and wanting a relationship.

her whole design warranted HTTYD 3 to be done in an entirely new software so they could program those ugly glitters into her. In fact, her whole design is a waste.

Other dragons are gritty. Some design choices are a bit odd, but there was never any visible split between male and female dragons. Stormfly and meatlug are girls. this was communicated to the audience normally. 

In the light fury design, there was no consideration taken to what light furies truly even are. there wasn't "light furies", there was only just the one that was meant to seem "exotic and wild" to captivate toothless.
their designs were made to be female.
that's the most demeaning and degrading part of it, in my opinion.
"LFs are aquatic, blend in w/ clouds..." ... but that wasn't ever considered. She was only meant to be contrasting to toothless, to be his mate, to sell merchandise of night lights. There was nothing else to her, and nothing that truly fit with the setting.

the developers of the film wanted the light fury to seem female, that it was difficult to differentiate her from the rest; making her smooth with no scales, rounded to seem softer. She's a girl-dragon and there's nothing else.

learning that was genuinely a bit devastating. This series so rooted in rough and grittiness and getting through the worst of things, and the mascot to completely undo all that work is everything HTTYD wasn't.

I don't know whether I can call it misogynistic or not, but that's how it felt to younger me watching and later understanding.

that brings me to the Hidden World itself, and how it's complete nonsense.

All the dragons being sent to THW wouldn't work out. It just doesn't. Deathsongs and changewings prefer to eat other dragons; there are dragons with deep and aggressive territorial disputes, some that outright can't make it to THW in the first place, and many that will just die out from overcrowding and/or lack of resources.

I doubt THW can fit the entire population of one entire species; and I'm supposed to believe all of them managed to squeeze in there?

"it's the circle of life" - no, the circle of life was never supposed to take place in THERE. It's the dragons that deserve the earth as much as humans do, Hiccup sending them there is inherently cruel and he likely caused the extinction of many, many more species. Hell, meatlug, stormfly, barf and belch, and hookfang probably died in there during all the disasters that would happen.

not to mention that poachers and hunters probably sussed out where all the dragons were migrating off to. they probably had a spree with catching as many as they could.

Toothless was a terrible alpha for listening to Hiccup's command on taking the dragons to certain doom. This quite literally contrasts Drago more than it does Grimmel's dynamic with Hiccup. If anything, Cloudjumper felt like a more rational choice of an alpha.

making toothless so... overpowered was a terrible choice. He's the king of dragons! last of his kind! - but he was already unique enough. His design, but more so his prosthetic tail fin and relationship with hiccup is what made him likeable. it wasn't on him having more power.

So, in the end, everything the series and the previous movies worked for in terms of developing characters and furthering their moral, HTTYD 3 undoes all of it so they can have a tearjerker ending and get you to buy their merch while suddenly bringing in the book ending. 

(While also brutally killing the evil deathgripper dragons because c'mon, those are the EVIL evil ones, not like the whole franchise was building to the idea of dragons not being inherently cruel even though the deathgrippers were being controlled by their own poisons and hiccup's whole shtick is that he wants to save dragons, naaah c'mon trust us buy our merch pls pls pls)

the book ending only worked in the books was because the relationship between Vikings and dragons was already tainted; Dragons were slaves, and they don't go into hiding in a fancy colorful cave. they hide wherever they want, whenever. There was no immediate call to get them to leave and never come back. Toothless, in the books, stayed by hiccup until he died of old age.

[ and as a small detail I'd like to raise, dragons: the nine realms raises a really horrific outcome for night lights. because they become inbred.

with how genetics work, I doubt NF genetics could stay dominant for that long without other NFs adding to the mix of NL gene pools. The only feasible way that Thunder (NL in modern day) could reasonably keep black coloration was if Toothless's children and descendants mated with him.

... which, also, probably isn't too far off seeing how disfigured they made the NL models in the nine realms. ]

as musings of my own, I think the light fury should've been the villain for the third movie. LFs and NFs have territorial disputes, and she wants to rid the last from the hidden world. She tries to challenge and fight toothless for his alpha title, frequently attacking berk. At some point leading to toothless and hiccup discovering the hidden world (not necessarily a glowy cave in this iteration), and the remaining colonies of night furies have toothless reuniting with his kind.

Hiccup figures that he must want to rejoin the wild with them, but toothless makes the decision to stay with hiccup.

and rather than killing the light fury, they lead her to a different area to relocate her with a small moment of toothless and LF making up before she returns to the wilds to hunt.

you could focus on hiccup's development of being a chief and his struggles with it, his identity on how he feels nothing without toothless and how he overcomes it, and toothless having his own arc of genuinely wanting to connect with another similar species and later finding and protecting the colonies. You could also make it so that toothless decides that no, he doesn't think he can truly be the leader of dragons, and pass it to a more capable and maybe older fury that has been protecting the colonies and their home for a long, long time.

No "remove all development and get a wife and kids and forget about your best friend" purgatory ending. And no need to slap in another scawy dwagon huwnder for another time- Drago did a damn good job at being an insane guy in the second one and Viggo was more cunning than Grimmel could ever hope to be.

also, just citing one last piece from a user on reddit called cd943t regarding gift of the night fury and how it's completely forgotten in favor of THW's plot (and murder of his character):

"I don't see that as anything other than a retcon to justify the events of the 3rd movie. It fails to explain so much, in particular why he destroyed the tail afterwards.

Toothless's animal instincts kick in when he is first given his new tail. Notice how his irises narrow after he realizes what the new tail can do. His irises contract every time he is being controlled or succumbs to some bodily instinct. We now see Toothless, the animal.

After Toothless comes back in GOTNF, he pulls out the old tail setup. Hiccup says "why'd you pull this out for? You don't need this anymore." Indeed, if the only reason Toothless came back was because he didn't find a mate, then he would have simply resumed his morning flight with Hiccup using his new tail. Hiccup evidently thinks this and moves to jump on Toothless's back. After all, Toothless can do everything he did before with the new tail and he will need it to make another attempt next Snoggletog.

Instead, we no longer see Toothless, the animal. He has evolved from that. What returns is a new Toothless, the person. Animals don't put ideals before practicality, nor do they have existential thoughts about what they need and want from life. If Maslow's hierachy was adapted for dragons, the instincts of fire and flight would be at the very bottom, where we expect most dragons to be.

This scene perfectly illustrates that Toothless is not just a mere animal. Flight is everything to a dragon, the animal. A downed dragon is a dead dragon, but not just in a physical way. Not being able to fly is mentally crushing for a dragon as an animal, as we see when Toothless is utterly defeated when he was stuck in the cove. Toothless has moved on from this primal instinct as he has found something even better - a lifelong companionship with his best friend - where if he had to choose between friendship and such an base animalistic urge as flight, he would rather choose friendship. Destroying the new tail is Toothless's way of saying "if I can't fly with you, I'd rather not be able to fly at all."

I'd argue that Toothless's flight symbolically represents his journey in life, the path that he chooses to take. By destroying the tail, Toothless demonstrates to Hiccup that he is not just a passenger but an active participant in both flight and life. With the old tail, Toothless doesn't control their flight fully, and Hiccup doesn't control their flight fully either. They both fly as one, and whatever path they take is done as a team.

Toothless didn’t destroy the tail because he didn’t need it. That’s not what you do to things you don’t need – that’s what you do to things that you hate, that you have a visceral reaction to even the notion of. He did so because flying, the most natural, everyday occurrence for a dragon, felt wrong without Hiccup by his side. There was a longing that Toothless felt, a void in his heart that wouldn't be filled unless he made it clear to Hiccup what was missing. That was the choice Toothless made, the gift of the night fury."

And, as my final counterargument for HTTYD 3 - "It's just a kid's movie".

Kids aren't braindead. It's demeaning to judge them as stupid, illiterate cavemen. I was a kid, and I was never genuinely partial to anything that wasn't interesting and made me feel genuine things, even if it scared me; I'd have taken gametheory videos or underverse episodes over stuff like loud nursery rhymes animated with stiff tweening visuals any day of my young seven year old life.

Not to mention that the last two films didn't need this excuse. The last two were made with heart and genuine love for the series- the last one was a cashgrab.

The hidden world retconned everything about the franchise to make it twist into a faulty, hollow ending, and so they can have an even worse spin off that presents even more faults later in "nine realms". If you want actual slop to feed your kids, just put on THW and nine realms right afterwards. No thinking, just switch your brain off and enjoy the colors you love so much.

the plane ride in question was four hours long so I was kind of just stewing all of this in my brain till i got onto my pc lol

but yes. thats my rant for today . im also up for debates on this if anyone has any!! thank you for reading :} ⭑｡𖦹°‧