History Headscratchers / HowToTrainYourDragon

* Why is [[spoiler:The Green Death's murder]] presented as heroic? The message of the film is that by seeing the dragons as evil because they try to preserve themselves, are dangerous, and look scary is wrong. So what about [[spoiler:the Green Death]] meant that it had to be [[spoiler:killed]]? Sure, it was [[spoiler:forcing the dragons to bring it food]], but that was its only method of self-preservation. Would you rather [[spoiler:it ate the dragons]]? The fact is, [[spoiler:The Red Death was no more evil than any other dragon]], and by presenting [[spoiler:Hiccup's murder of it]] as just and heroic, the movie was going against its own message. [[spoiler:If the fact that the Red Death was just trying to survive as well had been brought up, it would have tainted the moral waters. The Red Death just can't be supported along with the village. So what do you do with it?]] But in ignoring this and saying [[spoiler:"it's evil because it looks scary, attacks when provoked, and is trying to get food"]], the movie flipflopped completely on its message. Am I the only one a little bothered by this?

* If the Green Death devours any dragon that [[YouHaveFailedMe fails to bring enough food back raided from the Vikings to appease it]], how is Toothless still alive and serving it? It was established early on in the film, ''the Night Fury never shows itself or steals any food''.

* Why is [[spoiler:The Green Death's murder]] presented as heroic? The message of the film is that by seeing the dragons as evil because they try to preserve themselves, are dangerous, and look scary is wrong. So what about [[spoiler:the Green Death]] meant that it had to be [[spoiler:killed]]? Sure, it was [[spoiler:forcing the dragons to bring it food]], but that was its only method of self-preservation. Would you rather [[spoiler:it ate the dragons]]? The fact is, [[spoiler:The Green Death was no more evil than any other dragon]], and by presenting [[spoiler:Hiccup's murder of it]] as just and heroic, the movie was going against its own message. [[spoiler:If the fact that the Green Death was just trying to survive as well had been brought up, it would have tainted the moral waters. The Green Death just can't be supported along with the village. So what do you do with it?]] But in ignoring this and saying [[spoiler:"it's evil because it looks scary, attacks when provoked, and is trying to get food"]], the movie flipflopped completely on its message. Am I the only one a little bothered by this?
** The Green Death [[spoiler: was a cannibalistic, amoral eating machine. The difference between it and the other dragons is that it doesn't care who or what it hurts or kills as long as it gets fed. The other dragons kill and steal out of self-defense and to placate the Green Death that rules them tyrannically with the constant threat of death-they don't attack each other or anything else that is friendly. There was no proof whatsoever that the Green Death had any redeemable qualities. Had it lived, it would have gone on eating everything in sight that had a pulse.]]
** Further, the Green Death had [[spoiler: '''some''' way of dominating the dragons nearby, presumably by it's crooning "song" which was heard when the Vikings were coming up on Dragon Island. They'd have probably abandoned their lair to it otherwise! It's why I originally referred to it as a sort of EldritchAbomination from the dragons' perspective; it had an unnatural hold on most of them and drove them to do unnatural things.]]. "Evil" may be too strong a word, but amoral it certainly was, and more or less was the common enemy of both the Vikings AND the dragons. With it gone, [[spoiler: the highly social dragons reverted to more normal behavior, and readily integrated into the Viking village with a bribe of lots of free food and a safe roost.]]

** But there was no other way out, because [[spoiler: trying to reason with the Green Death would have been useless. We saw enough of her evilness and selfishness in the dragon's den scene, IMHO. The heroic part is that they still chose to fight, despite such a powerful adversary, because even if they could have communicated, there's no way the GD would have released her little slaves, and would have still attacked everyone and everything. Plus, even if left alone, would have still searched for another place to conquer and more dragons to enslave and send to pillage other villages.]]
** I actually took the message to be "question what you know", in which case [[spoiler:defeating the Green Death is the payoff. The older Vikings kept on blaming the smaller dragons for the resource competition they are engaged in, as those are the ones that are constantly stealing their food. What they didn't realize (and what Hiccup discovered) was that the real competition was not dragons vs. Vikings, but The Green Death vs. Vikings. In order to end the raiding problem, they needed to stop The Green Death, not the smaller dragons. It's basically TakingAThirdOption that doesn't necessitate the genocide of either species.]]
** Consider it this way:[[spoiler:The Green Dragon was unnaturally controlling the other dragons and making them do things they would not normally do. If a human were to do that to other humans he (or she) would be considered a despot, and it would be justified to destroy them. So basically, the Green Death was Dragon Stalin.]]
** Another thing to consider is that in the book Hiccup did try to reason with the Green Death and in response the dragon told him that he was going to eat Hiccup, the vikings, and the dragons regardless. The reasoning the dragon gave was that he had nothing against Hiccup or his loved ones personally, he was just hungry. So long as that dragon was hungry it was going to eat everyone and thus there was no amount of reasoning that would have helped Hiccup.
** But all of this ignores the fact of how massive the Green Death was. The thing seems to be built as a dragon-eater; instead of eating dragons, however, it just collected part of their food. If you think about it, this method is the lesser of two evils. Dragons are shown to be sapient, and one could see it as more of a tragedy if they die as opposed to the lesser-intelligent creatures such as sheep and fish. Seeing how massive the Green Death was, it seems unlikely that it would have been able to find enough animals on its own to sustain itself, but it could make do with the other dragons offering it part of their kill. The Green Death may not be nice, but following this logic, its only other options were to either [[ImAHumanitarian feed on dragons]] or lay down and starve to death.
** Basically you're describing an apex species evolved to the point it can only subsist on its own kind. The fact of the matter is, to accuse the story of going against its own message, you'd have to ignore the ethics of the situation. The dragons and vikings can survive with each other, GD was an issue for the both of them. If you are trying to justify the survival of it you should at least try to justify the survival and prosperity of the larger population.
** Part of their kill? Astrid clearly says "They're not eating any of it." The Green Death is starving the dragons to death, eating ones who don't give it enough food, and mind controlling what are at LEAST semi-sentient(or completely sentient in Toothless's case, although it's not known if there are any other Night Furies living with the dragons) creatures. Nope, it's just a poor innocent lizard!
** The Green Death is ''one'' being whose continued existence ensures the death or unending misery of thousands of others. Any ''moral'' creature would've sooner killed itself than allow so many to suffer and die for its own gluttony.

** Clearing things up because this is going to get out of control. Green Death's usual method of eating is using it's song to get other dragons to get it food, eating the ones that don't bring enough to make up for it. It's huge and looks like it will need more food then it could hunt to sustain itself, even if it is a parasite. It's doing what it was to self preserved because nothing in this world with roll over and die because mother nature had it draw the short end of the evolution stick.
** Aside from the moral conundrum, we should return to the beginning of the film. Why Vikings wanted to fight and kill dragons? Because they were pests eating every share of food they could get their mouth on, and not above killing humans if they fought back [[spoiler:(since basically it boiled to feeding the Green Death or dying)]]. After the end, [[spoiler: the Green Death is no more]], dragons need far less food to get their fills and thus they're no longer pests: they're useful pets.
** If you look at the [[WesternAnimation/HowtoTrainYourDragon2 2nd Movie]], the [[BigBad Green Death]] really has no excuses for its behaviour. Look at Valka's Bewilderbeast, the Good Alpha. It feeds its servants first before feeding itself and treats fellow dragons with respect. You don't see the Green Death doing that now do you?
*** I don't know if this is a factor or not, but they're two different species, therefore, different habits. Honestly, I don't think the Green Death could 'actively' hunt for itself, so it had to resort to other dragons while Bewilderbeast can actively hunt for itself.

** Hiccup confused "fireproof" with "explosionproof". Dragon-fire is normally shot off in a ''controlled burn''. If it backfires and gets ignited all at once...it can wreak havoc on the dragon. A modern comparison would be burning gasoline in the spark plugs of an engine versus throwing a lit match into the engine's fuel tank.

*** Absolutely. The tailfin and fight mechanism went through several versions; dragon and rider only gradually learned to work together, and as they did Hiccup modified the gear based on how Toothless responded. By the time of [[spoiler:the battle with the Green Death, they worked together nearly flawlessly, to the point that Toothless could still make shift at keeping airborne ''with the tailfin all but burned off''.]]

* You know what bugs me? The way that Astrid became TheChick after she met Toothless. Before that, she was the epitome of what a Berk Viking should be, girl or otherwise, and even after that she at least managed to save Hiccup by smacking a burning dragon with a thrown hammer during the arena ritual, but other than that all she did, combat-wise, was cling on to Hiccup's back and almost get inhaled into the Green Death's maw while all her much less skilled classmates were busy [[InstantExpert dragon riding]] and getting their own [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome CMOAs]]. It woulda been nice to see her show some of the muscle we know she had in the final battle.

** Watch the film again and you'll see that Astrid is directing Berk's new flying corps while Hiccup is busy trying to free Toothless. In short, Astrid has already show how powerful she is with personal combat and the climax shows her how powerful she is as a combat leader. Yes, she ''almost'' got killed when the Green Death took personal notice of her, but she's new to this kind of combat and she's smart enough to defer to Hiccup who is definitely practiced in this field.

*** It's fairly obvious that Toothless is at least as intelligent as Hiccup is, playing off the Not-so-different theme. Take the part where he recognizes why Hiccup keeps rolling his eyes, grasps the emotions and concepts behind it, and then adopts it for his own usage to express his feelings without actually talking. It's more along the lines of Toothless being as intelligent as humans, but having a completely different outlook on the world and social interactions. Think BlueAndOrangeMorality. Besides, it would make zero sense for Toothless to only have partial immunity, especially if he wasn't as intelligent as a human. If he was susceptible enough to take them there, he would have been susceptible enough to dump them, especially with Toothless right over the freaking source of the noise. He probably looks horrified because he realizes there's about to be a delux-size horde of dragons flying by, and if they see Hiccup and Astrid, they'd probably try to snatch them up, too - that being the reason why he takes them to the nest, aside from showing them the Green Death. In fact, if you look closely during the scene where the dragons are shown flying, one of them is carrying a (hopefully) dead viking.

** It's been at least a month since the GD battle when Hiccup wakes up. There's been plenty of time for the vikings to familiarize themselves with the dragons.

** The [[WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon2 sequel]] shows two Bewilderbeasts, which while being a different breed than the Green Death are of a similar size and capabilities. [[spoiler:Hiccup's mother, Valka,]] explains that every dragon nest has a "queen" of this nature.

* What happened to the Green Death's body? The explosion that Toothless ignited by firing a blast inside its mouth may have been big but it shouldn't have totally disintegrated its body, a more realistic sight would have been charred pieces of its flesh and blood raining down on the Vikings. I mean if Toothless could survive the flames of that explosion at least a charred corpse of the Green Death should have remained.

** No, I mean IRL everyone seems to treat their names as GettingCrapPastTheRadar. What gives? I don't get it.

*** Also, it's fairly common for someone to assume an animal whose sex they can't readily identify is the same sex as they are. I know if I see a random dog on the street, I'm pretty much always going to automatically think of it as a male unless there's something ''extremely'' obvious, like it's wearing a big pink bow or something. If Astrid had found Toothless instead, she'd probably have assumed it was a girl.\\\

* How is it that Hiccup spent years working for Gober in the Forge swinging a a hammer and yet he never developed muscles?

* You know what bugs me? The way that Astrid became TheChick after she met Toothless. Before that, she was the epitome of what a Berk Viking should be, girl or otherwise, and even after that she at least managed to save Hiccup by smacking a burning dragon with a thrown hammer during the arena ritual, but other than that all she did, combat-wise, was cling on to Hiccup's back and almost get inhaled into the Green Death's maw while all her much less skilled classmates were busy [[InstantExpert dragon riding]] and getting their own [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome CMOAs]]. It woulda been nice to see her show some of the muscle we know she had in the final battle.

** Toothless seems agile enough even with his prosthesis that, ''before'' his injury, he could probably have been nabbing seabirds on the wing, leaving the less-elusive prey for the clumsier dragons to collect.

** According to ThatOtherWiki, the retractable fangs are for catching fish.

** The [[WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon2 sequel]] shows two Bewilderbeasts, which while being a different breed than the Green Death are of a similar size and capabilities. [[spoiler:Hiccup's mother]] explains that every dragon nest has a "queen" of this nature.

* What positions/directions is Toothless actually in at that point in "Romantic Flight" when the background rotates 270 degrees?
It's the part when they're flying through bright, sunlit, purple clouds right before coming out into a starry sky looking at Berk in the distance. Toothless is positioned upright and flying straight ahead from our [=POV=], but he's clearly not actually flying straight ahead the entire time. The beautiful shot starts with a flat cloud right on top of them, then the screen rotates 270 degrees clockwise so that this same cloud is directly behind them when they burst through into the night sky. What position was Toothless actually in (flying straight ahead upright, straight ahead upside down, straight down, or straight up) and transitioning to throughout that rotation?

* Stoik gives Hiccup his helmet and tells him it came from his mother's breastplate. Yet in all the trailers for the second movie, [[spoiler: we see his mother and she's far too small and thin to have worn armor that large.]]

** I imagine that there was a hillarious mix-up when they first made her breastplate, so it was made ''way'' too big. She never wore it, but it was still "hers".
*** I can just see it now, the smith talking to a besoted and starry eyed Stoic who, in a fit of distraction, accidently gives his measurments rather than his wife's.

FridgeLogic from "WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon":

* Why was Hiccup so very reluctant to eat a bite of the raw fish to show Toothless it was safe? Gravlax (pickled and salted raw fish) is a traditional Norse appetizer, so at most Hiccup should have thought it needed salt and vinegar.