User blog comment:Dual Energon/What I think makes HTTYD 2 the supremely better movie./@comment-24990845-20151113124935/@comment-24865409-20151117220443

@ Megadracosaurus

"It would be realistic if we saw that Hiccup had some burns or scars from his work. But we only see two scenes where he does it, so...Yeah. It could have happened off-screen."

Again, that's the movie trying to be pompusly pretentious about being "realistic". Sure Hiccup will lose a foot in a huge explosion, but he will not get a single scar from blacksmithing!

How realistic is the latter scenario?!

And if details like burns and scars were not shown, then the majority of the audience will just see Hiccup learn blacksmithing from the too-laidback-in-teaching Gobber and coming out unscathed.

"And its obvious he has being doing it for a long time, and is quite good. He probably knows, like Gobber, how not to get hurt. And even then, I think blacksmithing isn't as life threatening as fighting Dragons."

Hiccup got good at blacksmithing and learned how to avoid inury through experience.

But when he started as a young lad, wouldn't he have been clumsy enough to get a burn or scar of some sort?

And even if blacksmithing isn't life-threatening, it's not a job that you will walk away unscathed from if you start your apprenticeship as a small, weak and clumsy child. Not to mention that your teacher would let you find out a lot of (painful) things on your own, seeing as he believes in learning on the job.

"That way, he wouldn't have to rely on anyone else."

Yet despite all of Hiccup's training, at the most critical battles he has to rely on Toothless.

"She never predicts the future. When did that happen?"

I'll let you have that, seeing as I'm not willing to torture myself with watching episodes to look for details just to prove my point.

"The talk about undies isn't meant to be dumb. It serves as a running gag that Gobber uses to ease the tensions."

It's a cheap gag that often unnecessarily lightens up serious scenes, all for the sake of the children.

And in-universe, the tribe just finds it disgusting and not at all amusing.

And Gobber does tend to phrase his messages wrong. Take for example:

"It's not what you look like. It's what's inside that he can't stand."

Avoiding Hiccup because his inventions screwed up isn't an excuse.

Not to mention that none of them gave Hiccup any ideas or plans to build anything that would help them.

And how about them shunning Hiccup's logical mindset of thinking first and acting later?

"And if he did it in the past, maybe he messed that up, causing people to lose faith in his inventions. We simply don't know why."

You see?! That's another problem of HTTYD 1.

There's no 100% concrete justification for most of the characters' (mis)behaviours.

Those background details that are important should be shown, otherwise the story just falls flat.