I hope I have time today to watch it.

I'm going to crack "Book of Dragons" right now just to get the silly stuff out of the way so I can savor GOTNF later.

BUT OMG YAY

EDIT:

Here's some review-esque bull- nothing too revealing, I don't think, especially since, as Malus says, NO SPOILER BECAUSE NO PLOT.


Well, that was actually pretty fun. Given it was like, 60% old footage with voiceovers and stuff.

It was cute, and far more palatable than I was expecting, though the way it's put together, flip flopping between old 3D renders, new 3D renders, old concept art, and like three styles of 2D animated segments , is really kind of jarring.

A la "Boneknapper", the clip is mostly 2D animated segments (far more stylized than Boneknapper's), mostly cartoony gags about Bork, the Viking who first compiled the Dragon Manual.

Bork is... conceptually, almost identical to Hiccup of the books, aside from the fact that he's a full-grown hairy man. He even has a helmet with one horn missing, and some of his misadventures are fairly familiar (such as a Darkbreather (here, a Scauldron) eating his boat).

So I was pleased with the Cowell-esque air that remained. There are blatantly horribly misinformed scenes with corn (apparently Nightmares like corn??) and chocolate: American foods- which COWELL TOTALLY WOULD'VE DONE.

Funnily enough, there was also a gag with A NADDER STEALING A SANDWICH FROM PRETTY MUCH THE SAME ANGLE as one of the drawings I have posted here. There's also some stuff that will reaffirm the suspicions of some friends of mine- and some stuff about brushing a dragon's teeth, which is obviously relevant to my interests.

There's even a short, comical vore gag with slimy vomit. Yay.

Most of the dragons are just references to the actual ones used in the movie, or those mentioned/depicted in the movie's dragon manual. Overall, there's technically not a whole lot of new material here- just some random tricks like OMG THEY LIKE THEIR BACKS SCRATCHED: THIS IS COMPLETELY FUNCTIONAL KNOWLEDGE FOR YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW.

There's some new music, which jars with the old stuff a bit because it's obviously synth and not orchestral, but it puts up a good fight and does a decent job of blending in with Powell's precedents.


EDIT: Gift of the Night Fury

Oh man, what to say about this one...

Too short! They crammed probably at least 40 minutes of story into 22, so the storytelling is really rushed and rough. Which is a shame, really, because it's a cute, even touching story- there's just no time at all to savor it. The long, meditative moments and profound montages of the original movie are pretty much lost here, and pretty much every second is jammed with either characters jabbering away like there's a time limit- nearly all of it "I HAVE TO SAY THIS TO THE VIEWER SO THEY UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON" dialogue- or quick and to the point action, and the impact of the plot suffers for it.

Pretty much every issue I had with this was the glaring fact that they needed to SLOW THE FRICK DOWN and give us more material to help us identify with the characters and the situations taking place.

If you've seen the trailers and such, you have a decent idea of how the plot goes. It's not incredibly surprising, save for one bit at the end.

Malus, the end is probably going to piss you off. XD

So the plot did suffer immensely from OMG GOTTA GO FAST. They also ripped nearly the entire soundtrack from the original movie- which isn't entirely bad, except that some of the tracks really don't go with the scenes they're paired with. Of course, that might just be my uberfan-know-the-soundtrack-backwards-and-forwards ears talking.

The animation is pretty decent, for what this is. There are a lot of really adorable physical comedy bits with Hiccup- it's always refreshing to see your screen-friends pulled into some new expressions and poses (he falls over a lot XD). Occasionally the characters look oddly bug-eyed, but all in all they're fun to watch.

I don't know if I'd recommend you see this for the plot. But if Hiccup/Toothless (or general dragon/human) fluff melts your heart, they managed to squeeze in some really adorable moments to make you squee. Like that free-fall at the end... they didn't show all of it in the trailers- but holy hell it gets like WAY cooler/cuter.

ALSO THERE'S A BIT WHERE TOOTHLESS ENGULFS HICCUP'S HEAD WITH HIS MOUTH.

and it is quite slimy.

(and wetness and wet hair is really hard for animators, so it looks sketch- but REALLY exaggerated.)


So no, it wasn't as good as I expected, but yes, there are some good times to be had here. The plot is blah, but there are several scenes worth squeeing over again for sure.