Dreamworks Dragon Review

Another movie review! But I will have actual art news probably tomorrow. I just don't have time to upload the images tonight and it's silly to talk about them without having them on hand to, ya know, look at.

Anyway. How To Train Your Dragon was really really good. The visuals were stunning. The ads all claimed the 3D was more breathtaking than Avatar and it totally was. Of course there was almost nothing to Avatar besides the pretty phosphorescent veneer.

This movie was visually a lot of fun and the story was sweet. One of the reviews I read on Rotten Tomatoes praised it for being a film that advocated learning rather than violence.

I loved this movie right up until the end. But then... the end. It was the only problem I had with the whole movie and the more I think about it, the bigger it gets.

Fair warning, there will be Massive Spoilers Ahead!

See, the main character is a plucky little viking named Hiccup. Like all young vikings he aspires to be a great Dragon Killer. Until he actually has the opportunity to kill one and finds that he doesn't want to. Through the friendship he strikes up he learns that everything the vikings think they know about dragons is wrong. He learns how to handle them in a completely non violent way and uses that knowledge to do well in his dragon fighting class. As he does better in the class though, he gets more concerned that he'll be "rewarded" by being the first in the class to get to murder a dragon.

At the finale of the second act he tries to show everyone that the killing isn't necessary and that they have nothing to fear from the dragons. This goes predictably wrong and it all builds up to Hiccup showing his friends what he has learned about dragons so that they can save all the dragons and all the vikings.

All well and good, until, as I say, the end. The entire movie thus far has dedicated itself to showing us that dragons are intelligent and if treated properly, peaceful creatures. Not killing dragons is the entire thrust of the film. Hiccup has twice refused to kill dragons when presented with the opportunity and has tried to prevent others from killing them as well. In the end they have to fight a really really big dragon. Like, way bigger than all the other ones put together. And Hiccup uses his special skills that he has learned by being open minded and non violent to...kill it. The whole movie is about not killing dragons, but I guess that one has to die because it's too big? It's different from the other dragons? What?

You tell me Dreamworks. It was just so disappointing. I really enjoyed the entire film up to that moment. The message was so appropriate and timely. Except the end of the movie completely undoes that message.

It's still a good movie. It merits a second viewing even, and the 3D was gorgeous. I cannot emphasize that enough. But you'll walk away with a much more satisfying impression if you skip the last 10 minutes or so.

Captain Falcon!

So the adorable chicks I got last August? Captain Falcon is their Queen. As a baby she was the drabbest, but had a gutsy personality. She actually looked like a tiny bird of prey actually. And she was always the first one to jump onto the box, onto the stick, onto the edge of the box, out onto the floor. I estimated that she was at least a day or so older than the others because they were always just trying out the thing she'd mastered yesterday.

My little brother, assuming that she was a rooster because she was so tough and awesome, named her after this guy. He is a vaguely obscure video game character from the good people at Nintendo.

However, as the chicks developed and 7 out of 10 began to crow (to my lasting dismay), Captain Falcon failed to develop any masculine tendencies. She is a bantam Easter Egger, and she was the first of my flock to begin laying. Her eggs are tiny and blue. They look like robin eggs except slightly too large. I was delighted. Now she has gone broody. Just over two weeks ago I realized that she was trying to hatch one egg that did not belong to her (still not positive who laid it actually) and two golf balls that I put in the nesting box to show the hens where to lay.

I gave her some other assorted eggs (including one of her own, though I don't have high hopes for it as it spent a day in the fridge). They should, with any luck, hatch next week sometime.

Now to hopefully prevent the same karmic disaster that gave me 7 roosters last time, I need some macho names for the babies.

Two of them will be Captain Hammer and Dr. Horrible. If the one from the fridge, "Fridgey" as I currently call it, hatches I will name it Oracle.

I went to my brother for additional suggestions and he came up with Duke Nukem and Rooster Cogburn. I'll skip the last one because fully half the roosters in this country (the half not already called "Foghorn Leghorn" are already named Rooster Cogburn).

I may name one Spock, because I have been on a Star Trek kick lately. More than that I'm afraid to speculate on. She's sitting on nine eggs. It would have been ten, but I broke one while I was checking to make sure she wasn't sitting on extras stolen from other hens. She wasn't. Oops. But 9 eggs of various origins, and at least a few of them should hatch just in time for the Japanese exchange students we're having for two weeks. It is cool. My chickens are awesome.