SoA: Fairy 'nuff. I actually like the character designs for the dragons better than the humans. I even made fun of that in my ‘How to Drain Your Human’ trailer dub spoof around 0:30!
But yeah, I hope that Brave has better-looking characters than the concept art (come to think of it, the concept art only revealed one character and not even her face, so maybe there’s still hope?).
IV: I thought Stretch was pretty okay. Whoopi Goldberg! I thought that voice sounded familiar. But others like Twitch and Crunch were annoying because they were ‘silent characters’ but had very little personality to them.
Well, not every extra gets to be fully developed. Some characters have to be there. Obviously Lotso needs a fair-sized gang. And of course Bonnie has other toys. Giving all of them enough screentime to become properly developed, deep characters wouldn’t be possible.
Like IV said, they could’ve excised a few without detriment to the story. I guess the reason I was miffed was because they hyped up the new characters in their promos and made a big deal about each supporting character, and then they only let them appear for a few minutes or say one-two token lines in the movie. If you happen to be a fan of a certain character and you had that suspense built-up by the promos and little ‘Meet XYZ’ featurettes, you’d be sorely disappointed.
HTTYd on the other hand, didn’t make such a big deal about its supporting characters in its promos. They focused on Hiccup and Toothless’ relationship (and a bit of Stoick) in the trailers and posters. They didn’t employ a ‘scattergun-let’s-unveil-a-new-character-a-day’ campaign like Pixar did with TS3 and what they’re now doing with Cars 2. Same with Rango. There’s a huge supporting cast, but their marketing campaign was very specific on the title character and maybe one-two characters like Beans and Priscilla. Any supporting characters are incidental and left to the audience to discover and fall in love with when they watch the movie.
Don’t get me wrong. I always love a bigger cast, and getting to know them a bit better before I go watch a movie. But this ‘Oh, here’s a new character we got’ update every week is just stretching the publicity campaign and reeks of marketing desperation. Apparently Pixar makes mountains out of their minor characters’ molehills.
Again, please don’t be offended. I enjoyed some of the supporting characters in TS3, but I felt they could’ve cut a few out and not made so many ‘bit character’ updates in their marketing campaign, when they should really be focusing on the STORY you can expect when you go see it in cinemas.
the only supporting characters i really liked were mr. pricklepants and the peas (I STILL NEED THEM IN MY LIFE, JS.) completely agree with everything you said, tdit. i mean, i know there have to be supporting characters, but, i dunno, they made such a big deal out of them and then they all had names and it was like there were /so many/ of them. and they couldn’t all just have some personality, & in the end i felt like there were so many they detracted away from the story, which is /always/ the most important thing. i have never, ever felt that way about a pixar movie until this one. and this is getting kind of out of control, so i’m going to stop now. /endrant
asdfghjkl; i feel like this is the part where i shamelessly insert a random gif to break the tension, so.
But again, there were a few minor characters from TS3 I liked such as Pricklepants and Trixie, so it’s not all bad. It’s just unfortunate that they were not distinctive enough to really capture my attention.
And that scene from HTTYD is one of my favourite moments not only from the movie, but from cinema of all-time. It’s as epic as ‘Define Dancing’ from Wall-E (which another scene, ‘Romantic Flight’ comes pretty close to as well).
I love the whole movie, but that’s one of the 3 scenes that made me cry. <3 I love that screencap! Anyway, yeah. They had way too many, even if some of them were enjoyable. I like Buttercup, Pricklepants, and, Chuckles. That’s it to my memory.
i legit cried like a baby when toothless came to rescue hiccup and then hiccup was trying to get him to leave but toothless wouldn’t because he was trying to protect him, and then you just hear hiccup yelling at everyone not to hurt toothless and asdfghjkl; i can’t even. I WAS LIKE A SOBBING WRECK, GUYS. LIKE, YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW.
I know… Stoick was such an @#$hole for not listening to Hiccup… it tore my heart when Hiccup commanded Toothless to stop attacking his father and Toothless obeys and gives his wide-eyed look of innocence before they clapped the chains on him.
EJE: Did you read this fanfic called Survival of the Sheep? It’s a really interesting and unconventional POV fanfic from the movie.
Guys, it seems to me… when TS3 first came out and I had seen it, I bombarded it with praise and hailed it “best movie of the year”. I was blinded by nostalgia goggles! In hindsight, How To Train Your Dragon proved to be WAY more impressive when comparing the two films, especially considering it was made by Dreamworks, who I didn’t think could make a memorable, heartfelt movie until HTTYD. To me at least…
TS3 is a good and enjoyable movie, but… HTTYD is, in my opinion, better.
gets guns, swords, and other weaponry pointed at me
Hey, take it easy, guys! We’re all friends here, right?
I think that’s what got most people, at least here. You were expecting an average movie from an average studio and got an impressive movie.
With Toy Story 3… well, you were used to Pixar’s perfection. You were expecting an impressive movie from an impressive movie and got exactly that, an impressive movie. And when you get what you’re expecting you aren’t surprised.
Now imagine How to Train Your Dragon were a Pixar movie. It had a very good script, if somewhat predictable and nice animation (if an unsatisfying character design I hope Pixar never uses). Well, besides that, it looks like a plausible Pixar movie. If it were, it would lost the surprise effect that was “Dreamworks actually made an awesome movie!” and would got something like “Well, another marvelous film by marvelous Pixar…”
To me, that was what made most of the trick (there are other reasons, of course, that I can list some time).
P.S. I know this kind of post that makes some fellow members think I’m an extremist Pixar fan. I’m not. I’m a good films fan. Pixar just happens to make good films. Dreamworks has made a couple, so I’m a fan of those too, but I still like the former more.
