How to Train Your Dragon (animation)/Awesome

Movie

• Hiccup. Untying the Night Fury. The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself. Even the fully grown vikings run from it as fast as they can. He untied it. Without any assurance that he'd live.
  • Hiccup falling out of the sky with Toothless. Anybody would panic and fall to their deaths. Hiccup stays calm enough (and virtually assumes a skydiving position) to try and control the situation and eventually remounts Toothless.
    • And then he steers him perfectly through a group of rock formations without his cheat sheet.
• When picking up the falling Astrid in the end battle. The picture, the music, everything is perfect.
• The end of Astrid's little speech on top of the wharf. ..then something crazy!
  • The whole speech. Drags Hiccup out of his self-pity and gets him to do what's needed to save the entire village from the enormous dragon that only she and Hiccup have seen.
• The end monologue.
• High-speed flight. On the back of a dragon. Just above the foggy surface of the sea. Between cliffs and stone pillars. With an at least twenty times as big abomination chasing after you.
• The entire battle against the Green Death. First when it's introduced, and the hardened dragon killing vikings who just moments ago were ready to kill thousands of dragons ran for their boats in sheer terror. Then, the neglected prince comes in at the last minute, and their fight soon takes to the skies where all the vikings on the ground can see is explosions like thunder and lightning silhouetting the Green Death. And then the Green Death comes plummeting out of the sky and explodes. Every scene evokes the feeling of an epic viking tale 200 times greater than Beowulf.
• Stoick the Vast's introduction.

Hiccup: That's Stoick the Vast. They say that when he was a baby, he popped a dragon's head clean off its shoulders. Do I believe it? (Stoick grabs a cart and throws it at a dragon, bringing it crashing down.) Yes I do.

• • Stoick and Gobber's last stand.

Stoick: I can buy the men a few minutes if I can give that thing something to hunt!
Gobber: Then I can double that time.
Stoick: (smiles, then charges at the Green Death) Come on! Attack me!
Gobber: Oh no... here! Here!

• • During the attack, the catapult he's near gets attacked by a Monstrous Nightmare while it's on fire. What does Stoick do? Calmly tells the others to reload the catapult, while he bashes the thing upside the head with his hammer.
• A definitive Crowning Moment for the creators for the first scene between Toothless and Hiccup. This troper's dog watches TV often, but only reacts to real animals on the screen, and is surprisingly good at figuring out what is real and what is not. Well, the dog watched the scene with rapt interest, ears perked up. The creators made Toothless so realistic that is fooled an actual animal.
• During the Test Drive scene, their first maneuver is a left turn, everyone in this troper's theater cheered. Not only that but on the DVD's Director's Commentary track the creative team itself pauses for it.
• Test Drive and Forbidden Friendship. So good that it was nominated for an Oscar for best film score.
  • The whole soundtrack really does give you the sensation that you're flying. Do yourself a big favor and invest those ten dollars in it.
• After a Monstrous Nightmare pins down and tries to attack Hiccup, Toothless appears seemingly out of nowhere, jumps on its back, slashes at it, and basically scares it off into hiding. And the thing was a little over three times his own size, and it was a very one-sided battle.
  • Addendum to that statement: since Toothless has lost his left tail fin, he can't fly. But when he hears from a distance that his friend is in danger, he throws himself up the cliff that pins him into the box canyon and then he half-runs, half uses his wings to get to Hiccup in time. Especially awesome since he gets there just in the nick of time to place himself in front of Hiccup to protect him from the Monstrous Nightmare. Epic.
• Let's not forget how Hiccup was about to take on the Monstrous Nightmare: by taming it and showing the village that the Vikings don't have to kill dragons. He was about to use his coming-of-age ritual as a way to force the village to change their way of life — not only does that showcase his Character Development, but he might have actually been able to pull it off if Stoick hadn't panicked!
• Two words: Test Drive. The entire damn scene, especially when Hiccup falls off of Toothless. Anyone else in that world would simply scream, freeze and then die, but Hiccup keeps calm even while plummeting, talks Toothless into maneuvering to him and resaddles to regain control and pull out of their death spiral. Add that with a fast maneuvering in through the rock stacks and you'll know that the pair has earned the right to give a barbaric yawp and fire pulse flourish.
  • Not to mention, Hiccup had also taken a good, sharp whack from Toothless' tail, and still managed to pull this off.
  • The scene is especially good in 3-D.
• The montage where it shows Hiccup using Science! to overcome his lack of bravado and become top of the class. It truly is awesome to watch a case of brains over brawn defeating dragons with relative ease.
• A lot of people seem to overlook a particularly satisfying moment of Awesome for Hiccup: After the disastrous final exam, Stoick drags Hiccup off and begins condemning him for his traitorous actions. Keep in mind that up until this point, the conversations between Hiccup and Stoick have always been very awkward and in the end, Hiccup just takes whatever his dad throws at him. But here, when Stoick is blaspheming the misunderstood dragons and saying "They've killed hundreds of us," Hiccup finally, finally strikes back: "And we've killed thousands of them!" He then goes on to tell Stoick the real reason behind the raids. And when he accidentally reveals how to get to the Dragons' Nest using Toothless and his dad immediately sets off to do just that, does Hiccup just stand there? No. He tries to warn his father about the Green Death and makes one last desperate attempt to get Stoick to listen, culminating in "For once in your life, would you please listen to me?" Does it turn out badly for him? Yes. Does it show how far he's come from the beginning of the movie and that he's gained the courage to stand up against what he knows is wrong? You bet it does.
• It's awesome enough when Stoick manages to pull Hiccup out of the water in time during the climactic battle. But the second his son is safe, he dives right back into the water again to free Toothless, the "unholy offspring of lightning and death itself." Granted, we all know that isn't the case by this point, but that's centuries of belief bred into these vikings. Even after everything Hiccup said to defend Toothless, Stoick was still taking a huge leap of faith by freeing him, especially after treating him so badly. And then Toothless has his own moment when he carries Stoick back out of the water to safety. And just shakes himself off and gestures for Hiccup to hop on so they can take the monstrous behemoth of a dragon down and all the while, the film's heroic theme is thundering on the soundtrack as the two disrespected heroes are back in action. So much awesome packed into a few seconds.
• Comparing Toothless and Hiccup's initial flying skills to their fight against the Green Death. When they're falling during the Test Drive scene, Hiccup barely manages to pull them back up before they hit the ground, and Toothless's wings fan out just in time to catch them. When Hiccup realizes that the Green Death has wings, Toothless spreads his wings again to stop in midair, whips around, and dives straight for the dragon, completely controlled. That, along with Hiccup's nonchalance during Toothless's spinning temper tantrum with Astrid, shows just how far they've come in terms of their flying ability.
• Being a 3-D theatrical film in which the glasses and extra money is justified and was wholly recommended for the stellar use of it during the flying sequences, which give off an exhilarating effect on par with James Cameron's Avatar, which is no small feat.
• This is a behind-the-scenes moment that deserves mention; the scene where Hiccup loses his leg was risky enough, but they showed it to test audiendes expecting the parents to make the usual fuss. Not only did the backlash not happen, but the parents actually encouraged them to keep it in. If this isn't a serious blow to the Animation Age Ghetto, I don't know what is.
• The Book Ends ending: "The only upside, is the pets. Other people have horses or goats. We have (in an extremely majestic voice), DRAGONS!"
• There really should be a Chekhov's Gun page for this film. Among the things that play into the final battle that appear throughout the story:
  • Fishlegs' breakdown of the Green Death's anatomy;
  • Crashing into the rock formations during the test flight;
  • Hiccup and Astrid's flight through the clouds, showing the visibility limits;
  • Hiccup's understanding of how a bellows intensifies the heat of a forge;
  • Toothless' inability to pull out of the freefall during the test flight;
  • How Toothless tried to use his wings to decelerate at the same time; and
  • The squabble between Toothless and the Terrible Terror ("Not so fireproof on the inside, are you?").

In essence, the entire climax is Hiccup killing a dragon with LOGIC.

Gift of the Night Fury

• The moment at the end where Hiccup and Toothless are freefalling with no worry on their faces, it really shows how far they have come in friendship and they trust each other completely.