Thursday, June 25, 2015

A How to Train Your Dragon Marathon



I’m glad to say that last week, two of my friends and I made up for the How to Train Your Dragon marathon that got canceled at the last minute on the one-year anniversary of the release of How to Train Your Dragon 2.  It went a little different than originally planned, though.

In the morning, I got an e-mail from one of said friends that said that they were both fine with watching How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2 at their house (instead of my house as it was originally planned) in the afternoon.  So, I spent the time that I had before then looking up recent news about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), writing part of a poem that I was still working on at the time, and listening to music.  In the midst of doing all that, I thought that I may as well bring the soundtracks to How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2 to listen to in my car – and I decided to listen to the soundtrack to How to Train Your Dragon on the way to their house and listen to the soundtrack to How to Train Your Dragon 2 on the way back to my house (which I ended up doing in the end, by the way).  I will say that I had dressed up appropriately for the occasion in terms of what I had to wear (as I don’t have any How to Train Your Dragon clothing yet) – I was wearing a silver dragon t-shirt, a bronze Celtic dragon amulet, a leather dragon bracelet on my left arm, and a dragon hat.

I was told that my friends had some errands to do before I arrived at their house for the How to Train Your Dragon marathon, so after I arrived at the town that they live in, I drove around for a bit.  At one point while I was driving through town, I imagined myself and the two drivers in front of me flying on dragons (while “Romantic Flight” by John Powell was playing in my car, I might add).  I did make a couple of stops to get things:  I got the Magic:  The Gathering card Sarkhan Unbroken (from the Dragons of Tarkir expansion) at a card shop and then I got some pizza for the How to Train Your Dragon marathon.

After I arrived at the house that my friends live in, I thought that maybe we were going to eat pizza while watching the movies.  That turned out to not be the case.  We ate the pizza while we talked about several things (none of which had to do with How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2) and then my friends had some other business to take care of first (which took the better part of two-and-a-half hours or so).  (Just for the record, we did eat a little bit of pizza while watching the movies in the end.)

Then, we finally got around to watching How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2.  One of my friends has watched both of them before, while my other friend hadn’t watched either of them before.  We had two monitors set up so that my friend who hadn’t watched either of the movies before could play a video game and watch the movies at the same time.  Once we started watching How to Train Your Dragon, my friend started playing his video game – but after ten minutes or so, he stopped.  Needless to say, he had his attention focused on How to Train Your Dragon.  A little while after the movie started, my friend asked if the dragons talk and I told him that the dragons don’t talk – and that wasn’t the only thing like this that happened while we were watching the movie.  Every now and then throughout the movie, he laughed at one point or said something funny at another point (such as saying that Stoick looks like Gimli from Lord of the Rings, which I told him was something that I hadn’t thought about until he mentioned it).  There were also a couple of times where he speculated about something (for example, when Toothless and the other dragons were flying into the dragon’s nest with Hiccup and Astrid, he speculated that there was going to be a big bad dragon in the dragon’s nest).  Some of his commentary didn’t really surprise me (such as saying that Hiccup was a dragon tamer and later saying something along the lines of, “He looked like he was about to cry.  He’d better cry,” after Stoick showed his reaction to disowning Hiccup).

After we finished watching How to Train Your Dragon, my friend who had now watched it for the first time was eager to watch How to Train Your Dragon 2, as he really likes movies that have good stories.  Unlike when we watched How to Train Your Dragon, he didn’t say funny things or speculate about something while we watched it (though he still laughed at a few points).   There were a couple of times where he was disappointed over something that happened.  He went, “Noooo,” when Drago’s Bewliderbeast killed Valka’s Bewilderbeast.  Later, when Stoick was killed by a mind-controlled Toothless, my friend didn’t feel sad, get upset, or cry – he was angry and he felt that Valka should have been killed instead of Stoick because Valka wasn’t really in Hiccup’s life (well, not as much as Stoick was, anyways).  Then, during Stoick’s funeral, he asked if it was the end of the movie and I told him that it wasn’t.  He also asked if Hiccup was going to get Toothless back and I said that he was.  He ended up feeling better by the time that the end of How to Train Your Dragon 2 actually came around.

Once we finished watching How to Train Your Dragon 2, my friend said that he was going to have to buy How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2 – and he said that they would be good movies for him to watch before he goes to sleep.  I asked him which one he likes better and he told me that he likes them both.  He saw them as parts of a story, so to speak.

I was also a bit surprised that my friend who had watched How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2 before told me that he likes How to Train Your Dragon 2 better.  After we watched How to Train Your Dragon 2 while it was in theaters, he told me that he liked the first one better.

In addition to those things, something a bit funny happened.  After I mentioned my friend saying that Stoick looks like Gimli, I told him that Clate Blanchett was Valka’s voice actress with the exception of the song “For the Dancing and the Dreaming”.  His response to that was, “Galadriel didn’t step up.”  XD

Once that was over with, we talked a bit about other things.  Then, I left and drove back home.

Overall, we all had a pretty great time and I’m glad that our How to Train Your Dragon marathon worked out this time and didn’t get canceled at the last minute again.

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