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| Storyboards with Valka as a villain | |
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| Topic Started: 04 Sep 2014, 15:36 (5607 Views) | |
| Pikey | 04 Sep 2014, 15:36 Post #21 |
Wow!
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Drago needed more in my opinion, Hiccup and Toothless are obviously important, but Drago being the cause of his father's death and being avenged by Hiccup, he needed more. |
| VeloYourSwaggyDragon | 04 Sep 2014, 17:58 Post #22 |
I am... swaggy
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This is like a PETA version of Valka. ;D |
  
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| Cartoon Freak | 04 Sep 2014, 19:03 Post #23 |
Deadly Nadder
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Revenge of the Sith did it, and I'll bet that plenty of kids saw that. Okay, so RotS completely botched the execution of it, but that's another matter. Not that the Valka-villain angle would stop them from killing off Stoick anyway. Based on the storyboards, Drago was still present in that section of the story, so there are loads of ways you could have done it. Heck, they could even have kept the idea of Toothless killing Stoick if they were so attached to it. Not that I'm overly attached to it, mind you. While it was high on shock value, the exact nature of the plot point and its presentation meant that there was no payoff. Oh, and just a little note regarding something you said earlier: yes, Valka's villainy is presented in a very clunky manner in the storyboards. That's what rewriting is supposed to be for: fixing up those little problems. They didn't need to throw out the baby with the bath water. |
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Number of times I've watched the trailer: 18. My pet peeve: people who refer to complete strangers by their first name. The correct ways to refer to a "John Smith" whom you have never met are Smith, Mr Smith, or John Smith. Not "John". He's not your buddy. | |
| Eret | 04 Sep 2014, 19:18 Post #24 |
....Son of Eret
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I'm almost completely positive that person on this forum who worked as a supervising animator on the movie specifically stated that they were forced to change it because they were going to have valka be responsible for his death. And yes, this is the second time you pointed out that a star wars movie did something super dark that dragons 2 didn't do. You know what else is different about star wars and dragons 2? One is an animated childrens film primarily, the other is a film that draws its audience equally from people of all ages and is also a super beloved franchise that will forever be in the film canon. yeah yeah, dragons 2 doesn't have to cater to parents, star wars is also for kids, blah blah blah. but the fact of the matter is, they're totally different. Dreamworks Animation makes animated movies. The movie-going public expects animated films from big studios to make movies for children. Parents and their kids are the main audience for animated movies, regardless of how "dark" they are. Dreamworks is a business, and there is only so far the executives will go on how dark a movie can get before they let the fear of losing their primary audience, and consequently money, overtake creative freedom. Do I think it would have been cooler if Valka was the villain? Yes. Do I think Dean or the crew are to blame for "throwing out the baby" or that its worth complaining about? No, not really. |
| Cartoon Freak | 04 Sep 2014, 19:40 Post #25 |
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Deadly Nadder
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Fine, let's assume that's true for the sake of argument. Then make someone else responsible for Stoick's death, while keeping Valka as a villain. What is stopping them from doing both? Or heck, I can think of ways they could have made it ambiguous whose fault it actually was. That way, you can have Hiccup sensibly forgive Valka (or rather, as with the actual film and Toothless, not having anything to forgive at all), while still leaving her feeling secretly guilty about it, setting up a need to redeem herself in the third movie. That's the key to handling those executive orders from high. You work with them, and keep the changes as small as possible while still keeping the story good. You don't just completely scrap a perfectly good plot line because someone forced you to change one little bit. Alternatively, if you have to change something (in this case, Valka) so much that it ceases to work then you just have to kill your darlings and start from scratch (in this case, remove the idea of the mysterious dragon rider being Hiccup's mother - that would basically fix the problem no matter what direction they went in). |
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Number of times I've watched the trailer: 18. My pet peeve: people who refer to complete strangers by their first name. The correct ways to refer to a "John Smith" whom you have never met are Smith, Mr Smith, or John Smith. Not "John". He's not your buddy. | |
| Eret | 04 Sep 2014, 19:45 Post #26 |
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....Son of Eret
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I didn't realize you were there in the writing room and knew the specifics about every direction they were given and every choice they made |
| Cartoon Freak | 04 Sep 2014, 19:51 Post #27 |
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Deadly Nadder
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I wasn't. Hence the statement on things that could have been done to fix the problems that only supposedly arose. Hypotheticals are fun. |
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Number of times I've watched the trailer: 18. My pet peeve: people who refer to complete strangers by their first name. The correct ways to refer to a "John Smith" whom you have never met are Smith, Mr Smith, or John Smith. Not "John". He's not your buddy. | |
| DarthBacon | 04 Sep 2014, 22:53 Post #28 |
Gronckle
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If they had done all that, I'm pretty sure the movie wouldn't have crossed 300 million. This is a kids' movie, not Game Of Thrones. The fact why they added Valka mainly proved that Hiccup was the sum of the best parts of his dad and his mom. A rogue Valka would have led to a lot of questions too. The chances of that plot line going bad is quite high. This plot, if not better than the original, but was perfectly executed. |
  
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| Oneill5491 | 05 Sep 2014, 02:26 Post #29 |
Terrible Terror
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As much as the original story boards were interesting and provoking, I have to agree that proceeding with the original story line would have been financially disastrous. The final cut was already upsetting as it was; the original characterization would have spelt doom for the movie. You can only take this genre so far, especially with the westernized perception of mainstream animated productions. Leave the dark tone and complex animated movies for the low budget eastern anime studios where the primary target market has a natural appreciation for it. If you want to change the western perception of mainstream animation to be truly an all-demographic genre, do so in baby steps which I think the final product accomplished here. |
| Cartoon Freak | 05 Sep 2014, 07:00 Post #30 |
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Deadly Nadder
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None of the material that's in the storyboards would make the movie appreciably darker. Now, in order to make the film commercially viable, you would need to do two things. First and foremost, you would need to have Valka repent. That's easy enough (heck, Pokemon: The First Movie had a genocidal maniac as the villain, made him pull a quick bit of repentance at the end, and didn't seem to suffer at the box office for it), and even as someone who loathes Valka as is, I think that would be better than having her die as a villain. Second, you'd probably need to not have Valka be directly responsible for Stoick's death. As awesome as that would have been, that's probably got to go. As things stand, however, the storyboards imply that Drago was at least going to be present at the big battle, so you've got a third party who can do that if need be. Or heck, you could save killing off Stoick until the third movie. While his death was inevitable at some point in the saga, there's no particular reason at the conceptual stage why it had to be in the second movie. I could get into a rant about how the presence of Valka as she is in the final product actually cheapens everything Hiccup did in the first movie, but let's instead focus on how things would have played out in the original version. Proto-Valka basically stands in contrast to Stoick in the original film. Both are extremists, stopping at nothing to defeat their enemies, regardless of who gets hurt in the process. Both, however, have strong and relatable motivations, that is, the desire and the need to protect their own. When you get right down to it, Stoick is not only an antagonist in the first film, he may well be the main antagonist. He's basically the one who causes Hiccup problems. The Red Death, while certainly an antagonist, is closer in purpose to the classical dragons of legend, that is, a monster for the hero to defeat as part of his journey. When you think of things this way, it's perfectly sensible for Valka to be the antagonist of the second film. Not only is she a natural fit for the role, but by having Hiccup reconcile her and Stoick*, it actually shows him bringing humans and dragons together. This stands in stark contrast to the central conflict of the finished product, which basically amounts to, "Hey, there's a random bad guy, defeat him because he's bad." Finally, by having Valka and Stoick both be deeply flawed people, it's that much clearer that Hiccup is embodying the best of both of them**, as opposed to the current situation, where he's pretty much Valka with a couple of tiny different decisions that happened to have major consequences. Oh yeah, and the plot of this movie is definitely not perfectly executed. No plot is, if course, though the original HTTYD came as close as can be reasonably expected. *Having thought about this, it occurs to me that, within the original story, it would probably have been better to have Stoick survive the second film, so this reconciliation can be clearer. Again, there's no reason this couldn't have been done, and it would actually remove one of the reasons why the Valka-as-villain plot line supposedly couldn't be done. **Random thought: hypothetically, if they'd gone with the original storyline, it may have proven more effective to have Drago as a long-lost older brother of Hiccup. That would have taken much more time to make work than they had available, however, so that sadly wasn't even much of an option. |
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Number of times I've watched the trailer: 18. My pet peeve: people who refer to complete strangers by their first name. The correct ways to refer to a "John Smith" whom you have never met are Smith, Mr Smith, or John Smith. Not "John". He's not your buddy. | |
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