Review: Dreamworks Dragons “A Tale of Two Dragons”

What happens when two of the riders’ dragons decide to fight one another? Well, Hookfang and Stormcloud are about to tell you!

Spoilers!

The alarm for the Screaming Death goes off, and everyone is trying to get to their assigned posts. Snotlout and Astrid almost have a midair collision. We come to find out that it was only a drill, and the mid air fiasco destroyed the Great Hall. That gives them time to harvest Mildew’s cabbage patch. Hiccup tries to organize the group, but Snotlout railroads the discussion. Everyone starts their jobs, with things going well. That is, until Snotlout and Astrid go at it, again. Things get serious when they start shooting blasts at each other. Hiccup gets them to a point of working together, and things get back to normal. A plot point comes when Fishlegs points out that no matter when Astrid and Snotlout fight, the dragons stay out of it.

Hiccup is at home with Stoic. Astrid, and later Snotlout, knock on the door, saying that one can’t work with the other, for the exact same reasons. After getting advice from Stoic, mostly involving axes and maces, Hiccup implements option three. He tricks Astrid and Snotlout to work together. This works for all of five seconds, until the dragons go for each other again. They get thrown off their respective dragons, and they start fighting. They get separated, and back to the Academy. Hiccup has Snotlout and Astrid switch dragons, and spend the day getting to know them. They both do things that they didn’t know the dragon can do, or thinks the respective rider didn’t know. They get back, and don’t want to leave their new dragons. The next day, Fishlegs goes to the field, and is looking for clues as to why the two dragons fighting so hard yesterday. After Meatlug digs, he finds out why. Meanwhile, Snotlout and Astrid figure out that they’re there to feed each other’s dragon. Unfortunately, the recipients aren’t there. They busted the cages, and flew off.

You know things are serious when the twins are scolding you for losing your dragon. The whole group is there, trying to figure out how to find them, and where they could be. Fishlegs knows, and leads them back to the field. The two dragons are fighting over dragon root, which is something akin to catnip. Unfortunately for the gang, it makes the dragons angry instead of getting dragon-stoned. Astrid has an idea. She gets in front of Stormfly, and Snotlout gets in front of Hookfang, and essentially re-train their dragons. This would be all well and good, except Barf and Belch are now going at it. Fishlegs and Meathook try to yank out the dragon root, but they keep getting shot at by the dragon.  Astrid and Snotlout make it to the scene, but on each other’s dragons, and manage to help Fishlegs get the root out…by using the new attacks they discovered on their day together. Fishlegs does an dumps the dragon root into the ocean. The field gets plowed, and Stoic is one happy ruler.

Well, this was a different plot. I love this episode, mainly because this plot came out of left field. Astrid and Snotlout have been at each others throats for quite a few episodes, and it finally came to a head. That’s good, because I don’t know how much longer I could have taken of “Mucho Machismo” Snotlout. The hook of getting Astrid and Snotlout to switch dragons was awesome, because you knew there’d be a bond grown. We get even more, because they actually learned moves that the respective owner / rider didn’t know about. This is a major step forward, because the stretch to the season finale is coming, and Dagger is coming, as well as the new movie. The fact that we finally see Hiccup finally go to his father for some advice is a welcome sight, because no one has all of the answers all the time. And to be honest, Option one with  the axes sounded pretty legit.