ONE WEEK

Well, it's just one week now until I will have seen HTTYD3 (roughly to the hour)! It's so crazy to think that the sequel is so close. I've had a much weirder ride building up to it. For one, I spent the entirety of last year so miserable and stressed out by my job/boss that I hardly had time to focus on fandom stuff... so the third movie has kinda snuck up on me! On the other hand, we got a lot of news dumped on us that had a bunch of fans arguing over whether it was good or bad (especially the Light Fury). Unlike waiting for the second film, I wasn't really concerned at all waiting for this one. I feel like a part of that is because I saw how well Dean handled Hiccup's development and the story as a whole in the second film, and I trusted him to do it again. Plus, I'd heard the reactions of people like Cressida Cowell and Steven Spielberg, and they both said they loved the film.

So, yeah, I'm gonna watch HTTYD, GotNF, and HTTYD2 this week in anticipation of Saturday. It's a really surreal feeling... drawing this close to the end. I'm both excited and kinda sad! It is going to be the end of an era. It will be the last time we wait in eager anticipation for our heroes to soar onto a theater screen. It will be the last time we sit down not knowing how the story will end. It's the final step in this epic tale that has shaped me so deeply as a person, and I am a little scared to take it.

That being said, I think I've made my position clear on being happy that the story will be given genuine closure and not be dragged out in horrendous style like other animated franchises have been. It may be the end of one ear, but it will be the beginning of a different one. It will be the start of being a nerd of a franchise that has immortalized itself as a classic and an icon. It won't be the same, but there will still be this immense joy of having witnessed every last moment of this amazing story. It will be so satisfying to place the HTTYD trilogy on a shelf and proudly look back at it years from now and say: There were dragons when I was a boy.