I've been on a dragons kick recently and actually rewatched THW (cause I hate myself apparently) and you know what's really annoying?
Multiple characters TELL us that Berk has been having problems with outside forces:
Astrid: "I wish there was some way we could get them to leave us alone."
Hiccup: "It does seem like the whole world knows about us now."
Grimmel: "They want to make distance between themselves and enemies in the East and South."
Hiccup also mentions it during the Mead Hall meeting but I can't remember the exact quote.
The point is that this is referred to multiple times.
I remember reading a post once from someone defending the ending by saying part of the reason Hiccup lets the dragons go is because there was an increase in violence towards Berk. All of these lines would imply that yes, that is the case HOWEVER
This information is completely contradictory to what we're literally SHOWN in the first like... 20 minutes of the movie.
Based on what we see in the film, Hiccup and by extension Berk are the ones picking fights with people who have seemingly done nothing to them. They are the ones being aggressive, they are on the offensive, again, for seemingly no reason. Gobber quite literally even says that Hiccup is picking fights and will regret it one day. Eret (and I'm assuming Valka as well) scout out ships for them to attack. He literally tells Hiccup he found more trapper ships and Hiccup immediately decides to go after them FOR NO REASON aside from the fact they're dragon trappers/hunters. They don't even know if they have any dragons on their ship, bro. It's not even implied the trappers are headed for Berk, Eret just tells them he spotted more trapper ships. I'd also like to point out that during the opening, they're attacking the ship at night but don't arrive to Berk until what appears to be midday implying that they flew HOURS just to attack a trapper ship...
If Berk is actually experiencing problems with outside forces, the movie shows us it is literally because Hiccup is creating those problems himself because he has basically deemed himself and Berk the protector of all dragons. We never once see Berk actually struggle with any of these outside forces (and no, I'm not counting Grimmel here) aside from the characters simply telling us that they are which completely contradicts their own actions in the beginning of the film. They're creating enemies and then complaining about it. They're having their cake but they don't want to eat it. They keep mentioning having enemies and I'm like... who though? No, genuinely, who? Who in their right mind would actually try to attack Berk with the amount of dragons they have now? No seriously, WHO? Nobody stands a goddamn chance.
This honestly could've been a really interesting character dilemma what with Hiccup potentially putting the dragons above his own people and unintentionally creating enemies because he's so hellbent on protecting these creatures that he's not thinking straight, perhaps a lot of that obsession stemming from the traumatic loss of his father and the pressures of his still recent Chiefdom. If Drago was still the main villain, it would've given them even more parallels to play off of. It also would have made Astrid's hesitation to marry him make way more sense as opposed to him simply having self-confidence issues - which he's ALWAYS had and suddenly it's a problem for her six years deep?? Hiccup makes some truly WILD choices in this movie that I'm honestly shocked he never gets mutinied. His people honestly would've had every right to. He seems like such an incompetent leader and again, that could have been a really interesting plot-point but it's never used in any sort of impactful way.
Not to mention, the film had such a ridiculously easy way of showing that Berk is struggling with outside enemies/forces if the opening sequence had been them actually rescuing dragons that were perhaps taken from them in a recent attack instead of simply going after a ship for seemingly no reason just to rescue a couple of dragons which, yes, is was it is. They are very explicitly new dragons, not Berk's dragons. All you had to do was imply they were captured dragons from Berk and boom, Berk has enemies and it's specifically shown.
I have way more to say about this shit show of a film because of my recent rewatch so I'll probably make more posts.
