The Deathgripper Breedism Problem
So there is a problem with the Deathgripper than many people aren't really aware of, but was the intentions of the creators of the third film.
And it's that they were meant to be evil.
Now you may be questioning why would this be the case. Well….
On page 109 of The Art of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, we get this description for the Deathgrippers.
"This is the first movie where we got to think about creating 'bad' dragons….." "But when a bad human comes into the picture someone like Grimmel he can turn evil dragons into something worse. The Deathgrippers are being controlled, but they were not very nice to start with. It was an interesting opportunity to dig into an evil-looking dragon and so much fun to see them evolve."
Sssoooo….
They not only designed the Deathgrippers to like evil, but also intended for them to be evil dragons who aren't nice.
So, if you at all have seen my paleo media blog, I have post on there talk about how Jurassic World introduce a thing called breedism through the Indominus Rex.
I use breedism as the term because it's the closest thing to what I'm talking about.
The Deathgrippers as evil dragons is playing essentialist thinking, and plays into by have them as just inherently evil by what they are. With Grimmel calling them dragon killers seeming to play into the inherently evil dragons bit.
Aside, from playing with some dangerous ideas this idea of evil dragons is just wrong in the httyd series, and goes against it's themes.
First off we have seen many dragon killers before as several dragons we have seen are willingly to hunt and eat other dragons, they are all just animals. The Scauldron and Death Song are both dragons that will hunt and eat other dragons. Meanwhile ones like the Cavern Crasher will eat the combs of Fireworms bringing about harm on the Fireworms.
Even the the Red Death eats other dragons, and while it had to be dealt with it was never called evil. The Red Death was just doing what it normally does.
Heck, even Drago's Bewilderbeast wasn't evil but was just doing bad things under Drago's command.
By extension the first film was all about the idea of the dragons no being evil, and that they were all misunderstood.
With the second film making it clear the dragons aren't evil as Valka says.
"Good dragons under the control of bad people, do bad things."
What should have been done was that while they look evil, and that they dragons that will hunt other dragons. None of this evil dragons stuff.
Overall, the Deathgrippers were done dirty.
Written by Eris