How To Train Your Dragon 3 was my most anticipated film of 2019. I rewatched the first two (plus Gift of the Night Fury) the night before, got all dressed up in a Hiccup cosplay, and cancelled my prior Saturday plans to catch an advanced screening. Suffice to say, I REALLY wanted to like it.

But I didn’t because I completely reject the basic premise. All the dragons have to be hidden because… um… people don’t like dragons? And the (giant deadly fire-breathing) creatures are at risk from the outside world? And it’s an all-or-nothing proposition, where either ALL the dragons disappear forever, or they don’t.

I call shenanigans on all of this.

Here’s the real premise of HTTYD3: the filmmakers wanted a Toy Story 3 ending, where Hiccup has to let go of Toothless, something beloved from his childhood. And the writers very clearly worked backwards from there, creating a story and twisting the plot into pretzels in order to arrive at that last moment. That is not how you craft a story, and that resulted in the finale to Dreamworks Animation’s best franchise being completely underwhelming.

Which is not to say it doesn’t still pack an emotional wallop — I was weeping along with the rest of the theater. But emotional wallop does not excuse shoddy storytelling.

Berk is presented as a Viking-dragon utopia, where the only issues impeding their happily-ever-after are external threats. Putting aside my skepticism of these external threats, does Berk just have infinite space and resources? It’s an island; eventually they will run out of space to put all the dragons. And dragons eat a lot of fish; eventually the waters around Berk will be overfished. The dragons keep burning down the wooden dwellings; eventually Berk will run out of lumber. None of this seems to enter anyone’s mind throughout the film.

But fine, let’s suppose that the only issue facing the dragons’ continued Berkian future is the external foes. Hiccup and Toothless find the Hidden World, apparently a 15-minute flight away from New Berk. Cut to everyone sobbing their eyes out as the dragons leave… FOREVER! (dun dun dun) Um… my daily commute to work is a helluva lot longer than Toothless’s flight to New Berk would be. What exactly is stopping the dragons from popping in every couple days? It’s not like Hiccup is going off to college across the country the way Andy did.

But fine, let’s assume that Toothless is acting like a love-stricken drama alpha. Why, exactly, do all the dragons have to come and go as a monolithic entity into the Hidden World? Are we to believe that not a single dragon on Berk wanted to stick around? Not Stormfly. Not Barf and Belch. Nobody? No one wanted to take a minute to discuss?

While we’re on the subject of the goodbye scene… why was the dragon/rider relationship reduced to the dragons “taking care of” the riders? The entire point of the HTTYD franchise is a partnership between dragon and rider — they take care of each other. It’s not like Toothless is a Pokemon, battling to the point of unconsciousness purely on behalf of his owner. The eleventh-hour redefining of Hiccup and Toothless’s friendship doesn’t sit right, especially in the middle of a scene meant to be a tearjerker because that friendship is ending.

In an attempt to make the ending bittersweet, a wedding between Hiccup and Astrid is shoehorned into the epilogue. This would have been fine — it’s an animated fantasy film, weddings are par the course — if it were not built up throughout the movie as something they should do. Yes, at the ripe old age of 21, Hiccup and Astrid’s reluctance to get married is portrayed as something peculiar they need to work through. I thought we were past the point, as a society, where 21-year-olds needed to get married ASAP — but really, what’s a happy ending without marriage and babies?

The film also tries to get an emotional oomph out of Stoick longing to find the Hidden World all along and telling Baby Hiccup about it. This is the kind of thing that would have come up in the first two films. For example, when Stoick is raving about finding the Nest as his ultimate dragon-fighting goal. Or at some point in the debate over Hiccup’s penchant for exploring the Archipelago. This is a lazy retcon, a transparent excuse to get Stoick into the film, largely at the expense of developing Valka’s character further.

I’ve seen the film’s epilogue praised as the most powerful moment in the film. Which is fair, the “share the wonder with the next generation” shtick is a very effective one, used to great effect everywhere from the Very Potter trilogy to New Girl. But in this instance, the epilogue completely negates the entire emotional arc of the film!

We’ve just spent 90 minutes on the premise that dragons had to be hidden away from the world for their own safety (for very ill-defined reasons). We just cried about Hiccup and Toothless parting because they had to (for very ill-defined reasons). Well, ta-da, it’s not as serious as all that! Hiccup and Toothless get to frolic in the clouds with the next generation as if nothing had happened.

Are we meant to assume that the world is now safe (about a decade later)? Are we meant to understand that Hiccup and Stormfly are the exception to the dragons’ self-imposed exile? (Which would be kind of awful on behalf of all the other characters.) Or are we just meant to wave away all logic, because we’re too busy feeling things?

In all, HTTYD3 illustrates all the problems that come when you write backwards from the conclusion, instead of finding a satisfying conclusion for the story you’re telling. The HTTYD franchise set itself up to be scrutinized by raising the bar so very high: the stories, characters, and world were all developed well enough to withstand scrutiny. And this installment does not hold up at all in the face of scrutiny. Hiccup and Toothless deserved a better sendoff than the one they got.