"Artemis Fowl" Gets Right What "How to Train Your Dragon" Gets Wrong (Spoiler Alert)

I enjoyed How to Train Your Dragon. Cute film. The one point of the movie that I needed to ignore, is what happens when Hiccup cuts the injured dragon ("Toothless") loose from being twisted up in the net. Toothless begins to attack Hiccup, but then lets him live.

It would be a shorter, less enjoyable movie if Toothless didn't show mercy to Hiccup in response to the mercy Hiccup showed the dragon, but we all know that you can't release an injured, wild animal and expect it to be grateful to you. If it doesn't run away, it will attack.

Better this from Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl:

"The troll was concussed, blinded by blood and lame. A normal person would feel a shard of remorse, but not Butler. He'd seen too many men gored by injured animals. Now was the dangerous time. It was no time for mercy, it was time to terminate with extreme prejudice."

Exactly.