Sintel

A young girl by the name of Sintel befriends an injured baby dragon, who she calls Scales, only to have it snatched away one day by an another adult dragon. She goes on a quest to reclaim her friend and endures many hardships along the way.

The third Blender Foundation movie, made to both drive development and showcase the power of Blender, an open source 3D modelling package. You can watch it here. Like previous BF movies Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny, the main drive is the visuals. This time, however, the team focused on telling a much richer story, and it shows, having a very deep story for the short run time. There is a rather tragic twist near the end, though, which has a tendency to upset certain viewers.

---

This short features examples of:

• All There in the Manual: The city we see in the film is called Ishtar, according to notations in the concept art. They also have names and roles for the gatekeeper barbarians (although only one is seen in the film).
• Androcles' Lion: Subverted. This is how Sintel meets Scales. It's also why the adult Scales hesitates just long enough for Sintel to deliver the death-blow
• Bittersweet Ending: Although Scales dies, we see the baby dragon following after Sintel at the end.
• Collapsing Lair
• Curtains Match the Window: Sintel
• Determinator: Sintel, definitely.
• DVD Bonus Content: And how! Four discs with the film in NTSC, PAL, and HD in multiple formats, 7 commentaries, multiple tutorials about using Blender, an hour long documentary, and all of the source files required to remake the film.
• Evil Weapon: Sort of. It's not intelligent, but the spear Sintel claims from the barbarian has "shed much innocent blood." Unintentionally, she uses it to shed some more.
• Fingerless Gloves: Sintel
• Foreshadowing: See Evil Weapon above.
• She Who Fights Monsters
• Irony
• Karmic Twist Ending: Sintel is so intent on getting Scales back and taking revenge on the big dragon that she spends 20 years hunting them down and doesn't realize until it's too late that the big dragon is actually Scales. The ending song has a line:

And when you see all that I have seen / Can you tell me love from pride?

• Load-Bearing Boss: Adult Scales.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Sintel at the end.
• Oh Crap: When Sintel realizes that she just killed Scales.
• Our Dragons Are Different: It seems that dragons are predatory animals with "earthly" life-spans that tend to breathe fire instead of the "usual" superintelligent creatures that live for thousands of years.
• Perma Stubble: The creators had some fun with this in a paint-over of Sintel's concept art.
• Production Throwback: Characters make appearances from both of the Blender Foundations previous shorts. In the market scene, you can clearly see Proog from Elephants Dream, and the butterflies in the bamboo forest are just a Palette Swap of the ones from Big Buck Bunny.
• Redheaded Heroine: Sintel.
• Rule of Cute: Baby dragons.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Sintel goes all that way to not only fail in her quest, but accidentally kills Scales herself.
• Someone to Remember Him By: After the cave collapses, Scales' new son follows Sintel as she leaves, just before the credits.
• Tears of Remorse: Sintel sheds them after she realizes that she had killed Scales.
• Time Skip: A very subtle one.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Sintel doesn't realize how much time has passed until she sees her reflection in Scales' spilt blood.