Well I don't know - I didn't really use Blender before 2.5 (maybe they tested the new sculpting, painting, multi-resolution stuff in it). Just for what other reason should they have preferred the tree over things like some actual dialogue with the old man? The way it is the tree makes no sense and adds nothing to the story despite looking cool. Still it's not just a nice setting like that ruin Sintel runs up while Scales is chasing the birds but the movie totally fails to communicate anything about that so they in my opinion should rather have done something that actually adds to the story or the atmosphere instead of this "Wow - a tree on the weapon!", "Wow - it's the actual tree!", "Wow - the dragon cave is right next to it!"...


The collapsing cave of course doesn't ruin the movie but for me it's the cherry on the cake in terms of a cheap and random story. On the one hand it's a cheap cliché and on the other hand they made it a stupid turn of events as the cave of course waits with its collapse until the dragon is dead and the "Now we reveal her true look"-scene has finished. It doesn't make any sense but just happens because the authors felt like this should happen now. It also doesn't really help the atmosphere as it pulls you out of the mood in order to be put into it again with the ending scene. From an emotional point of view (and that's what the movie in my opinion aims at) it would have been way better if she would have had a scene with the corpse. They rather chose to interrupt the entire scene setting with that "stupid" collapsing cave...


Well my complaint is that the movie throws random events together and doesn't think things to the end. I gave all the examples for it like the apple box nobody cares for, the disappearing chicken, the decision to search for Scales (the movie lacks to tell the reasons for it as it would seem Scales got picked up again by his parents - at least the movie gives no other reason for dragons flying around in order to take baby dragons with them) and all that stuff around the tree and the cave...

To me this really are major flaws as they pretty much kill any flow of the story which now consists of a collage of random scenes. Those flaws are different to the minor things you easily can ignore. Like for example that the old man tells that she's in the realm of dragons or something and the tree seems to be the symbol for it but in the end it's just a cave with one dragon the tree really relates to so why would you give this "realm" that symbol (and who was that bandit anyway that he had such a weapon)? Things like that are negligible though and you cannot expect that things are either explained or even thought through for such a simple short movie project. The scenes you present should make sense though and deliver a good story telling which is where Sintel in my opinion really is lacking...