How to Train your Dragon: The Hidden World
Please excuse our lateness of this review! We are covering every Academy Award nominee of 2020, so we’re cleaning up the films we forgot to critique earlier.
So, we’ve reached the end to the mega-fun How to Train your Dragon trilogy which started back in 2010 (wow, that long ago already?). Early last year, The Hidden World was dropped and heavily implied to be the final film in the series. End on a high note. Why not? Well, that hint is the full on truth. This is clearly the end, and Dreamworks went all out to make it a worthy finale. While it is the weakest of the trilogy, it is only barely so. It focuses heavily on continuing the series’ relationship between dragons and vikings (here, Hiccup is attempting to declare a world in which both beings can coexist). It reintroduces the notion of love (d’aww, Toothless is smitten in this one). There’s quite a lot going on, and it can be a bit a bit of a buffet to stomach. What makes the Dragon series so good is how great it is with enhancing the little things within a story. The Hidden World — like the dragons in these works — gets worrisomely high with the amount it tries to do, but it always gets back to a reasonable level. It’s less consistent, but some of the payoffs are richer, so at least there is that.
What makes The Hidden World a lovely opening chapter to a new life is seeing what I consider the Wall-E of Dreamworks: Toothless interacting with a lighter Fury dragon. There is no dialogue. There aren’t many interruptions. There’s only two dragons in love bonding, like a silent film with a score accompanying it. When The Hidden World gets too ambitious, it’s these scenes that get you right in the heart. They’re exquisite. There’s always the token animation this series has delivered, and this third piece is no different. There are moments where The Hidden World decidedly flexes its artistic muscles, and that’s perfectly fine, given the series’ track record with wowing its audience as an experience. Particularly dazzling moments include a flight within a glow-in-the-dark passage, and the fiery, destructive climax. The Hidden World knew what worked throughout the rest of the series, and how to maintain this identity.
Everything that the other two Dragon films succeed at can be found in The Hidden World as well.
This is the mature thing to do. Dreamworks could milk this franchise like they did the Shrek series, especially since How to Train your Dragon is arguably their biggest success. Instead, they realized that they can sell all of the Toothless toys and dragon based merchandise in the world. The film series can end like this. Families can maintain the legacy of these films by passing down their favourite animated series to the next generations. It’s surprisingly restrained by Dreamworks’ standards. The Hidden World is a lovingly made final chapter with the resolution the trilogy deserves. Now, will there be spinoffs? Maybe. All I know is that, for once, an acclaimed and successful family work hasn’t been driven into the ground before it was too late. Good.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.