How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

With The Hidden World, the How to Train Your Dragon series wraps up what has been a beautifully made and at times surprisingly mature trilogy of films. Never receiving the praise or box office of a Pixar film and lacking the hip energy of, say, Into the Spiderverse, the Dragon films have nevertheless consistently provided excellent character design and world-class animation while telling stories about friendship, loyalty, self-acceptance, and loss.

 

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World picks up a year after the end of the last film. Hiccup, the skinny, least-likely Viking ever, has been chief since the death of his father. In that time, his cliff-side village has become both a dragon utopia and wildly overcrowded. This problem is compounded as Hiccup is pressured by his friends to propose to his longtime girlfriend, even though he doesn’t feel ready. These domestic concerns take a backseat as a team of warlords who want to create a dragon army hires Grimmel the Grisly, the dragon hunter who supposedly killed every night fury dragon on the planet except for Toothless, Hiccup’s best friend and protector. All of these problems motivate Hiccup to seek out the Hidden World, a long-rumored place beyond the edge of the map where dragons live undisturbed by humans who either want to kill, exploit, or domesticate them.

So the film is a quest – partly to find a place where Hiccup’s beloved dragons can be safe but partly for Hiccup to become the kind of person who can let those dragons go if that’s what it takes for them to be protected.

As has been the case with the previous two films, The Hidden World addresses some surprisingly mature themes and hides them beneath exciting dragon attacks and ridiculous humor. The films have dealt with physical disability and death as Hiccup lost a leg in the first film and his father was killed in the second. The third film is largely about maturity when it comes to making relationship decisions. Though he’s riddled with insecurity as he compares himself to his literally larger-than-life father, Hiccup withstands the pressure from his village to get married and rule as a royal couple simply because he knows he’s not ready. In an animated fantasy world, for marriage to not be the automatic solution to a problem is still kind of unusual. Later, when Hiccup has to make decisions about standing on his own as a leader and what to do with Toothless and the other dragons he’s spent so much time protecting, the choices he makes feel earned and heartfelt.

In addition to its narrative strengths, The Hidden World manages to improve on the already magnificent imagery and cinematography of the last film. The flying sequences, in particular the one when Hiccup and Astrid discover the entry to the Hidden World, are thrilling and tactile.

As ever, the character design and animation of Toothless, the dragon that seems to be part cat, part dog, a little bit of koala bear, and a smidgen of toddler mixed with snake, is wonderful. Toothless doesn’t speak and yet his body language and facial expressions convey everything an audience needs to know. The sequences of him meeting, flirting with, and wooing a newly discovered light fury are completely wordless, and yet are touching and hilarious. They are excellent examples of technology being used to create art.

The film ends with a flash forward and seeing how several of the major characters end up some years down the line. Like everything else in the How to Train Your Dragon films, the sequence is beautifully made – it’s funny, exciting, touching, and a joy to look at. If you can watch it without tearing up just a little, you’re a stronger person than me.

I’m a little sad that Hidden World marks the end of a series I’ve enjoyed so thoroughly, but I appreciate the integrity and artistry with which the films were made.