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How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
Starring: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Cate Blanchett
Director: Dean DeBlois
Genre: Animation
Rating: PG
RUNTIME: 104 Mins
Five years ago, I was a fresh-faced, long-haired young lad sitting down in Saar cinema to review his first film for GulfWeekly.
Still a youthful intern back then, who spent his days shadowing chief reporter Mai like a little lost child and receiving orders barked sharply from Editor Stan’s office (a practice still observed … just with less obedience), I must admit I didn’t think I would be here at the end of the decade still sat in the same cinema screen having notched up more than 200 reviews.
So why choose now to indulge you readers in a little nostalgia trip? After all, this is the FilmWeekly page and not Kristian’s BlogWeekly. I promise that your regularly scheduled programme will be with you very shortly (indeed, in the next paragraph), but there aren’t many opportunities for me to take it all in and offer some personal musings.
The reasoning is simple. The film I sat down to review that day in 2014 was How to Train Your Dragon 2. Now, seemingly half a lifetime later, the third and final film in the trilogy brings both this fantastic series and my own personal career full circle.
What a joy (and occasional heart-wrenching sadness) this movie is to behold, too. Usually, we’d like the appearance of a threequel to mean: ‘Hey, here are all the cool ideas we couldn’t wedge into the first two’ but the cold reality almost always starts with: ‘We think there’s more money to be made!’
But sometimes, there are organically convincing extenders, and in the animation world, those exceptions include Toy Story 3 – arguably that series’ crowning achievement – and now How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, writer-director Dean DeBlois’ delightful, gorgeous and touchingly conclusive third adaptation of author Cressida Cowell’s fantastical universe of Vikings and fire-breathers.
That the third one doesn’t disappoint is hardly surprising, since over two movies so far, DeBlois’s enriching approach has been to treat the story of scrappy Viking scion Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) and his trusted dragon partner Toothless as a carefully-seeded trilogy with the emotional contours of a coming-of-age epic.
There’s plenty of change already on the island village of Berk which, under Hiccup’s young reign as chieftain, has been transformed from a quaint cliffside community into a colourful, if increasingly crowded haven for dragons and Vikings living together. Rescuing the flying, flame-spewing creatures from captivity is still foremost on Hiccup’s mind, thanks to the caring influence of his sanctuary-minded mother Valka (Cate Blanchett) and, of course, the considerable abilities of Toothless.
But when it comes to turning his romantic relationship with Astrid (America Ferrara), in every way an equal partner in ruling Berk, into something permanent, Hiccup’s name still suits him.
Two new figures – one enchanting, one menacing – are the catalysts to the friendship/leadership tests that comprise The Hidden World. The dazzling creature addition is something called a Light Fury, an alabaster-coloured dragon, whose non-domesticated allure (she’s suspicious of humans) turns the normally intrepid Toothless into a hesitant suitor for her affections.
The new villain, meanwhile, is a long-faced, evil trapper named Grimmel the Grisly (a suitably snarly F Murray Abraham), whose ultimate aim with dragons is either extinction or subjugation. His machinations, the series’ starkest representation yet of its anti-animal cruelty soul, push the characters toward discovering the titular utopia, which doesn’t disappoint as rendered by this movie’s accomplished team of designers and animators.
It’s one of the hallmarks of these movies that photorealistic beauty and otherworldly awe are so well meshed, never more so than in how the dragons are realised, forgoing Disney-fied anthropomorphism for a kind of non-human authenticity in movement and behaviour.
It means Toothless, his destiny now as essential to the saga’s as Hiccup’s, is as richly conceived a character as any of the humans, which include returning Vikings Eret (Kit Harrington) and Stoick (Gerard Butler) in flashback, and other comic-relief figures. Their antics are, as ever, more hit-and-miss than consistently funny, but as humorous stitching between set pieces go, they at least never detract from the general thrust of the movie.
In fact, as DeBlois engineers this tale towards an expectedly exciting and poignant conclusion, one realises how well that cleverly misdirecting title How to Train Your Dragon has morphed from literal to figurative, from being about command and obeisance to handling the turmoil within.
As a Bildungsroman franchise goes, this is best-in-class and the third instalment rounds things off perfectly with some of the finest animation ever put on the big screen.
Many times during the movie, I was transported back to that youthful time when I, Beardless, thought I had the best job in the world. I quickly learned that not every film was Oscar-worthy and there’s been a fair few stinkers in my time, but that’s all part of the fun of this job.
Hiccup and Toothless have grown up and come-of-age – a journey which many of my friends and family say I am yet to complete! As for my writing, that’s for you, dear readers, to decide, but as long as you keep coming back to read my opinion, whether you agree or vehemently oppose it, then that’s good enough for me.
Now showing in: Cineco, Oasis Juffair, Saar, Wadi Al Sail, Avenues, Seef II
Kristian’s verdict: 5/5
