How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

For me, the “How to Train Your Dragon” series has been something that was always around but not particularly good. That’s what I’ve thought for a long time, but now, while I still don’t think it’s the greatest, I realize there is something special about these animated movies.

I’ll admit, I haven’t seen the second installment in the series, or I’ve seen it a long time ago. Either way, I don’t remember it well, so there were a few things in the latest movie that didn’t make complete sense to me, but I managed to put it all together by the end, and none of those issues affected my enjoyment of the movie.

The latest is “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World”, and it follows the adventures of Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), an intrepid young viking, and his dragon, Toothless, as they escape dragon hunters, protect each other, and find a refuge for lots more dragons (but none as special as Toothless). There are a couple of subplots involving Hiccup letting Toothless go and Hiccup marrying fellow dragon-rider Astrid (America Ferrera).

Writer and director Dean DeBlois has a few too many storylines and themes to juggle, which winds up leaving the movie with some unexplored concepts and a few gaps of logic. The movie doesn’t do a great job maintaining its own verisimilitude.

The villain is Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham, clearly having fun), who is a dragon-hunter. He wants to capture and kill Toothless because he prides himself in having killed all of the nightfuries. First off, it’s entirely unexplained where he comes from or how he got involved in the story. He joins up with some dragon-hunter lords out of nowhere, with apparently no motivation for doing so. When we first meet him, he does not know of the existence of Toothless. Anyway, these dragon-lords also have a nightfury, but Grimmel doesn’t care about killing that one, only Toothless. He also acts as though Toothless was the last nightfury in the world when he knows the dragon-lords have one as well. Or maybe he’s just sexist because the other nightfury is female and is really a lightfury. Who am I to say?

Grimmel also wields a crossbow with poisoned darts to take down dragons. That seems to be his only effective method at doing so, yet he is treated as a terrifying new threat by our heroes. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s because I don’t remember the second movie, but how can one man force an entire dragon population of hundreds to go into cages? The dragon power levels seem quite strange, and Grimmel was winning with basically an arrow. None of the power dynamics make sense to me. He also has to have scary-looking dragons because he’s the villain, of course.

The other, more important, problem is that there are interesting ideas that go mostly unexplored. The best one is something that Grimmel says to Hiccup, “You’re nothing without your dragon.” The line appears in the trailer as well, and it seemed to be one of the main themes of the movie. But it’s not. There is only one time Hiccup is on his own and has to do something, and that situation ends up being resolved in less than five minutes. In one scene, Toothless is captured, and in the very next, Hiccup and friends are rescuing him. That would have been a great theme of humanity managing on its own without dragonkind, but it is never fully realized.

Additionally, a few crucial plot actions happen too fast. Every time that Hiccup lays forth a plan, Tuffnut (T.J. Miller), jokingly says, “I’m with him! Who else?” It’s not funny, but it wouldn’t have been annoying if the scenes kept playing. But they don’t. Every time he says that, the movie cuts to the proposed action being executed. This is especially bothersome in a town meeting early on in the movie, when Hiccup asks the entire viking village to leave their home in search of a place most of them don’t think exists (the hidden world). We get the sense that most of the villagers are against Hiccup. Then, Tuffnut says his line and we cut to a scene of them all flying away towards a new home. What? It would have made sense to have a heroic scene where all of the villagers echo Tuffnut’s sentiment, but we don’t. And, to make matters worse, once they all land on another island on their way to the the hidden world, the villagers are still against going there. Soooooooo, were they all forced to follow Hiccup?

One last complaint is of the humor. Aside from Abraham, Ferrera, and Craig Ferguson as the ineffable Gobber, the cast is more annoying than funny. Baruchel is just doing his best Bill Hader impression and doesn’t bring much to the table. Cate Blanchett has a blandly written character. Tuffnut and Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig) are incredibly annoying and they are never funny. Jonah Hill’s character Snotlout has one storyline involving his love of Cate Blanchett’s Valka. Valka is Hiccup’s mother, and Snotlout is Hiccup’s friend. This age gap makes that whole plot point uncomfortable and not funny because it's never treated as that strange.

The movie on the whole is unfunny. There is only one good joke, involving Gobber and a certain type of dragon. I didn’t laugh once the entire movie. Maybe it’s because I’m not exactly the target demographic, but this stuff might not be funny to younger kids, either. One of the worst offenders is this “joke”: Hiccup sees the female nightfury and wants to call it ‘brightfury’ because it’s skin is white instead of black. Astrid says no, we should call it ‘lightfury’. And Hiccup acts as if his name was terrible when he says, ‘yeah, your name is much better’, in a dumb, belittling way. What’s the joke? Is ‘brightfury’ really that awful of a name? I had to think about this one for a while.

For all my naysaying, there are a lot of good things about the movie. It’s well made, to say the least, and at least the plot is coherent if not foolproof. The editing is mostly pretty good, the script is well paced, and there is a deeper theme of immigration that is honestly quite good, mostly because it’s very subtle.

There is a plot line about Toothless’ romance with the lightfury that I found quite interesting. There are a lot of scenes of just the two of them, and while it isn’t exactly riveting, I found it so unique because for once, in an animated movie, there are scenes of two non-speaking characters that are allowed to play out. This isn’t Disney, where all the animals talk. You can actually follow the actions of the dragons pretty well, and it’s great to have scenes without dialogue.

There are three great things about this movie: the score, the visuals, and the emotion.

The score is just really, really good. It is heroic when it needs to be, soaring when the movie requires it, epic to match the cinematography, and even viking-ish at times. And the main theme of the “How to Train Your Dragon” series isn’t even played until the end. When it is, it blows your mind.

The best way to describe the animation in the movie is striking. The lighting is perfect in every scene, and there are tons of sweeping vistas of dragons flying against the sky that could be paintings. The colors strike the right balance between muted and popping (there are a lot of browns and grays, though), and the action is mostly easy to follow (although not always).

Finally, this movie is a great finale. I don’t know if it’s the last in its series, but I think it was supposed to be. And I hope it is, because what an ending. Seeing Hiccup in a beard is enough to pack a wallop, but the real treat is (SPOILERS) seeing Hiccup and his viking friends let their dragons go. That scene is incredible and awe-inspiring. The last piece is the score, which uses the main theme at just the right moment to remind that this is the last of the franchise.

“How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” may not be cinematic mastery, but I, for one, am glad it exists.

{★★½☆}