How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)

writ and dir. Dean DeBlois
based on Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon book series
feat. Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, F. Murray Abraham, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler

Hiccup and all his human and dragon pals are back, this time to run for their lives from overzealous dragon hunters. Continuing the storyline of the more compelling saga of dragons in current day media, Hiccup and his pals now go about freeing dragons from bad men and give them a home in their overcrowded village. When they cross the wrong baddies, the master slayer of Night Furies, Grimmel (F Murray Abraham drawn to look so much like Ciaran Hinds I mistook him for the wrong long face) enters the picture, aiming to wipe out our dragon loving clan, with a special targe on Toothless, perhaps the last male Night Fury. As bait, enters a white feminine Night Fury, termed Light Fury for the sake of delineation. 

Hiccup, now leader of the village, makes the bold move of picking up the whole town and moving them in search of the mythical, perhaps nonexistent Hidden World, a dragon paradise where supposedly dragons live in peace and harmony. Along the way, they find a new temporary home and wrangle with the budding love of the Night Furies, soon inseparable, and dangerous for all as Grimmel sets his traps to take his Night Fury prize and return dragons to the largely incompetent evil men. 

The third installment of HtTYD manages the same alchemy as the first, recognizing the beauty of these creatures and their worlds, and allowing the high flying beasts to soar quietly and elegantly for dreamy passages that always outflew Avatar in breathtaking fanciful flights. The design of an endless array of dragons dazzles and overwhelms, blasting a broad palette and a range from oafish beasts to spritely little bombs of color and fire. 

And the story rides high as well, the future of our longtime heroic couple essentially certain, their support and appreciation of each other recognized and demonstrated in a fashion that allows them to both be young folks growing up and mature leaders of dragon-loving cartoon Vikings. And with them, we have even younger love, as expressed between the Night Furies, their own adolescent fumblings untarnished by bad dialogue, instead played out through amusing bouts of courtship and high flying acrobatics, fueled by the teleporting talents of the breed. 

As our humans track the progress and changes happening to their reptilian pals, the story takes it up another notch, one disregarded by most animated films. If your steed and pet can communicate, live, and love, then how can it remain your trusty mount? Shouldn’t it be treated like an equal and permitted to have its own life? It’s a satisfying turn and avoids any of the common tropes of finding a special world and immediately wrestling with the imminent risks of opening paradise to darker forces. 

The film holds onto charm and smarts better than most animated features and though it suffers for having to carry the herd of doofus characters established as foils to Hiccup in the first film (and book, I presume), often running them in the most obvious directions, even those D stories have a few highlights and don’t douse the fire that the film fuels the rest of the time. Cheers to the creative team and keeping one director (Dean DeBlois) for all three installments.