How to Train Your Drag­on: The Hid­den World

Return­ing to the land of Berk some four years after film two, it would seem noth­ing but Hiccup’s facial hair has changed in the world’s first ​“viking-drag­on utopia”. The one-legged leader (voiced by a jit­tery Jay Baruchel) strives to main­tain peace with­in his hodge­podge com­mu­ni­ty, a dream quick­ly upend­ed by the arrival of Grim­mel (F Mur­ray Abra­ham), a rogue drag­on hunter has his eyes on Hiccup’s leath­ery drag­on, Toothless.

Where Hic­cup teeters on the precipice of life, Tooth­less jumps in feet first, a com­i­cal con­trast of spir­it that gives the fran­chise its appeal. Mean­while Grim­mel, with his shock of sil­ver hair and aquiline fea­tures, proves the inevitable span­ner in the works, forc­ing the dwellers of Berk to make one final fight or flight deci­sion: take on the ene­my or abscond to The Hid­den World, a secret oasis where they can dis­ap­pear for good.

It’s a spi­der­web-thin plot stoked by a tepid vil­lain (espe­cial­ly in con­trast with the fatal, dev­as­tat­ing after­math caused by the pre­vi­ous film’s neme­sis), but to sit in this would be miss­ing the point of the film entire­ly. DeBlois is a direc­tor who adores his char­ac­ters and has ded­i­cat­ed over a decade to this boy and his drag­on, from their ten­ta­tive, against-the-odds ori­gins to the com­pli­cat­ed present day, where a new love inter­est for Tooth­less forces Hic­cup to con­sid­er a future with­out his best friend.

The intro­duc­tion of said girl­friend allows Dream­Works Ani­ma­tion to real­ly flex its mus­cles, as the feline, pearles­cent drag­on with a Has­bro glit­ter fin­ish and invis­i­bil­i­ty mode gives the stu­dio an excuse to orches­trate some stun­ning new aero­dy­nam­ic sequences. The ini­tial mat­ing dance in turn is a defin­i­tive scene, as Tooth­less prances clum­si­ly in the sand, mim­ic­k­ing Hiccup’s fran­tic efforts from behind the trees.

Unlike Pixar, whose suc­cess rests on giv­ing voic­es to things that shouldn’t be able to talk, Dream­Works resists the urge to do the same with its drag­ons, instead tak­ing cues from exist­ing ani­mal behav­iour to turn their crea­tures into relat­able char­ac­ters. For the humans, DeBlois does well to utilise the throng of comedic actors at his dis­pos­al (bar TJ Miller, who was clean­ly axed amid sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions), giv­ing Jon­ah Hill, Kris­ten Wiig and Christo­pher Mintz-Plasse their spot­lights as bawdy but love­able young vikings.

The final scenes are imbued with salty sad­ness as the fates of Tooth­less and Hic­cup are sealed, but there’s com­fort in know­ing that a sto­ry patient­ly told over near­ly ten years is now fin­ished, DeBlois putting a cork in his cre­ation instead of suc­cumb­ing to the shiny allure of more sequels. For those invest­ed in the tril­o­gy, this is at the very least a sat­is­fy­ing end­ing, while fresh eyes can enjoy unri­valled crea­ture design and cor­us­cat­ing vis­tas. Where The Hid­den World tri­umphs most, how­ev­er, is in lov­ing its char­ac­ters enough to know when to let them go.