REVIEW: How to Train Your Dragon
The third and last entry in the How to Train Your Dragon series takes the epic narrative to its mature and considered conclusion.
Hiccup and his dragon, Toothless, rule Berk which is becoming unfit for purposes. Resembling his idea of a utopia where humans and dragons live side by side, with little space left and its vulnerability to attack, it is clear the island’s inhabitants must move.
Remembering a myth told to him by his dad as a child, Hiccup decides to look for the Hidden World where dragons are rumoured to live in safety, away from those who would hunt them.
Grimmel, one such dragon hunter, is enlisted by a group of warlords to capture Toothless. They gift him a female Fury to lure the alpha away from his pack, with the intent of separating the dragon from Hiccup.
Love and duty take centre stage as the leaders of Berk question how sustainable their current situation is. As people continue to hunt dragons, keeping them all in one place no longer makes sense, but the island nation has become used to this way of life.
Taking the position of leader becomes a question of identity as Hiccup wonders if he still wields influence even without his dragon to back him up.
Against Grimmel, the arc of the series is clear. Hiccup was raised to fight dragons and could have become Grimmel, but instead chose to unite the two species. These ideologies cannot co-exist, and while the visual stakes were higher in How to Train Your Dragon 2, a war of ideas is one that cannot pass in a ninety minute story. Something has got to give, and in The Hidden World, here is a film that never shies away from what must happen.
Emotional and epic, it brings to an end one of the 21st century’s best trilogies in a beautiful fashion.
By Scott Wilson
