“How to Train your Dragon: The Hidden World” is an endcap on a trilogy of excellent animated movies, based off a series of books. People who are familiar with the prior movies will have no problem seeing the same characters grow based on new experiences. Without seeing the first two movies, you may a little lost on arrival into a well-developed world of ancient Vikings and Dragons. But, fear not, because the same care has gone into this movie to make it a fun and colorful escape into a fantasy world of Berk. This fantastical place is the small Viking village that used to fear the awful Dragons – but has since come to love them.
Berk is led by young Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), who was the chief’s son. His meeting and friendship with a rare type of Night Fury Dragon (called Toothless) was the key that changed everyone’s lives around. His best friend (and love interest) is Astrid (America Ferrera) who is also enamored with Hiccup – if he would just make up his mind and ask her to marry him. These two have a large group of friends who will go out in night-time raiding parties. But they go after the evil Dragon poachers, and they get tired of losing all the Dragons that they capture. Hiccup and his crew will free all the Dragons that they find and allow them to stay at Berk. However, the small village is overloaded with Dragons, and now it has become a target for the Dragon poachers.
The Dragon poachers find an even more evil Dragon Hunter named Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham). He has control over a vary rare Dragon, called the White Fury. This is a female counterpoint to Toothless (he is a Night Fury). Grimmel uses the White Fury to lure Toothless out of the safety of Berk. The people living in Berk decide to go out and look for a mythical place called the ‘Hidden World’. It is where untold number of Dragons could live in peace, away from any Dragon poachers. The poachers and Grimmel are out to capture all the Berk Dragons, so they quickly into pursuit of the villagers. Hiccup and Astrid lead a raid on Grimmel’s hideout, but they are nearly captured.
Hiccup and Astrid then go with Toothless, and they locate the Hidden World. It is an amazing kaleidoscope of colorful Dragons, all types and shapes that can be imagined. Toothless and his new-found love (the White Fury) will be able to stay here forever. But before that happens, the evil Grimmel comes to hunt down Toothless and all his surrounding Dragons in Berk. They all converge to a final battle, to see who will able to claim victory. The Berkians (Berkshires?) all fight against the bad Dragon poachers and the evil Grimmel, with Dragons spouting fire and cannonballs a-flying. It all becomes it little like “Game of Thrones” there for a minute. Just Kidding! It will wrap up a three-movie series with the most touching and emotionally poignant ending that it can muster.
“How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World’ is very artistic creation full of creative images of Dragons, Hidden Worlds, seaside villages like Berk and rows and rows of Viking boats sailing on the sea. Many of the shots look so beautiful because Roger Deakins was a ‘Visual Consultant’ on this film. The voice acting talent is very well suited for the characters. Most of the same people were used from the prior films. Dean DeBlois is also the same director, now over three movies. Also, John Powell composed the score form each of these movies. There is a lot of consistency here, and it leads to very good things, indeed.
The movie series franchise for the “How To Train Your Dragon” comes to closure now. All things must come to an end, and you could not ask for a more rousing, yet touching, end to this series.
