The adventures of Hiccup and his dragon Toothless conclude in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. A year after being made chieftain of Berk, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), along with Astrid (America Ferrera), Snotlout (Jonah Hill), Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig), and Tuffnut (Justin Rupple), have set it among themselves to rescue dragons from hunters and bring them back home to Berk. However, Berk has now become quite crowed and new threat arises in the form of the extremely clever dragon hunter Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham). A possible solution comes from stories Hiccup was told as a kid by his father Stoick (Gerard Butler), which tells of a hidden world where all dragons come from. Hiccup decides to try and move the population of Berk to the hidden world and along the way, his Night Fury dragon Toothless comes across and falls for a female Light Fury.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World completes the trilogy of animated adventures that began with the original How to Train Your Dragon back in 2010. Following a much darker second entry, the plot lightens up quite a bit in this third film, which focuses greatly on the romance between the Night Fury Toothless and the female Light Fury. However, the film still features a thrilling adventure with a very cunning adversary in the form of Grimmel. The plot also deals with Hiccup’s growing responsibilities as chieftain of Berk and his fear that he is helpless without Toothless. Thankfully, he has the help and support from his girlfriend Astrid, mother Valka (Cate Blanchett), adviser Gobber (Craig Ferguson), and former dragon hunter Eret (Kit Harington).
2014’s How to Train Your Dragon 2 set a very high bar for animated films, with its very impressive visuals and its dark and somewhat bleak plot. However, this third chapter of the trilogy opts to play it safe with a much more family friendly plot with lower stakes, albeit one that still has a fair level of thrills, including a decent turn by F. Murray Abraham as the voice of the new villain Grimmel. In addition, being the final chapter of the trilogy, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World manages to seriously pull on your heartstrings, as it wraps up the story of a boy and his dragon that began nine years ago.
Altogether, I have to say that How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World does a pretty good job of concluding this animated saga, even if the film doesn’t quite reach the same highs as the previous film.