“How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” the third installment in the film triumvirate, is a visually brilliant series caper steeped in life lessons about friendship, love, and sacrifice. So, why does this final chapter in the story of Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his pet dragon Toothless feel so long in the tooth? The story is both over-caffeinated and bloated, veering frantically from one plot point/setting to another while still narratively stuck in the mud. The individual recurring characters aren’t appreciably developed beyond the previous two movies, a common malady for animated film trilogies. But, there’s a more jarring misstep in “The Hidden World” that not only hampers this film, but also undermines the overarching message of the entire series.
A year following the events in “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” Hiccup remains the leader of Berk, now a bustling viking-dragon melting pot. While Hiccup and his friends remained focused on rescuing other captured dragons and bringing them to safety, Hiccup discounts emerging difficulties in the increasingly overcrowded Berk. Gobbler (Craig Ferguson) asks Hiccup when he’s going to stop worrying about the problems “out there” and fix the problems “in here,” a sentiment straight out of the isolationists playbook.
Warlords sick of Hiccup’s meddling hire noted dragon hunter Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham) to break-up Hiccup’s safe haven, starting with Toothless, the Night Fury alpha who shepherds the other dragons. They gift Grimmel a Light Fury, the pale female counterpart to Night Furies, in order to lure Toothless into captivity and use him to attract and capture other dragons. For his part, Grimmel wants to complete his lifelong mission of ridding the world of the last Night Fury.
The rest of “The Hidden World” revolves around Hiccup coping with Grimmel’s repeated incursions and the burgeoning affections between Toothless and his bae, who originally hails from the Hidden World, the legendary idyllic home of the dragons. Hiccup even affixes Toothless with a new prosthetic tail so he can added flying to his flirtations and, ultimately, have the ability to leave Hiccup’s roost.
The principle point to the “How to Train Your Dragon” series has been peace and coexistence, the utopian subtext that if even humans and dragons can get along, why can’t we? Coming five years following the second film in the series, the third “How to Train Your Dragon” abandons this message, surrendering to the tenets of tribalism and espousing that both peace and happiness can only be found, for now, among your own kind. Writer-director Dean DeBlois dresses up this ideological shift as a gauzy, happily-ever-after conclusion to this saga. It’s actually a reflexive reaction to our zeitgeist. DeBlois isn’t saying the ideals of tolerance and acceptance aren’t possible, but that we’re not ready for it. It’s a way to end the film series, but it’s certainly not how it started.