By Audrey Martin
In children’s movies, we are starting to see more and more computer animation as seen in movies like Frozen and Wreck it Ralph and less of the traditional hand-drawn animation of old as shown in Snow White and today’s movie review is no different. We’re taking a look at DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World. This movie is a heartwarming farewell to the How to Train Your Dragon series and I’m glad the series has ended – not that it was a bad series or anything, far from it – but because it ended on a high note, as proven by how well the movie did in its first weekend as it soared its way to the top in the box office.
So, what’s this story about? The story is the continuation of an unlikely friendship between an adolescent Viking and a fearsome Night Fury dragon over the span of their lifetime. By this point, we see our Viking named Hiccup, now as Chief of his village alongside his partner, Astrid, has since created a beautifully chaotic dragon utopia. However, the utopia is soon threatened as a female Light Fury comes along. This happens at the darkest part of the village’s history, causing everyone to lose the only home that Hiccup and the rest of the villagers have ever known. They have left in
attempts to find another world that may only exist in mythology. They continue to fight side by side until the very end, but unfortunately, like every story, this fight must come to an end as we see the villagers and dragons part ways. But we see as the years pass, that Astrid and Hiccup are now married and have kids of their own. We see them traveling by boat and watch as they run into their old friend Toothless and find out that Hiccup and Toothless are both fathers. The two rekindle an old friendship and both Toothless and his mate fly in the sky with Hiccup, Astrid, and their children on their backs for old times sake.
And that’s where the movie ends. Is the movie perfect? No. Does it have its problems? Sure. The problem that I had with the movie was with one of the twins, Tuffnut. He was annoying and kind of obnoxious. I don’t know if he was meant to be written that way or not. But, he was one of my least favorite characters in the franchise. However, the thing that I loved was the computer animation. Computer animation technology has come such a long way in the past ten years. For example, there is a scene where Toothless and his mate are in the early stages of their bonding time at a beach and the sand looks absolutely phenomenal! I love how photo-realistic it looks and the colors are insanely beautiful.
The humor in this was great too! Like the time Toothless was trying to woo his mate, there was a back and forth between him and Hiccup as Hiccup was silently helping Toothless. Also, at times there were funny misunderstandings like Toothless doing the thriller dance. Even though I did find Tuffnut pretty annoying, there was a particular time where he got me to chuckle. There was a time after Hiccup and his gang came from a mission to save more dragons from the bad guys, they realize that they left his twin
sister named Ruffnut behind. They panic as Tuffnut quips: “What is she going to do, talk them to death?” Then, the movie literally cuts to the next scene of her talking the bad
guys to death.
Overall, I give this a 4.5/ 5 hands.