The First Reviews of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD Are In and It Sounds Like a Winner!
I’m a huge fan of DreamWorks Animation’s How To Train Your Dragon franchise, and it all comes to an end with How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. I was hoping that this final film in the franchise would close it out perfectly, and it sounds like that’s exactly what it’s going to do!
The first reviews for the film have arrived online, and they’ve got me even more excited to see this movie because the reviews are super positive!
I’ve shared some excerpts from some of the reviews below that highlight the greatness the movie delivers.
CNET: “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is a near perfect trilogy ender, safely landing an occasionally kid-unfriendly dragon ride. A story about a boy and his best friend, its timeless values are delivered with spades of wit and epic adventure. After three brilliant rides, we bid farewell to one of the best film trilogies of all time.”
THR: “ Pulling off a rare three-peat, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is a tender, spirited coming-of-age CG-animated feature that proves every bit as emotionally resonant and artistically rendered as its 2010 and 2014 predecessors, if not even more so.
“It turns out Hiccup isn’t the only one to have matured over the past several years since we last saw him — so, too, have the opulent, computer-generated visuals, which have always been a hallmark of the franchise. Here, the technology reaches notably impressively detailed new levels, from the wispy stubble on Hiccup’s chin to cascading waterfalls, and, most notably, photo-realistically flickering flames, all gorgeously bathed in light and shadow with the assistance of visual consultant Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins (Blade Runner 2049).”
Variety: “From its inception, this series has insisted on a widescreen style different from other animated features, attempting to map the live-action idea of ‘magic hour’ onto virtual landscapes and stylized human figures. Here, the visuals outdo anything we’ve seen before, to such a degree that we might almost overlook the subtler innovations in the character animation: the nuances of expression on both the human and reptilian faces, and the wonderful nonverbal tactics these artists use to convey emotional intricacies neither Hiccup nor Toothless have had to communicate before, all of which pays off in an unforgettable final scene.
“This is uncharted territory for cartoons. No matter how Pixar spins it — about waiting until the right idea comes along to continue the story — from Finding Dory to last year’s The Incredibles 2, toon sequels have always been driven by financial considerations. Granted, Dragons 3 (as DWA staffers refer to the film internally) was hardly made for charitable reasons, but there’s an integrity to DeBlois’ approach that won’t be lost on audiences.”
The Wrap: “The first movie, released in 2010, was a boy-and-animal-friend story built on childhood wonder; the second (from 2014) told an adolescent adventure about maturation and legacy; the third, fusing the cute and the dark that has so far marked this franchise’s growth, makes for a satisfying exploration of the ways adulthood invariably means both new horizons and leaving some things, and some ways of thinking, behind.
“It gives The Hidden World the feeling of something in between an installment and a sequel, a kind of heartwarming drop-in on beloved characters and eye-popping creatures — fantastic beasts, indeed — plus a reviving tour of familiar environs, all with the promise that it’s all heading somewhere exciting and meaningful. In this case, it’s a story built around a long-assumed mythological realm at the edge of the world where dragons live in peace.”
Screen Daily: “Capping off a lively and warm-hearted trilogy, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World delivers a crowd-pleasing finale to this beloved animated franchise. An eccentric community of Vikings, the colourful dragons they’ve learned to live with and love, and swooping aerial imagery all combine in this affectionate farewell to the popular series. And if it seems like DreamWorks is bowing out of a box office success a little early, knowing when to let go of something you care about is also one of the film’s main themes.”
IndieWire: “Having long since taught us how to train our dragons, DreamWorks’ franchise has moved on to bigger — and, it turns out, better — things. Rare is the animated sequel not part of the ‘Toy Story’ mythos to justify its existence to anyone other than the kiddos, and yet ‘How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World’ manages to do that by ending the now-complete trilogy on a high note.”
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is set to be released on February 22nd, 2019, and I couldn’t be more excited to see how the story comes to an end. It great to hear from these first reviews that it delivers a film that fans are going to love.