After a series of events, the Vikings at Berk could then share their space and live together with their ex-arch enemies. That was where the first film left the plot, until the second installment emerged in 2014. In How To Train Your Dragon 2, the story revolves around how Toothless rise up to become an alpha of the dragons. In a series of unfortunate (and fortunate) mishaps, Hiccup lost his beloved father, but was reunited with his long lost mother, Valka (Cate Blanchett). Hence, you won’t see Stoick in The Hidden World anymore, other than in a string of flashbacks.
In The Hidden World, Berk has now evolved into a full blown dragon sanctuary, with the Vikings quickly running out of living space to accommodate for the freshly rescued dragons. Hiccup, now the new Chieftain of Berk, views the increased number of dragons to be a vulnerability, but I view that as an advantage. Who wouldn’t want an endless army of dragons under Toothless’ command?
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Source: Dreamworks
Anyway, Hiccup is determined to find a way so that humans and dragons can live together in perpetual peace, and the appearance of a new, powerful villain just makes his quest that much harder. Well, again, I view those as great opportunities for the crew behind the film to showcase their artistic crafts. Once again, the imagination and world building aspects are stretched far for this installment. Berk’s architecture looks vastly different now since the massive influx of dragons. The hidden world and the entrance to it are impressively visualized. There’s a lot more variety to the dragons featured throughout the story. And to pull-off dragon rescue ops against dragon poachers, Hiccup and his young Viking gang are now even more fused with the scaly creatures, featuring suits built from dragon scales. On top of that, he wields a burning sword, which draws so much similarity with his fire-breathing friends.
All those aspects really got me wondering, is the crew behind the film not just great filmmakers, but is a group of equally capable game-creators too? All the former touches to the movie hint ‘final chapter’ of a game. Advanced civilization, legendary armor and weapons. But it is not until the moment that Toothless gains his final ‘special ability’ that the idea above struck me in the head. Yes, Toothless definitely has ‘leveled up’ tremendously since the first movie.
Source: Dreamworks
And yet, from a gamer or a movie-goer’s perspective, the baddie certainly doesn’t look the part as the final villain in this last chapter of a story. Or game. If I have to be completely honest, the cartoon-ish villain might be the biggest factor that keeps on reminding you that you’re seeing an animated film, other than the overly juvenile dialogue scripts that can pop-up once in a while. Something along the line like, when disaster strikes, one of the characters has to comply with the childish routine and ask, “What we’re going to do now?”. Back to the villain, though The Hidden World tried to mould him to be the most cunning and dangerous antagonist that Berk has ever faced, none of that actually worked. Even with a fleet of savage dragons under his command, he is yawn-inducing at best, and I don’t even have to mention how far he is from being ‘terrorizing’.
It’s also fair to mention that before the climax, the narrative does get a little clumsy and nervous, with the villain gradually losing his edge, and all of his mysterious, secretly plotted, mastermind plans suddenly become a shameful case of Captain Obvious. And yes, even a film with a solid story progression like The Hidden World suffers from cinema sins exploitation once in a while. Why would any dragon coincidentally make a return in a dreaded time after being freed into a sanctuary is beyond me. The cinema sin strikes again during the climax, when dragons which are put into (unlocked) cages walk out effortlessly. Those were pretty hilarious to observe, but, at least to me, that didn’t put a dent into the whole movie experience nevertheless.
