How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World Review

It's been a strange year at the box office so far with a lot of movies that seemed like surefire hits surprisingly underperforming. The three big examples so far include "Glass," "The LEGO Movie 2" and "Happy Death Day 2U." So it's about time that we finally have an anticipated movie actually live up to expectations as "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" opened to a hair above $55 million. For perspective, "How to Train Your Dragon" opened to $43.7 million in 2010 while "How to Train Your Dragon 2" opened to $49.5 million in 2014. That gives "The Hidden World" the best opening in the franchise. Whether or not that translates into the best overall total for the franchise remains to be seen as "How to Train Your Dragon 2" ended up being a lot more front-loaded than its predecessor, winding up with $177 million domestically whereas the original finished with $217.6 million. If hidden world were to follow a similar path as the second movie, that would mean a final domestic total of $196 million, which means it has a legit chance of being the first DreamWorks Animation film to cross the $200 million domestic mark since "Madagascar 3" in 2012. Of course this will be determined by how well it holds up against the crowded market in the next few months.

Perhaps me bringing that up will intrigue you enough for you to not be too mad at me for what I'm about to say next. I really wasn't a huge fan of this movie. Before I tell you why, it might be helpful to explain that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with DreamWorks as a whole. They were one of the animation studios that came into existence shortly after Pixar completely transformed the animation game with "Toy Story" in 1995. The first DreamWorks film was "Antz" in 1998, which oddly enough came out a month before Pixar's "A Bug's Life." Pixar most definitely won that battle in terms of quality bug movies, but after that, DreamWorks started to get on a roll with their movies. That until they completely crashed and burned in the early 2010's when they started to get a little obsessed with quantity over quality. Ever since then, they've been trying to do their best to course-correct, but it's been a bit of a bumpy ride as they've been all over the place in terms of quality. In fact, they didn't even release a movie last year, which was the first time since 1999 that the world didn't have another DreamWorks movie to go to. And now they've even shifted hands from Fox to Universal after switching from Paramount to Fox starting with "The Croods" in 2013.

And yes, if you noticed that timeline there, each "How to Train Your Dragon" has had a different distributor. The first movie with Paramount, the second movie with Fox and now the third movie with Universal. That's a fun fact for you. Now before I get crucified by this fan base, I'll let you know that I adore the first "How to Train Your Dragon." It's such a powerful film that teaches kids that it's OK to be different. In fact, you can help change the world by being true to yourself rather than becoming the person your family and friends expects you to be. In this Viking world, Hiccup is expected to grow up to be like his father and become this strong, angry, blood-thirsty dragon hunter. And he tries initially, but he just doesn't have the skill set or the self-confidence to pull it off. As he's wandering around one day, he runs into the Night Fury Toothless. Knowing very well that he'd be seen as a legend if he were to be known as the Viking who hunts and kills a Night Fury, he ends up doing the exact opposite by befriending it. Thus gives us to one of the best onscreen relationships with human and creature that leads to Hiccup completely changing the culture in his Viking city as they learn that dragons and Vikings can work much better as friends and allies rather than enemies.

I think that movie stands on its own as a fantastic movie that didn't need any sequels. It got the point across rather simply and profoundly that, even if you seem small and insignificant, you can do great things if you stay true to who you are and learn what your individual talents are. Yes, I know this is a series of now 12 children books by author Cressida Cowell, so there's plenty of material to do sequels, but I think the only reason we got a sequel is that whenever DreamWorks makes money on a film, they try to squeeze every penny they can out of the franchise, thus showing that they care more about the dollar bills in their bank accounts rather than bringing stories that the world needs. That's why we have about 9,000 "Shrek" movies as well as more "Madagascar" stuff than anyone ever needed. Thus is why we also have one of the more pointless and forgettable DreamWorks sequels in "How to Train Your Dragon 2," a movie whose quality of story depended solely on the shock value of certain reveals, which made the viewing experience completely pointless because they spoiled every single big moment in all of their advertising. It goes down in history as one of the worst trailers ever put together in my book because it totally ruined the movie for me.

Even if I try to look past the trailers ruining the movie experience for me, I just wasn't all that interested in the movie itself. I wasn't a fan of the mother's motivations for disappearing for 20 years nor do I even remember whoever the villain of the movie was. The reunion of the mother and father could've been a great moment, but I'd also seen that a hundred times in all the trailers. I don't feel like spoiling the one thing the movie didn't spoil, but I do remember that there came a point in the movie where I thought if they ended it right there, this would've been a bold and daring film, but then the movie had an ending that felt completely tacked on and rushed because we can't have a cliffhanger ending in a kids movie, right? I didn't finish the movie hating life, but it's also never a movie that I've had any desire to return to. It's just a movie that exists. And speaking of the book series, the second book is actually titled "How to Be a Pirate" and after reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia just now, I'm convinced that the story in that book would've made for a much more interesting movie. The other titles also sound quite intriguing and make a lot more sense since their ain't no more dragon training after the first film, so why didn't we follow the books and come up with better titles?

Yet the most baffling thing about this movie is that I've met so many people who feel that this is the greatest animated movie ever made. And I'm not even joking. I do remember seeing this is a drive-in theater in Tooele (which was a cool experience) and maybe they just put in the wrong film. That's the only thing that would make sense. I mean, I've heard the arguments about why its so great and I can't even understand them. Sometimes I see where people are coming from, even if I disagree. This one I've never been able to get on board with even relating to people. And it seems like we're going to get a repeat performance with "The Hidden World" because everyone who loved the second movie is also loving the third movie, and thus this is now being proclaimed as one of the best animated trilogies ever made, one that rivals the "Toy Story" trilogy. Yet I don't think either of these movies deserve to exist, nor am I really going to remember than any more than I remember the likes of "Shrek 3" or "Madagascar 2." Granted, they're not bottom-of-the-barrel DreamWorks films. That belongs to the likes of "Penguins of Madagascar," "The Boss Baby," "Shark Tale" and "Bee Movie," but they just belong in the realm of DreamWorks movies that I'll forget existed.

So let's talk about "The Hidden World" specifically, since, you know, that's the title of this review. Like the previous movie's trailers, the trailers for "Hidden World" also gave away a whole lot of the plot. Although perhaps a huge difference is that "The Hidden World" doesn't rely on shock value. There's no major twists and turns to spoil. It just looked like a generic movie without much depth or substance. Evil villain who hates Night Furies attacks the village, thus leading Hiccup and gang to seek out this Hidden World, which is where all the dragons live, so that they can escape evil dude. Meanwhile, Toothless finds a girlfriend with the white Night Fury that shows up, which they call a Light Fury, and there's a giant battle at the end with dragons vs. the evil dragon hater. And, of course, they're going to find the Hidden World at some point because, well, that's the title of the movie, and them wandering through it is also in the trailers. I wish there was more to this story than what was presented in the trailers because this description I gave you was exactly what I thought going in based on what was being advertised to me. It just seemed like it was going to be a boring, fairly lifeless movie that didn't even have close to the amount of heart and power of the original film.

Unfortunately for me, the boring movie I anticipated going in was exactly what I got. But I will give credit where credit is due. The animation itself is stellar. It's one of the best looking animated films I've seen recently and may be the best animation that DreamWorks has ever put together. I was also rather charmed by the adventures of Toothless and the Light Fury. I would've actually loved a no dialogue, spin-off film with just those two dragons. That would've been great. I also enjoyed the continued relationship development between Hiccup and Astrid, although you know exactly where that story is going the second a certain comment is made towards the beginning of the film, possibly within the first 10-15 minutes. So yeah, those individual pieces worked well, they just didn't fully connect to a competent film for me. Perhaps the biggest issue here is the villain of the film. His name is Grimmel and he hates dragons. Specifically he's out to hunt and kill every Night Fury. When the trailers introduced him as someone who looked like a boring, generic villain, I was hoping there was more substance to him. Why does he hate dragons? What is it about Night Furies specifically that makes him want to hunt them? What is his backstory? What are his motivations?

Maybe it's too much to ask for a kids film to flesh out a really good villain, but I was at least hoping for something that would make me buy him as a legit presence that gave weight to the film. But no. We get nothing. We're just supposed to buy the fact that he's an evil dude who hates dragons without even getting a hint as to why or any sort of clue as to what this guy's backstory is. And it gets even more absurd that one small attack from him on the town causes Hiccup to decide to completely abandon their home and take the whole village to go find the Hidden World because now it's too dangerous. Even though he singlehandedly stopped a much bigger threat at the end of the last movie with just the help of Toothless. Why not use your giant army of Vikings and dragons to defend your home instead of playing a dumb game of chicken? But nope. That's our story. Evil dude attacks the city so now we're running away from home. And apparently Hiccup's character development has taken a complete backwards turn from the last two movies because the second Toothless temporarily leaves with the Light Fury, Hiccup is suddenly this incompetent loser with no brains or sense of identity, making us have to retread the same exact character arc as the previous two films.

There's also another element to this film that really had me upset, but I'm not going to talk much about it since it's the resolution to the film that I'm talking about. Many of you have probably already seen this movie by now, so you'll know exactly what I'm referring to. Feel free to message me or talk to me about it in private and I'll unleash on you how I think this betrays the first two films. Until then, I'll leave you in the dark as I've already said more than I should. But yeah, in summary, this movie had good elements to it. I liked Hiccup and Astrid. Mostly. I liked Toothless and the Light Fury. I loved the animation. But the story of the movie? Nope. It was boring. All the side characters? Yuck. In fact, there was a lot of attempted humor that not only fell flat, but was super annoying, like Jonah Hill's character hitting on Hiccup's mom the entire movie. The villain? I've already almost completely forgot he exists? The themes? Uninspired and generic. The character arcs? Predictable and repetitive. Again, this is not an awful movie. But it's also not a good movie. It's just one that kind of exists for me and if I don't get endless flack for this review, it's a movie that I'll completely forget about. I'm hoping that I can just post this and quickly move on with life. My grade for "The Hidden World" is a 6/10.

P.S. - Here's the full list of titles for the book series. Just by going through this, most of these already look like better stories than what we got with "The Hidden World":

1- "How to Train Your Dragon"
2- "How to Be a Pirate"
3- "How to Speak Dragonese"
4- "How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse"
5- "How to Twist a Dragon's Tale"
6- "A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons"
7- "How to Ride a Dragon's Storm"
8- "How to Break a Dragon's Heart"
9- "How to Steal a Dragon's Sword"
10- "How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel"
11- "How to Betray a Dragon's Hero"
12- "How to Fight a Dragon's Fury"