From the archive: "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"

From the off, these big screen adaptations of Cressida Cowell's children's books were elevated some way over the digimated pack: 2010's first How to Train Your Dragon did something both tangible and touching with the space separating a scaly firebreather, a nervy young man and the latter's gruffly traditional father. (For once, 3D technology added a layer of meaning, rather than merely subtracting pounds from parents' pockets.) Two films down the line, and with the franchise established and the budgets swelling, that space has come under threat. "We have dragons, lots and lots of dragons!," squawks our still-boyish hero Hiccup (again voiced by Jay Baruchel) as he flies into his hometown of Berk early on in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Lots of dragonriders, too (the supporting voice cast has swelled); also lots and lots of the soaring, swooping spectacle that is assumed to sell 21st century matinee tickets, and which often gets between us and a lasting emotional connection with a film's pixels. One promising sign is the streak of self-awareness running through the writing (a Cowellian holdover, or genuine Hollywood invention?). When a wearied Hiccup sighs "It does seem as if the whole world knows about us now," it has the ring of a film talking to itself, of creatives pondering the pitfalls lying in wait as these characters finally set out for the wiggle room of the title. What next? Where now? How can a third film in a series surprise, move and excite us?

Well, Toothless has started skylarking with a ladydragon, one of many subplots set running over a brisk 95 minutes; in a comic highpoint, he will be Cyrano de Bergeracked through courtship rituals by Hiccup, himself under pressure to commit to his beloved. In short, there is a good deal going on in The Hidden World, both in terms of the dragons and their Viking handlers, and the minor miracle of Dean DeBlois' film is that it finds roundly satisfying means of resolving it all. Even among the tumult of plot and audience-pleasing spectacle, DeBlois makes room for moments of quiet beauty: a lovers' reunion on a cliff at sundown, a wordless ballet between Toothless and his dragon sweetheart, the artistry invariably heightened by John Powell's gorgeous symphonic score. The lighting in one confrontation between Hiccup and dragonhunter Grimmel is so dramatic we barely need anyone to speak; it could serve as both a lesson for and rebuke of less committed animation houses. Pixar suffered a (non-terminal, but noticeable) decline in quality control after owners Disney pressured their animators to industrialise what had previously been an artisanal process and double their yearly output. DreamWorks, it strikes me, have gone in the opposite direction: ramping down their production schedule has freed DeBlois's hopefully merry workers to polish these frames (Roger Deakins was brought on board as a visual consultant) and build these characters and relationships, such that when The Hidden World soars, it does so in the best, Spielbergian sense, where narrative and spectacle intertwine. (That the hidden world in question is first accessed unknowingly by two lovers circling one another is a flat-out beautiful story idea, matched here, as elsewhere, by exemplary design.) The affecting picture-book simplicity of the first film may be behind this series - it's top-dollar commercial animation we're looking at nowadays, storyboarded for an ever more competitive market - but The Hidden World has been programmed to last, with genuine flashes of excellence.

(July 2021)

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is available on DVD through Universal, and available to rent via Prime Video.