How to Train Your Dragon 3 (2019) Review

Plummeting from the box office top-spot this week is Dean DeBlois' coming-of-age, fantasy epic, dragon-cum-kitty, trilogy finale, How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World (2019). The first instalment, released in 2010, scorched itself into public consciousness with B.O. takings close to $500m; the second spread its wings and soared right on past that marker with $620m accrued over 2014; whereas this final instalment appears to be blowing hot air with only $330m of takings. Studio execs will be wondering why their third dragon has been so slow getting off the ground and whether its whimpers are that of a dying genre.

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The first thing to note about How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World (2019) is that it is not quite a full film; at best, you could describe it as half a film with a long credits sequence. Despite the running time of 1hr 44m, any moments of true cinematic significance appear only towards the end. In other words, we get the tail, we get the legs but we don't get the claws and we certainly don't get the teeth. For those easily frustrated by filler, this is going to be a problem: Hiccup and Toothless are a 'cutesy' pair but their sweetness has always been balanced with tangible danger and bad guys you could believe in. What a shame that Hidden World bucks that trend so tamely. Even young viewers are going to have a hard time believing that there is any real threat to the inevitable happy ending.

There is something strangely familiar about this instalment and you don't need to look outside of the franchise to discern what. The plot has been almost entirely recycled from the 2nd film; a man wants to capture dragons, Hiccup must protect his dragons; a man has a claim to sovereignty, Hiccup must protect his sovereignty. So the cycle continues. It's an exercise in profit and, after two hours of explosions, destruction, fruitless fights and pointless flights, eyes may start to close and brains may start to switch off.

Despite the loose themes of migration, of acceptance, of 'the other', that have regularly sifted throughout the franchise, How to Train Your Dragon's final words are hollow. The film really has nothing to say. No moral, no message, no indication of higher purpose. It is entirely, unforgivably postmodern. In the end, there is nothing to learn from its spiralling chase sequences, nothing to glean from its most profound conversations. It is literally just a film about dragons.

The soundtrack borrows lazily from motifs established in the last two and adds barely a note of originality. The animation is gorgeous but for display purposes only. When you add it up, Hidden World begins to look less like a dragon and more like a dragonfly (high-pitched and annoying).

Where, then, does the franchise go from here? To answer that, you have to consider that Hidden World is symptomatic of a wider issue now prevalent across mainstream cinema. Steven Spielberg approached the media earlier in the month to voice his opposition to home-streaming. His fears are well-founded; audiences are turning their collective gaze away from the silver screen, as was indicated by a 4% decline in box-office revenue across 2018. In reaction to this growing disenfranchisement, cinema producers are less willing to take risks and (as is apparent in the yield) micro-managing their creatives with growing conservatism. The results are there to see. Where once, cinemagoers could rely on a blockbuster for certified, quality entertainment, now it is almost too risky to bother. And, when franchise films are this exhaustingly bad, caution is justified.

How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World (2019) is much like any other popcorn franchise right now: terrified of its own shadow, terrified to take risks. Which is a shame, because if these are the meanest dragons that the studios have to offer, Netflix is going to have no problem filling the boots of Saint George.

★☆☆☆☆