BEFORE: This might seem like I'm shifting genres here, and maybe I am, but if I look hard enough I can always find something that two movies have in common, in addition to an actor or sometimes two. For example, yesterday's film dealt with disability issues, with a Portland paraplegic becoming a successful cartoonist, and the previous films in this series worked on a similar theme, with the main character losing a leg and also owning a dragon that had an injured tail, and they bonded over that.
Of course, that wasn't a conscious decision that affected my programming, it's mostly random, and you can almost always find some common theme between two movies...
Of course, that wasn't a conscious decision that affected my programming, it's mostly random, and you can almost always find some common theme between two movies...
Jonah Hill carries over from "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"
FOLLOW-UP TO: "How to Train Your Dragon 2" (Movie #2,208)
THE PLOT: When Hiccup discovers that Toothless isn't the only Night Fury, he must seek "The Hidden World", a secret dragon Utopia, before a hired tyrant named Grimmel finds it.
AFTER: I don't want to belittle this film too much, because from an animation standpoint, this represents a marvelous achievement, many times during this film the screen is FILLED with dragons and riders, there are like 12 or 13 distinct types of dragons, I can't even keep them all straight. But they all have to be animated differently, I think, because they have different body types and different powers, some breathe fire and some burp slime, etc.
And I feel like overall this is a positive sort of film that makes kids happy, and not just because they want to collect the toys of all the different dragons and riders. Hiccup has evolved over three films in what, nine years, from an awkward teen to become the chief of his tribe, and he's taught everyone in the tribe how to live in harmony (more or less) with the dragons, much like people once took care of their horses, and all seems to be right with the world. Which can't last, obviously, so there has to be a NEW villain that is against people riding on dragons, to take the place of the villain from the last film, who also hated that same thing before he was defeated.
This new villain is something of a hypocrite, because he's against the unholy alliance of human and dragon, but he also uses a type of dragon to help him catch (or kill) the other dragons. HUH? How can you be against something, and also practice that exact same thing? I think maybe he USES one form of dragon, and considers them a type of tool or slave animal, which is obviously worse than forming partnership lifebonds with them, but it doesn't feel like some writer here could even be bothered to point out that distinction. Imagine the difference between a hero cowboy and his faithful horse, and an "evil" horse trader in the old west that just treated animals like a commodity of sorts, and wanted to catch them all to put them to work so he could profit. It would have taken maybe five minutes to explain this character a little better, and I think it would have been worth the extra effort.
But that's a minor point, and I think there are two MAJOR ways that this film dropped the ball in telling its story. The first is in the depiction of the Hidden World, which lies at the end of the ocean, before the horizon drops off into space, or something (kind of like the weird Flat-Earth stuff in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films...). There's a huge build-up in searching for, and finally finding, this Hidden World, and then when the main characters finally get there, it's just (SPOILER ALERT) a place where a ton of dragons hang out. Big deal, there are hundreds of dragons in Berk now, so what's a few thousand more? I'm underwhelmed - we went all that way, just to find more dragons, we could have just stayed where we were, there were dragons there, too! So was this trip really necessary?
My other issue ties back to that whole disabilities thing - when Toothless meets another dragon of his kind, only she's white instead of black, it's quite obvious that he's going to fall in love. It's sort of an inter-racial thing, which is positive, but still, there's a hint of "stay with your own kind" if a Night Fury can only fall in love and mate with another Night Fury - even if she's technically a "Light Fury", or whatever. What's the problem, can't a Skrill mate with a Bewilderbeest? There's some soft sort of species racism going on here, almost. I guess the different kinds of dragon are a bit like dog breeds, but if they don't cross-breed them they're going to become as messed up as all those AKC "purebred" dogs. (Dog breeding is a bit too close to genetic "master race" type stuff for me...)
But since Toothless can't fly very well with his tail disability, it's very strongly implied that he has to be "perfect" in order to impress the new female dragon he meets. This is exactly the wrong message to send out to the kids. Light Fury also has a special power, she can burp out a purple energy that allows her to teleport for a short distance, and during a long sequence where they fly around together (after he gets his tail repaired so he can fly with her) it seems like she has to teach him this new trick, which he never would have learned on his own, in order to get with her. Bear in mind, there are kids out there who love these movies, and some of them have disabilities and see themselves reflected in the characters. Telling them that they have to be made "whole", or even "better" in order to find love and acceptance from others is a questionable message, at best. Kids who are differently abled should be made to feel that they can use prosthetics, wheelchairs, hearing aids, or whatever if they want to, but if they don't feel comfortable doing that, that should be OK too.
Hey, Toothless, if you have to become somebody else in order to win her love, then maybe she's not worth it. She seems like a really stuck-up perfectionist, if you ask me, and I think you're probably better off without her, even if she is the only other dragon of your sub-species. THAT should be the message of the film - or the Light Fury at the very least should learn to accept Toothless the way that he is, and not make their love conditional in any way.
The flashbacks with Hiccup's father didn't really add anything to the story, but I guess if you can get Gerard Butler back, you probably find a way to shoehorn him. T.J. Miller, on the other hand, was notoriously absent and replaced by a semi-sound-alike, since he got caught up in that wave of sexual assault allegations and also he apparently called in a fake bomb threat while traveling drunk on am Amtrak train, just to get back at another passenger. Not cool.
With a little more polishing of the story, and a bit more concern over the effects that certain story elements might be teaching kids, this could have scored a 7 or an 8. Instead it felt to me like this franchise was just sort of limping to the finish line. They could have used a couple better gags - that repeated one with Tuffnut pretending his long hair was a beard felt old the second time he used it.
And I feel like overall this is a positive sort of film that makes kids happy, and not just because they want to collect the toys of all the different dragons and riders. Hiccup has evolved over three films in what, nine years, from an awkward teen to become the chief of his tribe, and he's taught everyone in the tribe how to live in harmony (more or less) with the dragons, much like people once took care of their horses, and all seems to be right with the world. Which can't last, obviously, so there has to be a NEW villain that is against people riding on dragons, to take the place of the villain from the last film, who also hated that same thing before he was defeated.
This new villain is something of a hypocrite, because he's against the unholy alliance of human and dragon, but he also uses a type of dragon to help him catch (or kill) the other dragons. HUH? How can you be against something, and also practice that exact same thing? I think maybe he USES one form of dragon, and considers them a type of tool or slave animal, which is obviously worse than forming partnership lifebonds with them, but it doesn't feel like some writer here could even be bothered to point out that distinction. Imagine the difference between a hero cowboy and his faithful horse, and an "evil" horse trader in the old west that just treated animals like a commodity of sorts, and wanted to catch them all to put them to work so he could profit. It would have taken maybe five minutes to explain this character a little better, and I think it would have been worth the extra effort.
But that's a minor point, and I think there are two MAJOR ways that this film dropped the ball in telling its story. The first is in the depiction of the Hidden World, which lies at the end of the ocean, before the horizon drops off into space, or something (kind of like the weird Flat-Earth stuff in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films...). There's a huge build-up in searching for, and finally finding, this Hidden World, and then when the main characters finally get there, it's just (SPOILER ALERT) a place where a ton of dragons hang out. Big deal, there are hundreds of dragons in Berk now, so what's a few thousand more? I'm underwhelmed - we went all that way, just to find more dragons, we could have just stayed where we were, there were dragons there, too! So was this trip really necessary?
My other issue ties back to that whole disabilities thing - when Toothless meets another dragon of his kind, only she's white instead of black, it's quite obvious that he's going to fall in love. It's sort of an inter-racial thing, which is positive, but still, there's a hint of "stay with your own kind" if a Night Fury can only fall in love and mate with another Night Fury - even if she's technically a "Light Fury", or whatever. What's the problem, can't a Skrill mate with a Bewilderbeest? There's some soft sort of species racism going on here, almost. I guess the different kinds of dragon are a bit like dog breeds, but if they don't cross-breed them they're going to become as messed up as all those AKC "purebred" dogs. (Dog breeding is a bit too close to genetic "master race" type stuff for me...)
But since Toothless can't fly very well with his tail disability, it's very strongly implied that he has to be "perfect" in order to impress the new female dragon he meets. This is exactly the wrong message to send out to the kids. Light Fury also has a special power, she can burp out a purple energy that allows her to teleport for a short distance, and during a long sequence where they fly around together (after he gets his tail repaired so he can fly with her) it seems like she has to teach him this new trick, which he never would have learned on his own, in order to get with her. Bear in mind, there are kids out there who love these movies, and some of them have disabilities and see themselves reflected in the characters. Telling them that they have to be made "whole", or even "better" in order to find love and acceptance from others is a questionable message, at best. Kids who are differently abled should be made to feel that they can use prosthetics, wheelchairs, hearing aids, or whatever if they want to, but if they don't feel comfortable doing that, that should be OK too.
Hey, Toothless, if you have to become somebody else in order to win her love, then maybe she's not worth it. She seems like a really stuck-up perfectionist, if you ask me, and I think you're probably better off without her, even if she is the only other dragon of your sub-species. THAT should be the message of the film - or the Light Fury at the very least should learn to accept Toothless the way that he is, and not make their love conditional in any way.
The flashbacks with Hiccup's father didn't really add anything to the story, but I guess if you can get Gerard Butler back, you probably find a way to shoehorn him. T.J. Miller, on the other hand, was notoriously absent and replaced by a semi-sound-alike, since he got caught up in that wave of sexual assault allegations and also he apparently called in a fake bomb threat while traveling drunk on am Amtrak train, just to get back at another passenger. Not cool.
With a little more polishing of the story, and a bit more concern over the effects that certain story elements might be teaching kids, this could have scored a 7 or an 8. Instead it felt to me like this franchise was just sort of limping to the finish line. They could have used a couple better gags - that repeated one with Tuffnut pretending his long hair was a beard felt old the second time he used it.
Also starring the voices of Jay Baruchel (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), America Ferrara (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), Cate Blanchett (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), F. Murray Abraham (last seen in "Robin Hood"), Craig Ferguson (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Kieron Elliott (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon 2"), Gideon Emery (ditto), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (last seen in "Movie 43"), Gerard Butler (ditto), Kristen Wiig (last seen in "Mother!"), Justin Rupple, Kit Harington (last seen in "MI-5"), Julia Emelin, Olafur Darri Olafsson (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), James Sie, David Tennant (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), Robin Atkin Downes (last seen in "The Mummy"), Ashley Jensen (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes").
RATING: 6 out of 10 Hobgobblers
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