Review of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) by Brunovn00 — 31 Mar 2019

The third and (probably) final installment of the How to Train Your Dragon series is a nice conclussion to probably the second best animated franchise ever besides the Toy Story franchise.

The animation and visual effects here are stunning, resulting in one of the most beautiful looking movies Dreamworks has ever released. I enjoyed the story and the writing was okay. The theme of letting go the traditions in favor of setting all dragons free is simple but cute. Toothless is such a cute character and some of the scenes he shares with Light Fury are great and some of the best of the movie. The action scenes were good but not great or anything outstanding and the score is great as expected from a HTTYD movie.

Some of my criticisms are with the characters, specially with the villain. First of all the villain was very weak. His motivation wasn't clear and he really had no character besides being a typical "I'm bad and evil" cartoon villain and he's pretty much forgettable. The rest of the characters besides Hiccup and Astrid are very one-note and not compelling or complex at all, which is a shame.

Also the final act was a bit underwhelming, like it felt really quick and the ending was extremely predictable, like it's the most cliché ending they could think of.

But overall this is a really good movie and a satisfactory conclussion to this trilogy, this is going to end up being one of the best animated movies of the year (I mean, 2019 isn't shaping up to be a good year for animated movies anyway) and I definetely recommend it.