How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy

DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon trilogy is a fantastic experience with soaring heights, yet its gradual mistakes pull it under the sea. I used to love these characters growing up, getting excited when I first saw the trailer to the second film, and spending hours of my weekends watching the TV shows, but I wanted to reexamine the films as a whole. With my first-time watch of the third and final film over a year ago, I wanted to graph all three of them together and see which one was best, and how well they aged under my new system.

The stunning greatness of this series stems directly from the first five minutes of the first film. It has the strongest, most efficient opening in terms of storytelling and score I have ever seen. John Powell’s score carries this series to the very end, and it is absolutely perfect. In the first film especially, the characters’ development and the music’s growing bravado go hand in hand as the tension gets ready to burst into flames. Each note matches what Hiccup experiences, cementing the linear plot in an impressively economic way. The first film is the definition of textbook storytelling, with just the right amount of magic and passion to bring it in the league of animated classics that came before.

The first film establishes itself quickly and efficiently in order to ramp up its entertainment to the highest peaks. The story is linear, offering one goal with only one central character and three antagonists—his father, the dragon that becomes his friend, and his love interest, Astrid. The dynamics shift and pull against each other in every scene, creating both humor and heart-tugging moments between the characters. The dialogue is one flowing conversation that keeps the energy going as the scenes change, making it impossible to look away. Ignoring all the fancy terms and metaphors I want to put with the craft of this film—it simply just works. Everything builds to the climax. Gerard Butler as Stoick is a brilliant foil to Hiccup, stealing the show with an emotional performance as a disappointed father. The flight scenes capitalize on Roger Deakins’ cinematic eye, and offer a perfect background as the score takes center stage. The team behind the first film made the film they wanted to make—ignoring most of the source-material books—and were able to put everything in just the right place. Its massive success proved their hard work, but now there had to be sequels… and money was on the line.

The sequels very quickly abandon what made the first film work so well. A linear, simple story that capitalizes on the humanity of its core characters is now cut into two sides of a spinning coin. The plot shifts from engaging narratives to awkward villains, child-geared action set pieces, and a heavy emphasis on the supporting cast. Scenes that revive what the main story stood for is interrupted with the transitions saying “meanwhile… this” rather than “therefore this.” Both sequels do this, creating hard juxtapositions of scenes that excel beyond the first film and scenes that stretch minor elements of the first film to appeal to wider audiences. Now, I am not saying these films are terrible. The opening introduction of Hiccup and Toothless in the second film is the best isolated-scene in the series; the addition of Valka was a brilliant follow up to Hiccup’s family dynamic and his struggle to fill in his father’s place; and the mirror of Hiccup’s development with the third film’s villain, Grimmel, is genius. The climax of the third film, in hindsight, chooses a duel of wits rather than a cheesy, bombastic battle with a “big-bad” dragon. But meanwhile… the annoying teenager-supporting cast gets triple the runtime, and since Stoick is no longer the main antagonist, a new villain needs to take his place with a simpler, conflict-centered plot rather than a society/friendship story—which falls flat both times.

The reason behind this two-faced quality of storytelling is because the sequels have two conflicting souls inside them. The dying semblance of a company built on a dream, and the commanding voice of over-head studios, still alive because they know money overpowers art in entertainment. For every time Toothless dances with the Lightfury, where the music swells and the action speaks without words, there is a scene with the twins rambling into the camera, because they are played by Kristen Wig and TJ Miller (until he got fired), and they are supposed to be funny and get tickets sold. In the second film, Valka offers so much security and love to Hiccup that he never had, but in the third film, she serves as the butt-end of a MILF joke with Jonah Hill’s Snotlout. Sometimes, it is like watching two people bickering over $100 million, but sometimes, when the director wins… it is so worth it.

Overall, The writers told a story of a boy going against his village, his father, his society in order to show them the truth of the unknown. A story about one finding friendship in the enemy, and learning that even though they might never be their father, they can at least be themselves. A story about loss and pain, where the main character handicaps his best friend and in the end, loses his leg. The sequels to this amazing story ignore all of this; they commit to an accessible, consumer product with action-figure-like characters and a jokey supporting cast to interrupt the flow of the plot just for laughs. DreamWorks started as a posse of animators leaving Disney to risk their careers on telling stories no one else would tell. Now, it is tied with puppet strings to the fingers of the business men that are making Minions 2. After 10 years of adoring this series, I was disappointed to see that I may only rewatch the first film again.

The grand average score calculated from the 58 scenes of How to Train Your Dragon:

7.83/10

The grand average score calculated from the 53 scenes of How to Train Your Dragon 2:

7.40/10

The grand average score calculated from the 61 scenes of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World:

6.95/10

Giving the whole Trilogy a score of:

7.39/10