After three movies and three TV series, the story of Hiccup, Toothless, and the rest of the clan finally comes to an end. While I would have thought that the last movie in the trilogy would have been a huge blow-out, with epic action and similarly epic storylines, The Hidden World is disappointingly ordinary. The big development is that Toothless the night-fury dragon, and Hiccup’s best friend, finally finds a girl dragon to fall in love with. Meanwhile, as the vikings of Berk continue to gather wild dragons to their archipelago for peaceful co-existence, dragon hunters pose a growing threat to the Berkean way of life. Led by a new villain, named Grimmel (who is very much like all the other villains that this series has had: clever, ruthless, and only interested in capturing dragons), they force the Berkeans to flee their homes and seek out “The Hidden World”, a legendary utopia beyond the edge of the world where dragons live without humans (which apparently Hiccup’s father Stoic had spent many years searching for — why is this the first we’re hearing of that?).

It might already be obvious from my summary, but the plot doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Why would these humans move to a place where dragons live without them? If “the hidden world” is where dragons came from, what’s preventing them from going back there on their own? What makes Grimmel any worse than other enemies that they’ve defeated in the past? Why do they need to make such a drastic plan? The whole addition of the new, female night-fury (actually she may be a different species, as they call her a “light-fury”) is also very odd. At first she’s used by Grimmel as a lure and distraction to create a wedge between Toothless and Hiccup, but then she comes to represent the “dragon life” that Toothless finally wants to go back to living. The poor dragon has to choose to leave Hiccup for her. The theme of growing up has been a constant undercurrent of this series, and now the latest message is that when childhood friends grow up, their friendships change and are replaced by new relationships. It’s a good theme, but this contrived dragon-romance is a ham-fisted way of expressing it. Plus it raises odd questions about the trainer-dragon relationships: Are they more like pets or like friends?

Story weaknesses aside, these movies have always been technically excellent. The visuals look wonderful and the dragon-flying and fighting action is always thrilling and well-crafted. There’s an opening scene where Hiccup and the gang stage a rescue on one of the dragon-hunters’ ships which really feels like something out of an action movie. Later, when they briefly visit the Hidden World, those backgrounds and scenery are also pretty spectacular (especially if you like seeing a lot of dragons). The character designs (everyone has new dragon-scale-armour outfits for the hand-to-hand fight scenes) are also nicely detailed, and the voice acting is really fun (I couldn’t imagine a better match than Jay Baruchel as the voice of Hiccup). F. Murray Abraham does an excellent job voicing Grimmel, and the animation of his facial expressions make him an enemy you’ll love to hate. He’s one of the better villains of the series and would even make a pretty good nemesis for Hiccup, but unfortunately they just don’t spend enough time with him to really develop that relationship between the characters. We’re too busy with dragon mating dances.

While there’s a lot to enjoy about this movie, it sadly fails to live up to its place as the grand finale for the entire series. And even though there’s a kind of Harry-Potter-style time-jump epilogue, it only makes the series feel either unfinished, or rushed to conclusion. For a series that brought us some fresh and iconic characters, some fun and well-written stories, and some wonderful and innovative visual imagery, I wish it had given us more before flying off into the sunset. (3.5 out of 5)