NYCC: How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World releases one week early

Will it conclude the trilogy in a satisfying way?

I feel like I should be more excited for How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Both the original movie and the sequel were some of the best movies Dreamworks have ever put out, but I’m just not feeling that spark for the third movie. Everything about the How to Train Your Dragon panel just seemed lacking. The panel had a reduced time, barely anyone was on stage, and most of the comments from them were just general “I’m so happy to be here, OMG!” It just felt like they were going through the motions. 

But the actual movie looks fine. Just… fine. We were able to see some scenes from the movie, like a raid on a ship full of caged dragons that made Hiccup look like an absolute badass, a beautiful trip through the eponymous Hidden World that reminded me a lot of seeing the Land of the Dead from Coco, and a fun little scene watching Toothless the dragon woo and impress a female dragon, who has the ability to turn herself invisible. All of the scenes looked great, but man that panel was lacking that spark it deserved. 

The only person that seemed to be really passionate about the movie was the producer, Brad Lewis. He was eager to talk about the production of the movie and that he thought the greatest challenge of any production designer was “creating a mythical world that does not exist and making it believable,” which is true. The world of How to Train Your Dragon is fairly substantial and has a lot of lore in it for future stories. As it is, this looks like it’s going to be a solid movie to cap off a fairly solid movie trilogy, though I’m pretty sure that franchise will continue on, most likely through the TV series currently streaming on Netflix. In fact, director Dean DeBlois was adamant that “If we do our jobs well and make [HTTYD] how it should be, then it’s a huge feat to make it a trilogy like Toy Story and Lord of the Rings that can stand on its own.” 

The panel ended with the reveal of the second trailer, which you can see above, and the revelation that How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, will be releasing one week early on February 22nd, 2019.