We went to the cinema to watch this only because we had nothing better to do during Chinese New Year and Alita: Battle Angel has an atrocious rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I also realized we’ve now watched all three films of the trilogy in the cinema, quite a rarity for any film series really, without consciously intending to do so.

As Hiccup and his crew continue to liberate dragons, Berk becomes positively overrun with them. The warlords realize that they only need to hit Berk to get all of the dragons back in one scoop and hire a legendary hunter named Grimmel to deal with Toothless. They also have a secret weapon in the form of a white female Night Fury that Astrid calls the Light Fury. Initial clashes with Grimmel reveal that he is shrewd and skilled with vicious dragons of his own that he controls with drugs. Hiccup therefore decides to lead his people away from Berk to seek for the so-called Hidden World from which all dragons come from. Meanwhile the Light Fury keeps flirting with Toothless and eventually leads him away while Hiccup comes under pressure to finally get married to Astrid.

One of the problems I had with the previous film was is messy plot and diffuse focus. The simpler and more straightforward plot ensures no such problems here even if it’s a bit awkward how the film tries to give each supporting character a running gag to flesh him or her out a bit. Of course the Light Fury is the star of the show here even without a single line of dialogue. The courting scenes featuring her and Toothless are reminiscent of WALL-E but are nicely crowd pleasing just the same especially with Hiccup playing the role of incompetent wingman.

I found the visuals for the previous film to have been surprisingly lacklustre given its high profile. Fortunately this film brings back the visual wow factor both in terms of quality animation work and in spectacular cinematography. Having recently learned a bit of Blender, I was impressed by the near photorealistic level of work on the textures of clothing and armor. I’m also convinced that the landscape views of a Berk full of dragons was influenced by similar shots in Coco which must have left a deep impression on viewers. The film also nicely recaptures some of the magic of flying with the two dragons frolicking with each other.

Of course this is entertainment aimed primarily at children and that shows in the lack of sophistication in its gags and the lack of any injuries in what passes for its fights. It’s pretty glaring how despite all the swords being waved about, no one actually manages to slash another character. It doesn’t even have enough of an edge to give its bittersweet ending any true bitterness. Still it’s not bad at what it does and it’s a fitting enough end to the trilogy.