How to Train Your Dragon 3

[mechaninac]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naW9U8MiUY0

Originally intended for a release in 2017, now tentatively scheduled for 2019

[M'Kyuun]

The first two were incredible films, with lots of heart, humor, great characters, and good stories. Hopefully they can maintain, if not surpass them.

[kajnrig]

The music has consistently been superb as well. I like the first movie a bit more than the second, but the second is an underappreciated masterpiece in its own right. It's much more in the mold of Lilo and Stitch (the director's previous animated work) than the first movie is, and Lilo and Stitch was one that I appreciated way more as I grew up than i did as a kid. Actually, as a kid I blew it off since it was made in that same era as Atlantis et al, where Disney were trying to do more "serious" stuff with their animations and failing badly at it. Back then crap kid me thought they were just trying to ape anime and "Westerners can't touch anime man don't even try to do it you just don't get it."

But anyway, this looks to be keeping in the same vein as the last two - surprisingly honest, unvarnished stories - and I'm excited. Shame it won't do the same big bucks as Shrek, Minions, etc., but then in a cruel twist of fate the really good kids' movies almost never do. Oh well.

[TangledThorns]

My wife and I incorporated some of the first film's soundtrack into our wedding. Namely Forbidden Friendship and Romantic Flight. John Powell is very underrated.

Edit: Looked up John Powell's recent work and saw he did Solo. I don't plan on seeing the movie in the theater but I now hope its soundtrack is as good as I expect it is. I always thought he could be a good composer for a Star Wars film.

Edited June 22, 2018 by TangledThorns

[M'Kyuun]

Films like this, and I'll argue the Incredibles, cater far more to a more mature audience. Kids like the visuals, all the bright colors, music, and the humor, but most kids under 10 or so probably don't pick up on the mature themes- losing a loved one, or, in Bob Parr's case, not having the strength, despite his super strength, to handle losing his family. Those themes hit emotional buttons that I don't think kids can really understand. Heck, even the Kung Fu Panda movies, esp the first two, stir the emotional pot. I'm glad, in the case of the Dragon movies, that the writers didn't water down those themes. The actors did a great job really conveying emotion and feeling, and it elevates the movies beyond kid-fare, for which I'm appreciative, as being an anime fan, I've long understood that mature themes can be explored in animation, and the emotion still carries despite whether the characters are real, drawn, or created in a computer. That said, I hope Dragon 3 carries the tradition forward.

[sh9000]

 

[TangledThorns]

I'll be taking my whole family to see this!

[sh9000]

 

[kajnrig]

Took the complete handful of kids to see it today.

It's good. Not as good as the first two, but there's still a whole lot more substance to it than most kids' movies. The problems mostly stem from the creators juggling too much and not having a really firm grasp on what they wanted to do with Hiccup. I get the sense that this movie was made out of a sense of "duty" rather than a creative drive, as if the creators were working under the assumption that 1) this franchise needed a "proper" ending, and 2) it had to be a trilogy.

I'd have streamlined parts of the movie, simplified some of the ideas it was trying to work with. The first movie was great in how it kept things simple but compelling, and the second managed to balance that simplicity against more... emotionally fraught themes. This one succeeds in the same way, just not to the same degree. Ah well. It was still a good bittersweet time, and the kids were really into it.

[eXis10z]

It was a satisfying end to the trilogy. I enjoyed the movie more than expected.