Scaling one final dragon film
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD I HICCUP AND TOOTHLESS ARE GOING OUT ON A HIGH…
The opening line of Cressida’s book stirred something in me: ‘There were dragons when I was a boy.’” Teasers is talking to writer/director Dean DeBlois about the third and final instalment of his sublime How To Train Your Dragon series. But before you go thinking DeBlois has dropped a spoiler bomb, that’s also the first line uttered by Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) in 2019’s HTTYD: The Hidden World, and DeBlois has had this final destination in mind from day one.
“There was an opportunity to tell a finite story with two characters that you would love to see spend their whole lives together, but for whatever reason, did not,” says DeBlois, who started thinking of the story as a trilogy while working on 2014’s HTTYD2. “That’s why I’m not shy to talk about the ending. I love the idea that we’re going to close that chapter of history, but ‘how did it arrive?’ is the narrative intrigue of it all.”
Set a year after the events of
HTTYD2 (primarily, the film will also play with timelines), 21-year-old Hiccup faces a grave new threat in the guise of Grimmel the Grisly (F. Murray Abraham), the dragon slayer responsible for wiping out the Night Furies. Every Night Fury except Hiccup’s best bud Toothless, of course. To save dragonkind, Hiccup and Toothless must find the Hidden World, a bioluminescent paradise only accessible to flying creatures via an undersea volcano. Creatures including the Light Fury, a brilliant white dragon who can turn invisible by heating up her scales, catch the eye of Toothless.
A monster success since its debut in 2010, the HTTYD universe has
encompassed short films, live shows, videogames, graphic novels and a long-running television series. But with a five-year gap between HTTYD2 and The Hidden World, work on the all-important final chapter wasn’t always smooth sailing.
“The script was beginning to feel like HTTYD2: Part 2, instead of a standalone movie,” DeBlois explains. In a creative rut, he turned to friend Guillermo del Toro. “He read the script and said, ‘To me, it feels like a bunch of studio notes. Just go be a fanboy, and write something fresh!’ And I did exactly that.” For DeBlois, the film marks the culmination of a 10-year journey with Toothless and co, one guaranteed to end in tears (but, you know, the good kind). “A decade of my life has gone by without really recognising it, until now,” DeBlois reflects. “It slowly dawned upon me that this is the closest thing I’ve worked on to a Star Wars-like universe where it’s ever-expanding, and you can go in any direction. It’s an exciting and rare opportunity, so I embraced it.”
‘THIS IS THE CLOSEST THING I’VE WORKED ON TO A STAR WARS-LIKE UNIVERSE’ DEAN DEBLOIS