How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is the third installment in a series of animated adventure films set in a fantastical viking world where dragons are a part of daily life.

The first two films, released in 2010 and 2014, introduced the characters and showed how they interacted with the dragons before and after the protagonist, Hiccup, led his village to accept the creatures they once hunted.

Filled with detailed, realistic landscapes and beautiful creative illustration, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World felt like an exciting journey all the way through, despite a somewhat lackluster story.

In The Hidden World, Hiccup and his friends have changed their home and made it livable for their dragons. The main group of vikings goes on raids to help save dragons from their human hunters. The story’s world is interesting, and the characters were fun, but the story just didn’t keep me interested.

There didn’t really seem to be a main goal for the characters; instead there were multiple objectives that the vikings just chipped away at until somehow everything worked out.

There just didn’t seem to be much structure to the main story. The interactions between characters was lighthearted and at least deserving of a chuckle, but there’s a significant line between a good story and a mediocre one hidden behind a barrage of senseless humor.

Additionally, the main villain Grimmel is just bland. The audience is given almost no insight into his motivations, leaving us with a one-dimensional, generic villain with no personality.

Despite my issues with the story, there was one area of the movie that I couldn’t get my mind off of: the artwork.

Every single scene in the movie had tremendous attention to detail.

Whether it was the blowing of hair in the wind, or the grass, or the scales on the dragons – it was all amazing. The amount of time and effort that the artists had to put in to this project seems inconceivable to me. It is one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen.

The Dragon’s home environment, which we see about halfway through the movie, is where the artwork seems most vibrant to me. Everywhere you look there are crystals, dragons flapping their wings, and wonderful lightning animations.

It seemed as though every new scene said, “Oh, you think that was cool? Wait till you see this!” before revealing realistic clouds, wonderful dragons or detailed facial expressions.

This attention to detail was also clear in the dialogue and side chatter, which the target audience of smaller children wouldn’t pick up on, but makes it worth the watch for older moviegoers.

My favorite of these examples was how, as vikings, instead of saying “thank god” or “Oh my god”, they mentioned Thor and Odin, the gods from ancient viking mythology. It was these little details that made the movie great, and despite a somewhat bland story, I enjoyed the movie overall.

My final score is 80/100.