The Theme of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

 I've been meaning to talk about this topic for quite some time. What topic, you ask? The theme of the third and final installment in the How To Train Your Dragon film trilogy (How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World): Love. I know, kind of an ambiguous theme, right? What kind of love are we talking about exactly? Familial? Friendship? Or romantic? To put it frankly, it's actually all of these forms of love. Not just friendship, not just familial, and not just romantic love...but all three. 

The truth is, if you've actually seen The Hidden World --and watched it more than once--you'll notice that this theme of love is actually brought up a lot. Not just figuratively, either. The word "love" is mentioned many times throughout the movie, yet the film still makes the theme just inconspicuous enough so that you're still required to do some thinking. I mean, if this wasn't the case, do you think I could dedicate an entire blog post to explaining and breaking it down? Okay, maybe, but it would be way too easy to explain and it probably wouldn't be near as interesting (or fun) to write--or read about.

Anyway, how do I explain the theme of "love" in this beautifully animated Dream Works masterpiece? I'll start by giving you a summary of the plot itself. After all, how can you possibly explain the theme of the story without first explaining what it's about, right? 

In the film, the heroes' home island, Berk, is starting to catch the eyes of the world outside of the archipelago, and this is mostly due to the fact that Hiccup and the other Dragon Riders of Berk happen to be bringing back so many rescued dragons back to the isle with them. In other words, Berk is beginning to be overpopulated with the dragons they rescue from Dragon trappers, hunters, and warlords. To put it bluntly, because Berk has so many dragons, it's becoming a pretty tempting target in the eyes of not-so-friendly outsiders who are still more or less prejudice against dragons. In the midst of all this, Toothless meets and falls in love with a female dragon that is of a similar species to him, in the forest. This, of course, is the Light Fury. The Light Fury, in a sense, represents the "call of the wild" for Toothless, in that Toothless's growing relationship with this female Light Fury starts to put his and Hiccup's bond of friendship to the ultimate test. In other words, Toothless is constantly being lured away by this female dragon that he has become so smitten with. Meanwhile, Hiccup notices that Toothless' inability to fly on his own is getting in the way of his growing relationship with the Light Fury, so he makes a new tail fin for Toothless that will allow him to fly without the need of his rider. However, after Toothless has been away for too long, Hiccup begins to worry about his fire-breathing buddy. After all, there is a new enemy out there in the form of the infamous dragon hunter, Grimmel the Grisly (who is also responsible for the near-extinction of Toothless' species, the Night Fury). In response to this, Hiccup and Astrid ride off on Stormfly (Astrid's Deadly Nadder dragon) to go find Toothless.

Of course, their search ultimately leads them to the fabled "Hidden World" from which dragons first came. There, they discover that Toothless has become king of the dragons residing in this hidden dragon utopia, with the Light Fury as his mate. However, when the wild dragons in the Hidden World notice the humans' presence, Toothless is forced to leave the Hidden World and save his best friend by taking him back to New Berk (the new island on which the Berkians have settled). And, as expected, the Light Fury follows them, because as Grimmel said earlier in the film, "Furies mate for life."