NEW TRAILER and EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Dean DeBlois on “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World”

NEW TRAILER and EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Dean DeBlois on “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World”

June 7th, 2018

W.R. Miller

After two films and a 79-episode TV series, DreamWorks Animation will release a third feature film in the franchise, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Our young Viking hero, Hiccup Haddock III, has accepted the role of chief of his tribe. Toothless, his Night Fury companion, dominates the dragons. A Viking-dragon alliance prevails among the islands of Berk. What could possibly spoil this paradise?

A new trailer, released today, gives us some clues.

In a phone interview, Dean BeBlois, writer-director of all three Dragons films, provides more information on the final chapter of the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy.

Bob Miller: DreamWorks produced a TV series that bridged the five-year gap between How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2. Is there going to be a TV series that’s going to connect Dragons 2 and 3?

Dean DeBlois: There could be. I’m not really in the know, as far as that goes. There may be discussions with the TV division and Netflix to continue the television series, but, unfortunately I’m not the person to confirm that. [Jerry Schmitz, a DreamWorks spokesman, says there are no more plans for an additional TV show based on the films at this time.]

Bob: What has happened in the gap between 2 and 3?

Dean: We’ve made a concerted effort that each of these installments be standalone films. They’re interconnected, but, you don’t have to have seen 1 or 2 or the TV series in order to fully appreciate Dragons: The Hidden World. It carries the story forward.

The larger narrative of the story takes place about a year after the events of Dragons 2. Hiccup is the rookie chief of his tribe. He has fulfilled his great ambition of creating a dragon-Viking utopia. They live in peace. And yet, the world knows about them because of the famous defeat of Drago and his army. They have the largest flock of dragons and their enemies know it. That’s part of what Hiccup and his gang have been up to. They’re constantly rescuing dragons, bringing them back to their vastly overcrowded home island of Berk. It’s teetering on collapse, as fun as it is. It’s not a sustainable way of life. That’s one of the pressures that Hiccup is facing at the beginning of the story. When pressure starts to amass in the form of Grimmel the Grizzly—a very specialized hunter—comes in speaking to the Alpha, Toothless, that’s when Hiccup really has to make some bold decisions about their way of life and how to protect it.

Bob: So he’s just a new dragon hunter on the scene.

Dean: In fact, he is the dragon hunter, the big game hunter, the prize hunter who has effectively eliminated the Night Furies. He has hunted them to near-extinction when he discovers that one has slipped through his grasp: Toothless, who is now the Alpha Dragon.

Bob: Now why would he do that? What’s his motivation?

Dean: They’re the hardest dragons to hunt and kill. And he’s a guy who welcomes a challenge, and so, he has made his name. He has become famous in other parts of the world for having eliminated them, all in the context of creating a larger world, by eliminating the most feared dragon of them all.

Bob: The trailer shows a romance between the Night Fury and the Light Fury. Can you tell us about that? And is the courtship ritual that Toothless was doing based on a real-life animal ritual?

Dean: Yeah, sure. Good questions, there. The first one is, the Light Fury is an engine of change in our story. She and Toothless meet under innocent terms, but there’s an immediate attraction. She is very wild and elusive, and she has a deep distrust of humans, for good reason. They continue to encounter one another. There’s a bond that develops between the two of them.

What she really represents in the story narrative is the force that causes Hiccup to really look at himself and ask the question of why he’s really holding on to Toothless in such a desperate way. Really, it’s about Hiccup’s growth to realize that he is able to stand on his own when push comes to shove. She’s a character that seeks to draw Toothless away. She represents the call of the wild. That’s something that, at first, a welcome discovery that becomes a threat in the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless, and forces him to really look deep into the insecurities he’s had since the first moment we met him in the first film, which is, “Am I worthy? Am I worthy to lead this tribe? Am I a worthy human on my own? Are all of my accomplishments and confidence been completely based upon his relationship with Toothless?”.

The second part to your question is, yes, Toothless finds himself having to engage in courtship rituals of which he knows nothing about. He is the last of his kind, as far as he knows, so there’s no parents or siblings to have taught him the ways, and he only has Hiccup to advise him and guide him. It all turns out to be terrible advice. He’s a bumbling amateur. He’s the Alpha Dragon, the King of Dragons. He is reduced to an awkward youngster when it comes to the ways of courtship.

Bob: So the ritual is not based on any real life animal courtship?

Dean: Oh, we did a lot of research in the beginning—nature documentaries, bird courtship behaviors, animal courtship behaviors. In the end we created our own but they’re based on real and very funny behaviors observed.

Bob: OK. Have you had any input or feedback from Cressida Cowell (author and creator of the original How to Train Your Dragon book series)?

Dean: Yes. Cressida has been a great consultant and advisor all along the way, on all three films, and she’s good friends. We always try to invite her into the mix. Whenever she’s in the States we invite her into the studio and catch her up. If I’m abroad in London we often get together and have lunch and catch up on all the developments, both on her next projects and what we’re doing with the third installment.

Bob: That’s great. Dragons 2 had the technological advancement of the Apollo software. (which won an Ub Iwerks Award from ASIFA-Hollywood) Has anything new been developed for Dragons 3?

Dean: Well, yeah. I think it’s going to be very obvious in the footage that we have stepped it up in terms of the palpable, visceral credibility of our world, and the level of texture and detail and numbers of characters. It’s all rendered now with a ray-tracer which is called Moonray, and it’s not something we had in the past. It really means that we can light our shots with a method that actually mimics the way real light falls on characters and objects. It’s really fast, and it allows us to many iterations. It also allows our departments to work really close together. It’s been a Godsend because it’s allowed us to really realize the visual ambition of the movie without any compromise.

Bob: What have you learned throughout your films that you wished you would have known on the first Dragons?

Dean: (pause for thought) OK. That’s an interesting question. I suppose, from Lilo and Stitch we had a lot of help with our composer, Alan Sylvestri, on that film. Making all three Dragons films I’ve come to rely on the power of music to communicate emotion and feeling that cannot be communicated through dialogue and performance. As such, I try to create sequences now that completely rely upon this for little-to-no dialogue whatsoever. It becomes iconic moments in the film where it allows the audience to soar along with our characters and fall into this narrative completely.

Bob: That sounds great. For this film specifically, what challenges did you face and how did you overcome those challenges?

Dean: Probably the biggest challenge was more of a logistical one. From its beginning to the end of its release on March 1, 2019, it will have been about five years to create the film. A lot of that was due to stalls in the change of leadership and DreamWorks being sold to Comcast and meeting our new bosses at Universal, just the whole transition of it all. It caused a lot of stalls in the making of the film. At the end of the day, I think, it was probably good because we were able to fine-tune what the story was going to be. But it was on a slower track for a long time while the studio was trying to figure itself out.

Bob: Is there anything else you’d like people to know about?

Dean: We have every ambition of delivering an epic conclusion to the story, and that it will be fun, it will be full of wonder, it’ll be funny and at the same time, we’ve really gone for some sincere emotion that will hopefully bring the audience to tears in all the right places.

DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is currently scheduled for release on March 1st, 2019.
Cast: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Cate Blanchett, Kit Harrington, Craig Ferguson, F. Murray Abraham
Written and Directed by: Dean DeBlois
Based on the Books of: Cressida Cowell
Produced by: Brad Lewis, Bonnie Arnold

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W.R. Miller

W.R. Miller - known informally as “Bob” – has written for Starlog, Comics Scene, Animation Magazine and Animation World Magazine. Bob has been involved in animation for two decades, as a writer, character animator, special effects animator, and storyboard artist - For more information about Bob, check his website: http://wrmilleronline.com/.

He has just completed Batman: The Animated Interviews, a five-volume work featuring the executives, producers, directors, writers, actors, designers, storyboard artists and composers involved with the making of Batman: The Animated Series and its spinoffs. BearManor Media is the publisher.