HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

Friends in high places

- Neil Smith

When first released in 2010, How To Train Your Dragon signified a marked step up in quality and ambition for a DreamWorks Animation outfit overly dependent on its Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda franchises. Its 2014 sequel was even better: so good, in fact, that the relative disappointment of 2019 closer The Hidden World did little to tarnish its memory.

It was inevitable, then, that writer/director Dean DeBlois would revisit the series at some point, especially given Disney's recent successes in the live-action make-over department. Should anyone be anticipating a radical reinvention, however, they should be immediately disabused of that fanciful notion.

The “new”