A waste of time and potential

rdavall

It may be surprising to some readers that I am honestly no fan of the How to Train Your Dragons movies (the climatic arc of the book series is actually better). While they have excellent animation (holy ***, that Bewilderbeast fight!) and a few poignant moments, I feel like they have a tendency to overglorify clichéd storytelling and characterization (particularly that of the dragon riders sans Hiccup and Astrid) as 'epic', leading to a sense of weird unintentional egotism. One of the aspects of the films I did undoubtedly enjoy though was the sense that the films were only scratching the surface of this grand dragon-inhabited Viking setting, and that there was huge potential for development and worldbuilding that could be expanded on outside of the films, e.g: in a TV (or Netflix now, what's the real difference?) show?

This review is not about the How to Train Your Dragon films. It's about the Netflix show 'Dragons: Race to the Edge'. And why have I spent an entire paragraph rambling on about the films when this is the IMDb page for none other than the show?

I guess it's because Race to the Edge is such a void.

As I said above, there was (and still is, without a doubt) huge potential to develop and expand the Hiccup universe outside of the films, and Race to the Edge fumbles at this in significantly unspectacular fashion. My only guess as to why this is the case is that the Dreamworks bigsuits basically told Art Brown and Douglas Sloan (the head writers) that they couldn't develop the characters/setting too much for risk of casual viewers of the films 'missing out' on these details, basically sticking the show into a rut it rarely manages to escape from. Now we're stuck with the same bland clique of riders from the first film largely undeveloped from their original selves. Hiccup is a bland (and kind of selfish and pretentious, for some reason now) hero, Astrid is an angry, temperamental jerk (prior to recent episodes, where the writers have abruptly zigzagged back to using her characterization from the end of the first film because they kind of forgot to build on her romance with Hiccup in most prior episodes and are now compensating), Fishlegs is a wimp stuck in the rut of learning homogeneous lessons every time he is given any focus, Snotlout is a braindead jerkass (although there are some flawed but well- intention-ed episodes that do try to develop him) and Ruffnut and Tuffnut are dumbasses obsessed with chickens and inanimate objects to the point of severe mental defect (both of these gags are painfully driven into the ground by episode 10 of the first season). And then we have Heather, a bland, 'pathos-driven' Mary Sue obviously given the Ascended Extra treatment because the writers prefer her to Astrid (explains the latter's characterization here well) and she isn't in either of the films, leaving them with free reign over a dead-on-arrival character. Having Tinkerbell's voice ain't gonna help ya, lady.

Race to the Edge also bleeds from severe wounds in other areas. Episode premises are largely bland (most are either narratives featuring a gimmicky new dragons because damn we gotta sell us some action figures, or character-focused episodes that 9.5 times out of 10 never tell us anything about the characters that we couldn't have already abducted (word is not 'deduced', by the way) from the first film), the villains are garbage (oh look, an insane, hammy guy who is later reformed. Oh look, evil backstabbing dragon trappers. Very compelling. No reference as to what even happened to Alvin from 'Defenders of Berk' either), the character designs begin to slip into 'awful' territory after a while (yikes, that queen and her right-man man!) not even closely resembling the quirky yet detailed designs from the films, the dialog is bland and vapid and any gags with the potential to be humorous are quickly hammered into the ground in case any poor viewer dare find them amusing the first time (look at the 'gambling' rumors from the season 4 finale). And the worst issue is that outside of a few small islands designed mostly as homes for the Toys/Dragons of the Week, not much development is given to the barren land of the Hiccup universe. No other Viking tribes asides from one 'sane', two 'insane' and one 'hidden village ruled by Mary Sue queen'? No history even implied on the previous Hiccups to set up anything from the films (isn't that one of the show's purposes)? When you have five seasons to do this, you should be doing this, not wasting away life by writing another 'hey looks guys, aren't Ruffnut and Tuffnut stupid? Herp derp derp' episode?

Basically, it's a cheap spin off that young viewers might enjoy, but it has little relating to the films. Watch if you're a die-hard Hiccup fan (although even this might be questionable, considering the even- poorer characterization in the show) or are under the age of twelve. Otherwise, stick to the films or go read the books (the last book is pretty amazing).

score 3/10

rdavall 10 September 2017

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3802853/