Dragons: Race to the Edge

Having finally finished watching the entire Dragons: Race to the Edge to its full fruition, I'm going to retract my previous review.

Race to the Edge is not as formulaic and repetitive as I had initially assumed. The first season might have been a little dull but by the second- and third season, the show is a full- on action packed adventure with the right amount of romance, comedy and drama. Viggo Grimborn is one of the most cunning and vicious villains to grace animated television. It's just an added bonus that he is voiced by the great Alfred Molina.

Adults will enjoy this alongside with their children. It builds up to the second How to Train Your Dragon, showing us how the youths grew up. The animation as well is remarkable, pretty impressive for a mini television show.

I was slightly skeptical whenever I decided to watch the show, I love the franchise with my whole heart so I just had to see what they have done, most of the tv shows of famous franchises always feel very different from the movies. But it's definitely not the case here.

First of all, the writing in the show is absolutely top notch(arguably even better than the movies), every single character of the show has so much depth to him and it really helps showcase more the supporting characters of the movies and fill them with personality. In addition, it's hilarious and the humor is outstanding to pretty much most of the tv shows I have ever seen.

One thing I really love about it is that every episode feels like an entire adventure of the characters and every two parter is just almost a movie on it's own, truly fleshing out the franchise in it's full glory.

The second point is the animation, even though you can somewhat feel the lower budget, it takes absolutely nothing from the glorious battles scenes and the good parts of the animation are really not forgotten.

To conclude, this is now my new comfort show for probably forever and I just can't get enough of it, in my opinion every single person who remotely likes the franchise can have an absolute blast watching this show.

So go watch it now, you won't regret it.

I am a big fan of the How To Train Your Dragon movie franchise and was rather excited to delve into this series.

Many have complained that there are errors and elements that are left out of the series and contradictions to the second film. I can see why they aren't completely satisfied with some character developments and focus. However after completing the series and waiting until the 2018 final series to come out, I can honestly say it was a wonderful experience with alot of adventures, interesting new dragons and characters and concludes nicely to lead onto the second film.

The characters have lots of development, with the introduction of new unique characters with interesting back stories. The series is PG and connects with young kids and the older generation. The kids loved the action and all the dragons and jokes, whilst the adults also enjoyed. A great family series.

I won't go into too much detail as do not want to spoil the series, but if you like the franchise and want to experience new adventures of hiccup and toothless, along with an array of colourful new dragons. This is the series for you.

Please don't listen to the naysayers, I doubt they have even bothered to watch the show. I can agree that Heather is poorly written and intrusive, she clearly shouldn't have existed, there is no doubt there, but the rest of the show is pretty darn good! This show is not only great but it gets better and better for each season! The last season blew me away, it was so much more than I could've imagined.

Usually a show lessens in quality and becomes more stale over time. With Race to the Edge it is the exact opposite! It started out exceptional enough but then it got even better! Midway through the action, romance, storytelling and stakes leveled up and it just became insanely good!

As a big Hiccstrid shipper, I must say the writers did a tremendous job with Hiccup and Astrid's relationship. They started out as friends and then halfway into the show we started to see their bond grow stronger and watch them fall in love. I honestly feared they wouldn't do their relationship justice but they did not only meet my expectations, they blew me away! After watching each season back to back, I can say with confidence that's most well written romantic relationship I have seen in an animated series.

Another big surprise for me was how they handled Hiccup's relationship with his father. The last season focused heavily on that and the writers did a superb job! It hits you right in the heart.

They really managed to tie the series in with the second movie, which was always going to be difficult but they made it seem effortless. It was all done very tastefully! Well, all except for the unwanted Heather story, which the show probably would've been better off without.

Aside from that, I would like to say thank you to Douglas Sloan, Art Edler Brown, John Tellegen, Jack C. Thomas, FM DeMarco, Will Morey, TJ. Sullivan and everyone else. Especially thank you to Douglas Sloan and Art Brown for running the show and putting so much time and effort into it. Thank you for all the wonderful 4 years of amazing content that made everyone cry in joy, frustration, anger, happiness, sadness and shock. You evoked so many emotions in us fans and made the experience very memorable! We will always cherish this. Thank you and good luck with your other projects!

Back at 2010, DreamWorks Animation released How To Train Your Dragon, a story about a young viking who befriends a deadly dragon by showing compassion. After learning the tactics of training a dragon, he changes his entire town of Berk and thus the battle between vikings and dragons ended. It became a critically acclaimed hit and started a trilogy with the second film in 2014. A year later, after the end of the Cartoon Network series Dragons: Riders and Defenders of Berk, Netflix, after making a deal with DreamWorks Animation in 2013, decided to make another TV series that takes place before the second film.

Race to the Edge continues the story line as Hiccup and his band of dragon riders find a Dragon Eye that unlocks many secrets. But little do they know that many dangers lie ahead as new villains want it for other purposes, so it's up to them to work together, make allies along the way, and save Berk.

Now that it's been five years since it came out, I'll review this show. So I won't do any spoilers to those who haven't seen this yet.

This show is perfect and one of the best DreamWorks/Netflix shows next to Trollhunters and Voltron: Legendary Defender. Not only is it well-written and provides character development for not only Hiccup, but everyone else including his friends Astrid, Fishlegs, Snotlout, Ruffnut, and Tuffnut along with the return of Dagur the Deranged. And the new villain Viggo, voiced perfectly by Alfred Molina, is great. Calculating, manipulative, and smart is what he succeeds at.

The music score from John Paesano (who scored the Maze Runner movies) continues to do a solid job in retaining the motifs of John Powell's score from the movies while giving it's own identity, the pacing is very good to the point where it can have quiet moments for the characters, and the voice acting from everyone involved apart from Alfred Molina is also great. Jay Baruchel continues to impress as Hiccup by giving the character pathos, authority, and a sense of humor when needed, America Ferrera also shines as Astrid who continues to give support for him and her team while Ruffnut and Tuffnut still bring some comedic levity that isn't overdone. There were some instances where Snotlout can get somewhat annoying, but not too much while Fishlegs is still the expert on reading the tactics of any kind of dragon.

And last but not least the animation and it's very impressive. The visuals are very good and the character animation lifelike and expressive. Even the action sequences shine brilliantly.

Overall, Dragons: Race to the Edge is a great continuation of the Cartoon Network series and one of the best Netflix shows of the past decade. Go check it out! :)