Fans of the How to Train Your Dragon book or animated series will no doubt know that two worlds are always going to be at odds with each other. The trust between humans and dragons is difficult, and when these two cultures clash, to find methods to preserve the peace is difficult. This principal message is one that both creator/author Cressida Cowell and writer/director Dean DeBlois have expertly crafted into the this narrative, and that is what makes this Viking saga so enduring. To see how the conflict finally comes to an end in the final book is aptly named How to Fight a Dragon’s Fury.
This novel was released in the UK on Sept 8th. In North America, it will be released in Canada on Oct 20th and in the USA on Nov 3rd. Readers will finally see the finale that’s been built up two books ago. The last three books comprise The Dragon Rebellion story-arc and the rising action only gets better in this last release. Here, the hero Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third finally confronts the dragon Furious, who is upset at all the inhumanity done to him and his species.
Hiccup and his gang of Dragon Riders are back in DreamWorks’ Dragons: Race to the Edge. Thirteen episodes of a 26 episode season run are now out and there will be 52 in total that Netflix has ordered. What’s presented is filling in the space left from the last season leading up to the second film. Some favourites from the past two seasons even return and I was firmly engrossed by episode five to keep on watching them all in one sitting.
Dagur the Deranged (David Faustino) gets more importance in the series after escaping from his prison. He swears that he will get his revenge on Hiccup (Jay Baruchel). The war with the Outcasts and Berserkers is over, and while peace seems to reign, more trouble is brewing. When the young stewards of Berk locate a boat containing treasures from foreign lands and find a mysterious Dragons Eye (a slide projector with kaleidoscope capabilities to cast and merge images out of a tube when properly illuminated), only adventure beckons the leader of the group. Hiccup wants to discover what secrets this cylinder has in its encoded messages. Some of it suggests answers to the origins of dragons and others unveils a bigger world for him to explore.
The good news is that the next part of the How to Train Your Dragon saga is all coming in almost one fell swoop. Thirteen episodes of the 26 episode season, Dragons: Race of the Edge, is coming to Netflix on June 26th. In the weeks prior, fans can expect a new swarm of toys from Spin Master based on what the DreamWorks panel at WonderCon has revealed. Two ominous dragon names include the Death Song and the Snow Wraith. There’s even a video game being made to feature more!
In what’s spilled to the Internet grapevine, the third season will help bridge further details leading up to the second film, like in how Stoick trained the Skull Crusher. No word was said about the first dragon he trained, namely the Thunderdrum. Also, just how Hiccup made his flight suit will get looked at. And for many fans wondering if this Netflix world is self-contained, thankfully not! Hiccup’s rival, Dagur, is set to return! This panel also revealed that Tuffnut forms some kind of relationship with a chicken and a mysterious dragon rider will be spotted. If that’s Hiccup’s mother spying in at the scene, most likely not. With plenty of tension being developed between episodes, the huge volume release is going to be welcomed.
At the same time, the demise of weekly serials, even for animated products, will no longer have people tuning in for more much like how the 60’s Batman kept viewers glued to the sets. Have viewers become that impatient? Some folks do binge watch, or do marathon viewing sessions with DVD releases of television programs. With Netflix, their idea is to do away with that by getting folks to watch their programs anytime, however little as they want it or a lot. When a few countries are setting “Internet bandwidth” usage caps and penalizing them, the idea seems counterproductive unless those viewers have subscribed to the right data plan or are pumping streaming content through special set-top boxes.
But as some television critics may well wonder, can this new model of pushing out content in one huge lump be good in the long run? Will putting out entire shows in its entirety, like what Netflix has done with Marvel’s Daredevil, forecast the demise of the traditional television watching in a serial format? For some folks, they can moderate what they watch. At least CW’s Supernatural keeps that formula alive, but for some folks who just want to eat up every episode released in one day, they just might call in to work to register a sick day just to watch one of their favourite shows in one go.
The title card for Netflix‘s upcoming continuation of the How to Train Your Dragon world was announced and the third season will be titled Dragons: Race to the Edge. The images released today confirms it. Most of the information about this series was announced during WonderCon in Anaheim yesterday, and the good news is that the first 13 of 26 episodes will premiere in June. This frequency of releases, by a weekly schedule or not, will be better than what Netflix has previously done with only five episodes per block.
How to Train Your Dragon fans will soon be inundated with merchandise from various fronts. Lucky AMC theater goers who attend a special screening Jun 12 (and who may have to be part of the AMC Stubs program) will get a commemorative dragon pin. Over on Walmart.com, there is a ZinePak exclusive for people buying the soundtrack — it comes with a nifty looking Nightfury patch. Topps also will have trading cards ready for some outlets to carry, but the list does not end there.
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