How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World – Blu-ray 4K Review
This post contains affiliate links. Please see my full disclosure here.
Universal Studios 2019
PG | 1hrs 44 mins Fantasy | Action | Adventure | Animation
HD | 1080P | Dolby Atmos | Dolby TrueHD 7.1
Upscaled 4K | 2160P | HDR10 | Dolby Atmos | Dolby TrueHD 7.1
2.35:1 Aspect Ratio
Staring: Jay Baruchel | America Ferrera | Christopher Mintz-Plasse | Craig Ferguson | Gerard Butler | Kristen Wiig
Directed by: Dean DeBlois
Ratings & Reviews
Please see here for my comments on reviewing movies.
My ratings are simple being marked out of a maximum of 5+. My reviews are biased towards the technical production aspects of the film with brief comments about the story line. Extras, sorry, that’s just not my ‘bag’.
Not having immersive audio yet, what did the 7.1 soundtrack sound like? Very good, and the 4K HDR10 video? Reference quality.
Entertainment: 5
Video: 5
Audio: 5-
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World – Blu-ray 4K Review
Technical – 4K UHD HDR10
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is an entirely digital production that was finished at 2K. Even though this 4K movie is upconverted, that doesn’t mean that the image is anything less than truly stellar. The movie looks spectacular on the 4K UHD format and manages to significantly improve upon its 2K HD Blu-ray brother by a notable degree in all aspects of the image; depth of colors, hue and saturation, rendering detail, clarity and dynamic range. Closeup shots show excellent details in the building structures, rocks & vegetation, dragon skin & scales, and costumes.
In terms of image quality, the clarity and sharpness are outstanding – better than most of my native 4K movies, including Mortal Engines and The Greatest Showman.
The movie opens with a foggy scene that the compression handles extremely well without any noticeable flaws, artifacts or banding. The digitally rendered movie images show first rate textural detail with compelling clarity and definition. Terrain and sand, clothing, dragon scales, facial and building features are all razor-sharp. The level of detail in the costumes and props was outstanding bringing them to life and making them almost palpable. Notably the vikings skin while having natural colors shows average detail except in the case of Hiccup where his fine wisps of beard hair are clear to see in almost every facial angle.
The production uses HDR to its utmost capabilities together with the DCI-P3 color space. The transfer reveals a boldly enchanced color palette that bombards the viewer with bright and impressive reds, greens, blues, yellows and purples as seen on the armies of dragons. Every color of the rainbow is there, with all hues and saturations virtually leaping of the screen. Blacks are inky black, supporting tremendous shadow detail and no crush, while the peak whites showed very good high level detail with no clipping, resulting in excellent contrast levels for both luminance and chrominance. This resulted in images that at times supported such stellar contrast ratios, saturated colors, resolution and textural detail that I felt as if my screen was a virtual window and I could reach out and touch the ‘3D action’. Particularly outstanding was the color luminosity in the end of the world cave scenes. Grain, well on my system, Oppo 205 and JVC RS640, there was none.
All is not quite perfect and there are a few moments were there were some very mild compression artifacts and extremely light shimmering/alaising to be found, but otherwise this is a reference quality animation image.
On my system, truly a top of the shelf reference level animation effort by Universal Studios.
Audio – Dolby TrueHD 7.1
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World‘ provides a Dolby Atmos soundtrack that defaults to Dolby TrueHD in my system. While the mix is not full of wiz bang and blow ’em up sound effects it supports the action very well delivering a well balanced mix. All seven speakers are frequently engaged with the rear and side surrounds pulling you into the action through their use for directional clues and movement, or providing a locales high action or subtle atmospherics. Action sequences are where the seven channels shine with the seamless integration of movement, plenty of directional effects and some very powerful sub action, particularly supporting the end of the world waterfall and believe it or not the first music track in the closing titles.
The music soundtrack by John Powell, who scored the first two How to Train Your Dragons, is clear and clean and given top priority on a number of occasions, supporting both aggressive and more relaxed scenes equally well. The soundtrack also includes two songs from Jónsi.
Dialogue was always clear and detailed with solid front-center imaging and prioritization whether zipping through the air, high action scenes or the cacophony of a town hall meeting. There is little to criticize regarding this soundtrack, providing as it does, an enjoyable mix.
Story Overview
This delightful and emotional story follows Hiccups continuing journey of trying to create a peaceful dragon utopia called “The Hidden World”. He soon discovers that Toothless isn’t the only Night Fury as a second elusive and untamed female Light Fury draws Toothless away looking for a mate. As Hiccup comes to terms with Night Fury’s new found love, he’s presented with the daunting task of looking after the village and trying to move it and the dragons to safer grounds as fleets of dragon hunter ships and the dragon slayer and tyrant Grimmel try to destroy everything he is fighting to save.
Truly an outstanding looking and well sounding movie. With real family entertainment value, real emotions and a real story. It uses HDR and the DCI-P3 color gamut to its fullest, providing some sensational eye popping candy and a few thunderous deep bass moments that gave my subs something to work on.
You have to own this movie and view it for what it is, a spectacular looking, good sounding and entertaining animation. It is now heading to my reference movies from where I am sure it will be viewed numerous times. AND, this is all from an upconverted 2K Intermediate….not even 4K native!
A perfect finish to the trilogy; or is it?
