It’s all but guaranteed that the third entry in a film franchise won’t live up to the heights of the first two. Maybe the original writers and directors moved on, or the previous films didn’t leave enough narrative potential to sustain a third film, but it’s rare for a franchise to remain strong through three entries. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, while a fun conclusion, upholds this rule and does not chart a course for anything but more of what we’ve seen.
Or, rather, you’ve maybe seen. I remember loving the first How to Train Your Dragon...
According to TV Tropes, the Internet’s most addicting repository of storytelling devices, the term ‘lampshading’ is “the writers’ trick of dealing with any element of the story that threatens the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief, whether a very implausible plot development, or a particularly blatant use of a trope, by calling attention to it and simply moving on.” It’s the wink-and-nod to the audience that says “We know we’re making something really cliché, so that makes it okay” and has become an almost essential scripting tool now that audiences have instant access to nearly every movie ever made.
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It’s the early months of the 2019 year, which means all the good movies that came out months ago are lining up for awards. Which means the movies coming out in theaters… generally speaking, aren’t really at risk of missing out. But even with this knowledge, nothing could really prepare me for Serenity.
Matthew McConaughey is Baker Dill, a deep sea fisherman who captains the Serenity, a small fishing boat. He lives on the vaguely Caribbean Plymouth Island, taking rich tourists out to sea so they can catch trophy fish, but getting in the way...