“This is Berk. For generations it was Viking against Dragon. The battles were ferocious. Then one day, everything changed. I met Toothless and together we’ve shown people here that instead of fighting dragons, we can ride them, live with them, even train them.”
The Cartoon Network series, Dragons: Riders of Berk revisits your favorite characters from How To Train Your Dragon, chronicling the further adventures of Viking teenager Hiccup, his friends, and their dragons. This DVD set contains the first four episodes of the TV series:
While peace has been made with the dragons, some citizens—such as the cantankerous Mildew (Stephen Root)—are getting sick of the dragons running wild. They are eating them out of house and home and causing damage across the village. So when the citizens demand the dragons be kicked off the island, Hiccup takes it upon himself to use the arena to train and tame the dragons.
Former dragon slayer Gobber (Chris Edgerly) tries to find a purpose in the village now that he is out of a job. Stoick tries to let him take over some of his duties, but this soon proves to be a disaster.
The animals on the island are spooked with the constant presence of the dragons and are no longer producing milk, eggs and wool. With a huge winter storm coming, the teenagers must help the livestock learn to trust their dragons.
Hiccup comes across a wounded baby fire-breathing dragon of unknown species. He takes Torch home to nurse him back to health and study him, but Toothless doesn’t like sharing the attention. Meanwhile, when Torch’s mother returns to the woods to find him missing, she goes on a rampage looking for her baby.
The original How To Train Your Dragon film is possibly my favorite of the animated Dreamworks titles. So I was really excited to check out this series that extends that franchise.
I was happy to see that Dragons: Riders of Berk recaptures the look, spirit and humor of the original film. Even though this is a TV show, the quality is up to par with the movie. Many of the film’s original stars are back to reprise their voice roles, including Jay Baruchel (“Hiccup”), America Ferrera (“Astrid”), T.J. Miller (“Tuffnut”) and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (“Fishlegs”). A few of the big-name stars from the film did not return—Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill and Kristen Wiig—but I didn’t even notice as the replacement voices are quite similar, and equally as talented.
Each of the episodes on this DVD does a great job at both giving a well-developed story while also further developing these characters that we already know and love. I really enjoyed these episodes—they were a great blend of action, drama and humor. It’s a shame there are only four episodes included on this DVD.
What’s Included on the DVD:
Episodes:
- The first 4 episodes of the series (1:30:24)
- “How To Start a Dragon Academy”
- “Viking for Hire”
- “Animal House”
- “The Terrible Twos”
- Widescreen 1.78:1
- Audio: English DD 5.1
- Closed Captions
Extras:
- How To Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular: Sneak peek (20:25)
Footage and behind the scenes look at how the animated characters are brought to life for the live stage adaptation of the film. Also features interviews with the cast and creators. - Previews
Trailers for Rise of the Guardians, Dragons: Riders of Berk, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted and How To Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular. - Sneak Peek (1:12)
Trailer for the upcoming Madly Madagascar. - Collectible Dragon Training Cards
A pack of 5 Dragon Training Cards (“Night Fury”, “Hideous Zippleback”, “Deadly Nadder”, “Monstrous Nightmare” and “Gronckle”) are included in the DVD case. Get the free App for your iOS or Android device to bring the dragons to life on your screen. It looks pretty neat—you can try it out using the image above of the back of the DVD case (click for a larger view). Additional cards will be included in future Dragons: Riders of Berk DVD releases.
Final Thoughts:
This series is aired in HD on Cartoon Network, but only received a DVD release. However, I’m really pleased with the quality of the picture on this DVD—it looks very crisp and clear. The audio is a 5.1 track, but it seemed to be dialog-heavy and I didn’t really get that encompassing surround sound feeling.
The extras were kind of disappointing. While the one long featurette on the live-action stage production was interesting, it would have been nice to get some featurettes about the actual series. I would have loved to hear from the cast/creators on going from the big screen to the series, see some voice recording sessions, the animation process, etc.
Overall, I really enjoyed these 4 episodes of the series—I wish there were more! Hopefully we’ll see a “complete season” type of Blu-ray release in the future, but until then this DVD is a nice introduction to the series.
