Spotlight #10- How to Train your Dragon 2

As an artist, I will say I am interested in other people's opinions, but I was honestly a little worried about "How to Train your Dragon 2". It was receiving a great deal of hype in theaters, and some were even claiming it to be the best animated film ever made. The trailers certainly looked enticing enough, but I've never been one to trust reviews made by my family and friends. All I really needed to do was see it for myself. Now, I can tell you with certainty that this sequel not only matches the expectations set by its predecessor, but succeeds them with flying colors.
This came out on Blu-Ray and DVD last week, but if you haven't seen it by now, it takes place about five years after the original. Dragons have now been accepted into the lifestyle of the little viking village of Berk, but Hiccup hasn't. While his father (reprised by Gerard Butler) is trying to involve him more in the community by encouraging him to join the Dragon Races or take the role of chief, he knows there's more out there to discover on the back of his dragon Toothless. He's right, of course. Out there, he finds that the world of dragons is much bigger than he could have ever hoped- big enough, that is, for there to be a massive war between an army of dragon oppressors and a sole dragon-riding vigilante. This war is bound to threaten Berk soon. Hiccup must find a way to bring peace, and it may involve becoming the leader he was destined to be.
As you can see in the trailers, the film is presented beautifully. Several more locales and dragon species are shown, and they all are rendered and animated with a stunning amount of creativity and realism. It's amazing how seamlessly they can switch between barren ice fields, burnt forests, and lush dragon nests without losing my interest visually. In terms of the soundtrack, John Powell returns for composition, and it certainly doesn't disappoint. It may just be a fascination I have with that Celtic twang it all has, but it does a good job of heightening the action and engagement.
Of course, while most animated movies nowadays can look as realistic as they want, the true achievement is the plot. The gripping and massive action sequences are interlaced by rather powerful softer scenes. Hiccup, naturally, has several with Toothless, but he also shows more of a relationship with other human characters, especially Astrid, who was teased only slightly in the previous film. Even so, the new characters are also a big joy to see. Valka, Hiccup's mother, make a big appearance that adds so much to the story. I ended up wanting to see more between her and Stoick, simply because the little amount of time they had on screen together was actually rather fulfilling. I do feel obligated to say that the villain, the dragon commander Drago Bludfist, wasn't as fleshed out as I wish he could have been, but in any other movie he'd be a firm centerpiece. He just had a hard time in this movie against all of the other, more engaging side-plots.
After the credits rolled, I was led to think about how this compared with other big animated movies. Most people consider corporations like Disney Animation or Warner Bros. to be the leaders in animation, but the comparison this year was pretty rough. Disney's "Frozen" was decent, but ended up forcing itself into a few too many cliches, overriding the fun-but-incredibly-overplayed music. The Warner Animation studio's "the Lego Movie" compares a little better, but embraces an entirely different field, too much so for a real winner to be decided. "Dragon", though, works its way out to originality, doing for animation what "Star Wars" did for live action. Granted, this is far from Dreamworks' first great film with hits like "Prince of Egypt" or "Kung Fu Panda", but it could give them that extra edge to surpass Disney as the lead family animation studio.
Really, I was hard-pressed to find an element of this movie I wasn't impressed with. It takes a few turns I didn't expect it to, and it all made me want to see more. Even the characters who weren't fleshed out entirely were at least interesting. It looks beautiful, sound gorgeous, and feels right in about every way possible. I'm probably going to watch this several times more. Not only am I glad I bought it, but I'm constantly going to look at it as a source of inspiration for expert film making. If you are anything like me, you'll buy it, see it, tell all your friends about it, talk about it for ages, and simply...

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