140 Character Movie Review: #140RVW
Unnecessary but solid sequel extends the story without necessarily enhancing it. Focus on making epic franchise distracts from the humor…
Spoiler-free Review of How To Train Your Dragon 2:
British author Cressida Cowell has written a dozen books in the How To Train Your Dragon series, so I suppose my assertion that this sequel isn’t strictly necessary may seem ridiculous. Nevertheless, I persist that as much as I loved the original, it was a complete story that didn’t really need to go any further.
I do realize that there is a tv show as well as some straight to video releases. I have watched a few of them and they’re pretty good for tv. They are on an excellent production level and even have most of the same voice talent, which is remarkable. This isn’t what Saturday morning cartoons were like when I was a kid. TV cartoon versions of movies, even animated movies, fell off hugely in quality, budget and by virtually any other measure.
The setting and premise are perfect for more stories. I’m just not sure they are big screen stories. There’s an expectation, entirely reasonable in my mind, that movies you shuffle off to the theater for and shell out cash had better be significant. It puts a lot of pressure on filmmakers to produce epic spectacles.
And that’s really what’s happening here. Instead of a cute little movie about a boy and his friend, they’ve turned this thing into part 2 of a grand saga. Writer/director Dean DeBlois, who co-wrote/co-directed the original, even insisted on turning this into a trilogy as a condition of making a sequel. Sigh. What is it with trilogies? Do we have this spot in our brains that isn’t happy unless stories fit into three parts?
DeBlois has stated that his model for the film is Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. C’mon, son. You don’t say that. You don’t even think that. Don’t invite comparisons to the greatest sequel ever made. Everyone aspires to equal Empire when they make a sequel, but what they really mean is “let’s get dark and serious”. Persistently forgetting that what makes Empire so good isn’t that it’s darker; it’s just such an amazing story. And this isn’t the franchise to go dark with.
Mind you, I love what they’ve done here. It is epic and it is well done. It just isn’t all that fun and even less funny.
The visuals are absolutely stunning. It is simply gorgeous and the character models are among the best CG I’ve ever seen. But I just can’t get past the fact that they’re making a cartoon. This level of animated brilliance has indeed produced possibly the best dragon movie yet. But it’s still populated with these goofy looking people. The better the backgrounds, fire effects and animation gets, the more ridiculous it is that we’re stuck looking at these big-eyed round faces. CG animation continues to evolve with every new picture in every facet except for the people. It’s like they got to a certain point of reasonably good looking caricatures of humans and stopped. I’m guessing because every time they’ve tried the next step, it looks creepy. Better to keep them looking like cartoons where they won’t be expected to be facsimiles of life. I understand that, I suppose, but it does mean that every studio’s output now looks identical. Worse, I’m left with the feeling that we’re in a transition stage and when we finally reach the next step of reproducing CG actors, all this stuff won’t play.
How To Train Your Dragon 2 is a really good movie, I don’t mean to be negative or imply that it isn’t. I was impressed with it and did enjoy it. I simply didn’t enjoy it in the same way as the first film. It wasn’t hugely funny – it’s not that the jokes weren’t successful, it just seemed like there weren’t many of them. It’s not a fantasy action comedy; it’s a comedic fantasy actioner. Think Dragonslayer, not Ghostbusters. Nothing wrong with that (I LOVE Dragonslayer). It’s just not at all what I was expecting. I imagine I’ll like it much better the second time when I know what I’ll be getting. Because it really is a good looking film.
Poster:
Trailer:
Bechdel Test:
Fail
The Representation Test Score: B (7 pts)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/) 
| Main Cast | Jay Baruchel Hiccup (voice), Cate Blanchett Valka (voice), Gerard Butler Stoick (voice), Craig Ferguson Gobber (voice) |
| Rating | PG |
| Release Date | Fri 13 Jun 2014 UTC |
| Director | Dean DeBlois |
| Genres | Animation, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy |
| Plot | When Hiccup and Toothless discover an ice cave that is home to hundreds of new wild dragons and the mysterious Dragon Rider, the two friends find themselves at the center of a battle to protect the peace. |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 102 |
| Tagline | |
| Writers | Dean DeBlois (written by), Cressida Cowell (“How to Train Your Dragon” book series) |
| Year | 2014 |
