Big, Fast, Loud and....DRAGONS

Rating: 8/10 (6 July 2014)

I was fortunate to have watched 'How to Train Your Dragon 2' very soon after seeing the original film. This gave me an excellent viewpoint (with the first fresh in my mind) to rate the second film.
The second film, after the critical success of the first, is what you would expect - bigger, louder, faster and with excellent attention to detail. Various positive aspects from the first film continue throughout the second - most notably the stunning visual effects, the personality of the dragons, and the charm of the characters.
In addition to this the film makers also went down the route of creating a story and a setting more vast than the first, which was primarily contained within the village of Berk - this time, the heroes and their dragons branch out from their homeland to discover some disturbing developments far beyond their town borders.
I thought that, for the most part, 'How to Train Your Dragon 2' succeeded in creating a story that was large enough and vibrant enough to outdo the original in the series. Being set 5 years into the future the characters were older but more mature, new characters were interesting and the action sequences were also excellent. Continuing from the first, the score was second to none.
The one area that the sequel couldn't live up to the original in was it's charm and emotion. It is clear that the film presented more of Toothless' cute side and tried to create emotional connections through the use of new characters, however in my opinion the second movie in the series fell slightly short in being able to recreate the beauty and simplicity of the story in the first film. I also thought that some of the sequences in the second film didn't quite hit the level of the first.
All in all 'How to Train Your Dragon 2' is a great film - it achieves a new level of visual beauty through the vibrancy of the locations and characters (dragons), and contains more action and slightly less depth than the quirky first film of the series.