Animated Sunday Goodness!

Rating: 7/10 (14 December 2014)

So as the title suggests, each Sunday in my house is labelled 'Animated Sunday'. It just seems, at least to me, that Sundays were made for films of the animated variety. Before the working week once again begins I want to get lost in a funny, uplifting and animated fantasy.
So this Sunday was How To Train Your Dragon 2 (2014). After doing the first film last week and thoroughly enjoying it my girlfriend and I decided that it was time for the second instalment.
For those of you that don't know, How To Train Your Dragon is about Vikings and dragons. They have been battling for as long as they can remember, then one day a boy comes along who bonds with the most feared dragon. They strike up an immediate bond and work to change the way in which Vikings and dragons can co-exist.
The second instalment sees both species living side-by-side until a man called Drago (Djimon Hounsou) comes along with a dragon army and tries to take all the dragons and kill the Viking tribe.
The first thing I noticed was that it was bigger than the last film. Not just in the size of the alpha dragons (who were terrifyingly huge by the way) but the sheer scale of the film was bigger. There were more dragons, more fighting and more expansive scenery which all added to the sense of it being bigger than its predecessor.
I, as I'm sure most people did, really liked all of the characters in the film, even the bad guy was so bad he was impressive. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is a funny character, partnered with Jay's voice made for a quirky, funny and extremely likable lead. All of Hiccup's friends are also very entertaining and add some funny moments to the film's more serious parts.
Cate Blanchett and Kit Harington joined the cast for the second film as Hiccup's long lost mother Valka and the lovable rogue Eret. Having Kit added to the cast in a film about dragons had to include at least one nod to Game of Thrones, and it did. One of the girls turned to Kit's character Eret and said 'you know nothing', an obvious nod to Kit's character Jon Snow in Game of Thrones who is told that often by his lover. That drew a laugh from me and I turned to my girlfriend, as I'm sure many people did when watching it, and said 'well maybe now he will believe dragons are real' to which I was the only one who laughed, as usual.
But again I think the best aspect of the film was the scale of it and especially the size of the alpha dragons. They were massive and made me regret not seeing them on the big screen, which would have truly been something to behold.
So all in all it was a good film, I enjoyed it as much as the first and liked the new characters that were added. I hear there is a third film in the pipeline so I am sure I will be making the trip to see it in all its big screen splendour.