Not Another Disaster of a Sequel

Rating: 8/10 (28 December 2014)

Each time a sequel is announced for a movie I absolutely love, I cant help but worry a little that the quality will suffer and absolutely pale in comparison to the original. HTTYD2 was a worry, but that turned out to be completely unfounded.
The sequel took the characters and concepts of the original and cranked up the maturity. The characters have all aged, the children now adults and the adults graying and although not all of the children seem to have matured mentally, they are more or less forced to by a twisted turn of events that left almost everybody I know in tears. Its as if the original tested the waters to see what they could do and get away with, and this film took that idea and ran with it into the worst possible emotional direction in the movie's climax. As movie audiences, we are much more used to seeing villains killing the good guys, but when its one of our own - the one we love the most and suspect the least - it carries with it an enormous impact and it leaves us wondering what Dreamworks could possibly do in the third installment that could top both the tragedy (and triumph) of this sequel.
The sequel simply cant top the original in my eyes, but it is by far best sequel to any movie that I have ever seen, and plenty of people rate the sequel even higher than the original. The emotion alone is enough to earn itself a permanent place on my favorite movies list, especially the bond between Hiccup and Toothless that has grown to an extent that is literally undefeatable. Once you have fallen in love with these characters in the first movie, you cant watch the sequel without feeling a whole lot going on in your heart - from stomach dropping lows, to heart pounding highs.