Rule the dragons again!

Rating: 7/10 (21 October 2014)

Watching an animation movie in the cinema is always a challenge. It's always difficult to get my friends to sit in the theater, because there is a widespread misconception among people nowadays that these movies are especially made for children. But this is not true of course. For example if we put all the Pixar movies or some productions by Dreamworks and Disney under the microscope, than we can certainly say (even with the eyes an adult) that we really liked that!
The situation is the same with How to train your dragon 2. At first glance the movie might seems to has been made for children under the age of 12. Buti f we are determined about watching the whole thing, we could certainly realize that plentiful adult content is stuffed in it too. Fortunately the movie doesn't try to feed us with the so over-hyped, usual and stereotypical love conquers all" slogan. Instead of that, it tries to put other basic and important human values at the canter, such as the significance of unity, cooperation vs betrayal, ties of friendship, belonging somewhere, how to convince an other man about your opinion by the arguments of reason, etc. The particular strengths of the film, is that these things are never been said directly by any character, we can sense the hidden massages by their actions and dialogues. So the movie was not made for a specific age group, but it has the ability to target all the consumers, regardless of age. Both children and adults would definitely find their own little favorite and lovable moments.
The film is a perfect sequel of the first part. Even the opening scene stars the movie very pleasantly: Hiccup riding his dragon equipped with its mechanic device (in order to be able to being controlled) meanwhile they discovering more an more new areas where they haven't had the opportunity to get before (without dragons). For me it had a little funny effect, that all the vikings take piggyback rides on their own dragons, but the animations have been drawn so nicely and accurately, that the sight was absolutely said to be correct and acceptable. Let's speaking of sight! The imagery of the film is fantastic! In today's world, when almost every little need of the consumers are satisfied to the extent, that put their threshold almost above the clouds, it difficult to show them something on which their eyes can stuck. However, in this film the wonderful landscapes, beautifully created characters, the creatively choreographed flying scenes are each tore my chin down to the ground. It was a long time ago that an animated film has been able to take such an advantage of the technology, which it was made from.
The first part of the movie in 2010 has become one of my favorite animated movie, that made me very curious about the sequel. Has it worthed waiting for so long? I can not really decide. The film is excellent as a sequel, perfectly continues the main elements of the first one. Those who haven't seen the first part, won't be able to understand all the essence of the interaction between the characters. But if we talking about characters, I must mention one thing: personally I couldn't wait to see Hiccup's next adventure, that how he will pick up the fight against the majority's will, what further discussions he'll has to take with his father, and what kind of further relationship he will keep with the other youngsters, who we got to know from the first movie. But unfortunately I had the feeling that they've tried to make the movie so monumental, that the characters have become a bit superficially developed. Hiccup and his father were the focal point of the first movie along with the night-fury of course. Here, however, the characters in the supporting roles were somehow more interesting for me. For example, I loved listening to our pudgy friend as he was saying all the nerd things about the beasts, or as the other kid was always being about saying or doing something bad-ass in order to impress one of the female members of the crew. But Hiccup wasn't so engrossing character like in the first movie, pity for him
Somehow I couldn't really care about the villain of the movie either as a I should have. We get a brief background story about why he's become so evil, but somehow he just seemed so impersonal to me. He doesn't have any engrossing feature, that could have drawn my attention to him, because he just has kept yelling and shouting and waving a stick with his thick arm.
I had a bit deja vu feeling by the prospect of the colossus dragon (called the alpha). But when an other one climbed to the screen from the depth of the villain's army, than I just sat in the theater totally confused. Why they wanted to copy this element so violently from the first movie? This was not one of the great features why so many people has become infatuated with the prequel. Maybe I'm the only one who sees it as a problem, but I didn't really like that huge bastard in the first movie either (I don't know why).
Overall, the film is able to provide great fun for everyone, and your age doesn't matter! It has some funny parts, serious points of interest, sentimental scenes, and all of these are spiced with great imaginary. For me it was not as great experience as its predecessor, but nevertheless i't gifted me with a really good 1,5 hour.
Rating 7/10