How To Train Your Dragon 2

Rating: 10/10 (4 July 2014)

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 centre of a battle to protect the peace and the people they love.
How to Train your Dragon 2 is the sequel to the oddly named original film; which was a huge surprise both for critics, fans and box-office. At first How to Train Your Dragon's trailer wasn't that good. Plus DreamWorks Studios hasn't made a great movie in a while (since Shrek in my opinion). Against all odds the first movie was actually a really good movie. And How To Train Your Dragon 2 follows in its footsteps. This time the film appears like a very adult animated movie and it goes where the original movie didn't in regards to characters and even the story, which is what a sequel must actually be doing. It's mixing an animated film genre with a very mature cinematography and direction. It's really great as I think this film is considering children as "grown up" people; not waiting for them to sit in a cinema and watch cool stuff happening till the end of a movie. There are lots of things going on under the surface, actually How To Train Your Dragon 2 is dealing with universal concepts such as growing up, maturing, family background, responsibilities, obligations and stepping up from the crowd in order to find our own voice. Moreover, it's good to see how Toothless and Hiccup relationship evolves. The only drawbacks of this movie I think is the villain. I was a bit disappointed by Drago's character. At first sight he is not as evil as I imagined him to be but his evilness is pulled out little by little along the movie. Beyond the fact that the score is awesome (John Powell), all the CGI aspect of the film: from characters to landscapes and dragon's action scenes are boosting the technical credit of the movie. Finally How To Train your Dragon 2 is emotionally deeper than just massively good cinematography visuals. This is a quite classical plot for an epic and drama animated movie but it's what makes the film really efficient at last.
Overall, this film is exciting and has everything a great movie can wish for: great characters, great plot evolving around very mature and universal concepts, really good action scenes, well defined emotions and DRAGONS!