Thrilling, emotional and extremely thoughtful

Rating: 8/10 (9 November 2014)

The Hollywood sequel is a fearsome thing. Most notably in recent years, we have seen an endless supply of re-hashes and cash-in's based on it's predecessor's success, commonly to disastrous effect. Animation especially - or even more so, Dreamworks animation - have churned out drivel with no heart; their only intentions being to offer something to parents that will keep their children busy for 90 minutes and to fill their own wallets. Take a bow, then, How To Train Your Dragon 2, which not only capitalises on the first film's charm, off-beat humour and dazzling dragon battles, but deepens it's mythology and expands it's world, while at the same time offering a visual spectacle to delight the kids and pose some extremely grown- up questions to the adults in the audience.
Five years after the townsfolk of Berk were given a lesson in allegiance and acceptance by unlikely hero Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), the Viking village thrives with domesticated dragons. It's chieftain, Stoick (Gerard Butler), has named Hiccup his heir, but the one- legged adventurer is not ready for the responsibility and would much rather be exploring the surrounding areas on the back of his dragon, the Night Fury Toothless. His relationship with the feisty Astrid (America Ferrera) has developed into a romance, and his friends fight over the attention of Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig). While exploring one day, he comes across an island decorating in strange ice formations, and is attacked by dragon-catcher Eret (Game of Thrones' Kit Harington).
Eret tells them about the warlord Drago (Djimon Honsou), who is amassing a dragon army after learning how to bend the creatures to his will using violence and intimidation. Hiccup and Astrid escape and ride back to Berk to warn the others, and learn that Stoick knows Drago and that he is a madman not be reasoned with. Hiccup, however, feels different and rides off on Toothless to treat with Drago but instead comes upon another hidden island, where dragons live in harmony under the influence of a colossal Alpha dragon known as a bewilderbeast. Also living on the island is environmentalist Valka (Cate Blanchett), Hiccup's long-lost mother.
Cleverly written without heavy lessons on morality and impeccably voiced by a star cast, How To Train Your Dragon 2 stresses the importance of finding your own place in the world. The film could easily have been some kind of eco-crusade, but instead questions whether the human race reserves the right to bend it nature to our will, or if we are a mere significance who have a duty to preserve it, or even if nature is a tool which we can use to serve the greater good. This is startlingly darker than it's predecessor - humans and dragons die - and even questions whether war can be just. Drago is a psychopathic tyrant - can these men be bargained with, or should they simply be wiped out? Thrilling, emotional and extremely thoughtful, this beautiful-looking sequel is the possibly the biggest surprise of the year.
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