It’s very gratifying to watch trailers for cutesy bullshit like Earth to Echo and Home, then be treated to a film like How to Train Your Dragon 2, one of the most enjoyable, challenging, and fantastic animated films of the last few years. Director Dean DeBlois knocked this one out of the damn park. It surpasses the original in every conceivable way, and I never thought I’d say this, but I’m excited for the third installment in a trilogy of kids’ movies.
HTTYD2 picks up five years after the original. Dragons have become commonplace at Berk, and the whole town cheers on while Astrid, Ruffnut, Tuffnut, Fishlegs, and Snotlout race theirs around an arena. Hiccup, even though his father Stoick (a returning Gerard Butler, excellent in every scene) wants him to become chief, is more interested in flying Toothless into uncharted territory so he can, well, chart it. Hiccup is drawing a map, the enormity of which shows just how isolated Berk really is.
The flying sequences are even better than they were in the first. Every second is so beautiful and visceral that you’re apt to tear up from the sheer joy and exhiliration of it all. Hiccup and Toothless are a great duo, and the latter is one of the more expressive creations from any animated film in recent memory. Hiccup has grown up a lot, too, and I don’t just mean because he has a five-o’-clock shadow now. His inventions have gotten more elaborate and daring (like a flying suit or a flaming sword), and clad in leather armor with a face mask obscuring his features, he looks like a damn action hero. Jay Baruchel may have found the best role of his career in Hiccup.
It’s on one of these expeditions that Hiccup meets Valka (Cate Blanchett), who appears riding a dragon, saddle-less, clad in something like Shamanic regalia. It’s all fittingly badass, as Valka turns out to be kind of a Jane Goodall for dragons, living among them in a sanctuary constructed by the Alpha Dragon, a creature who has dominion over dragons and whose size is nothing less than Lovecraftian. Oh, and Valka turns out to be Hiccup’s mother (relax, this was in all the trailers).
Valka’s reunion with Stoick is unbearably tender, and refreshingly devoid of any repetitive argument about Valka abandoning Hiccup. Rather, Stoick is overjoyed to see her, and Butler’s voicework conveys a softness and affection we haven’t heard from him in years.
I’ll cut to the chase: Valka, Stoick, Hiccup, and the rest of Berk’s dragon riders have to team up to thwart Drago (Djimon Hounsou), who has enslaved an army of dragons. Here’s where Dragon stumbles slightly, because Drago never fully connects as a villain. His character design isn’t imaginative enough to warrant inclusion in a film this good, his motivation is rote, and he doesn’t come across as a viable threat until the last fifteen or twenty minutes.
That said, it’s not enough to move the needle on this review. How to Train Your Dragon 2 is a great film in every sense of the word: it’s beautiful, moving, and funny as hell (a great running gag is the unrequited love that Kristen Wiig’s Ruffnut has for Kit Harigton’s Eret). The film is remarkably ambitious, and, rare for what is ostensibly a children’s film, it respects its audience enough to leave some of the story for the next installment (and something happens near the end that, along with Hiccup losing part of his leg in the first film, cements Dragon‘s reputation as the bravest franchise in animation). This is not only one of the best animated films of the year (The LEGO Movie is a tough act to follow) but it’s also, so far, the best film of the summer.
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