When How To Train Your Dragon was released, it felt like a blast of fiery fresh air.
We'd had well-written, funny animations before, and well-designed animations, but this tale of Vikings and their scaly enemies was an unprecedented combination of breezy wit and visuals that simply took your breath away.
I'm happy to report that the sequel maintains the high standard. While it feels as if there are slightly fewer laughs, the script is actually richer, and the animation work soars to new levels, not least, and appropriately, when in flight.
The first film charted the process by which man and dragon learned to love each other, through the efforts of chieftain's son Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel), who rescued the injured dragon Toothless and trained him. Taking the story on five years, everyone in the island village of Berk has a dragon companion. Whereas their life was taken up with war, now the sky is full of sport, with a larky game in which dragons and their rides must collect hapless sheep from the island and deposit them in baskets (shades of Harry Potter's Quidditch).
Life for Hiccup hasn't changed, though, in one particular way: he's still struggling to keep up with his father's expectations. Now that he's decided that his son isn't a wastrel, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) thinks it's time for Hiccup to take over his role as tribal leader. The teenager would rather ride Toothless on adventures. But before this becomes a confrontation between father and son, the village is threatened by the power-hungry Drago (Djimon Hounsou), who has an army of less domesticated dragons in his service.
Author Cressida Cowell has written around a dozen Dragons books. Writer-director Dean DeBlois is planning a trilogy of films, and is willing to imbue them with big issues and accompanying pathos. In the first, Hiccup was finding himself; now he's finding his mother, Valka (Cate Blanchett), thought long dead but who shows up in surprising circumstances.
For the most part, though, the emphasis is on fun and spectacle. Most of the humour comes courtesy of the supporting characters: along with Butler, Craig Ferguson maintains the film's Scottish pedigree as Stoick's grizzled, one-legged right-hand man Gobber, who views the awkward first meeting between Stoick and Valka with the immortal lines, "This is why I never married. This, and another reason." Game Of Thrones' Kit Harrington gets to let his hair down as a dragon trapper, and Kristen Wiig and the animators almost take the film up a certificate with the flirtatious Ruffnet, courted by every young lad in the village but with only eyes for the trapper.
Where DeBlois and his team really excel is the animation. The film is made by DreamWorks, the studio which has produced the huge Shrek franchise, whose once accomplished visuals seem positively lame compared to these.
The standout scenes are in the air, notably one in which Hiccup rides Toothless above the clouds, before indulging in some skydiving of his own, and a scene in which his mother, also a dragon aficionado, demonstrates her version of wing walking. The artistry extends to the ground, notably a magical confrontation in a cave. Some of the work on human faces has also progressed enormously.
A singular example of the attention to detail and idiosyncrasy is a small moment in which Hiccup is writing. Not only has DeBlois made the boy left-handed, but he shows him dragging his hand in the left-hander's style. A lovely, tiny touch, from a film delivering on big ambitions.
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