- Released: 13 June 2014
- Directed by: Dean DeBlois
- Running time: 1 h 42 min
- Rating 3/5
Synopsis
Five years after uniting man and dragonkind, Hiccup and his friends face a foe who wishes to take over the archipelago by using dragons as an army.My Thoughts
So um…let’s do another one of these.
This most certainly was…a movie???? Okay so I love How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and with this one I have opinions that are…mixed. On one hand, I love it. On the other I do have some problems with it. So uh yeah let’s dive in.
A basic enough plot. It’s refreshing to see an actual human villain in these movie (not the series. I’m talking about the movies separately), after having had a main antagonist that was just a giant beast in the last movie.
However…Drago…is one of the reasons this movie falls flat to me. He’s probably one of the most boring Dreamworks villains out there if you ask me. He mentions his backstory and has enough reason to hate dragons (they disfigured him and killed his family) but like…wouldn’t it have been way more effective if instead we got a flashback to see him be affected by what happened to him? You know, the good ol’ show-don’t-tell? Either way, he just doesn’t work. He doesn’t even feel like the biggest threat in the movie, his pet Bewilderbeast does (side note, I think the Bewilderbeast design is hideous. People give the Light Fury shit, but this thing doesn’t even look remotely like a dragon).
This movie also seems very…busy. Maybe a weird complaint, but if you watch it you probably notice: There is a lot going on. There’s so many fucking crowd shots where everything has a different color (mostly the ones with the huge colony of dragons flying together) and moves separately. It’s just a little too much on the screen to pay attention to. There’s also the shots where there’s something going on in the foreground we’re supposed to pay attention to, while something is going on in the background, which is just very distracting (example: the one where Hiccup and Astrid talk and Toothless and Stormfly play with a log in the background). You can’t really pay attention to what’s going on in the foreground when the background is constantly moving. (Maybe this complaint is caused by my autism, but, really, I’ve heard other people mention this, too).
The characters I like. Hiccup and Toothless are still good heroes and I want to follow them on their journeys. I like Astrid and even the sidekicks gang. Eret son of Eret was a nice addition to the main cast. Stoic was probably my favorite character in this. And there’s Valka… She’s just a dragon lady, but I really enjoy her.
Talking about her…yeah… This isn’t really a complaint launched at the movie itself, but more the trailer department…like…what the fuck. The plot twist that Hiccups mom’s alive is the biggest one in the movie. And they gave it away in the trailers. Just please stop spoiling the biggest plot points in trailers, people.
Some other things I liked before I start complaining again:
However…Drago…is one of the reasons this movie falls flat to me. He’s probably one of the most boring Dreamworks villains out there if you ask me. He mentions his backstory and has enough reason to hate dragons (they disfigured him and killed his family) but like…wouldn’t it have been way more effective if instead we got a flashback to see him be affected by what happened to him? You know, the good ol’ show-don’t-tell? Either way, he just doesn’t work. He doesn’t even feel like the biggest threat in the movie, his pet Bewilderbeast does (side note, I think the Bewilderbeast design is hideous. People give the Light Fury shit, but this thing doesn’t even look remotely like a dragon).
This movie also seems very…busy. Maybe a weird complaint, but if you watch it you probably notice: There is a lot going on. There’s so many fucking crowd shots where everything has a different color (mostly the ones with the huge colony of dragons flying together) and moves separately. It’s just a little too much on the screen to pay attention to. There’s also the shots where there’s something going on in the foreground we’re supposed to pay attention to, while something is going on in the background, which is just very distracting (example: the one where Hiccup and Astrid talk and Toothless and Stormfly play with a log in the background). You can’t really pay attention to what’s going on in the foreground when the background is constantly moving. (Maybe this complaint is caused by my autism, but, really, I’ve heard other people mention this, too).
The characters I like. Hiccup and Toothless are still good heroes and I want to follow them on their journeys. I like Astrid and even the sidekicks gang. Eret son of Eret was a nice addition to the main cast. Stoic was probably my favorite character in this. And there’s Valka… She’s just a dragon lady, but I really enjoy her.
Talking about her…yeah… This isn’t really a complaint launched at the movie itself, but more the trailer department…like…what the fuck. The plot twist that Hiccups mom’s alive is the biggest one in the movie. And they gave it away in the trailers. Just please stop spoiling the biggest plot points in trailers, people.
Some other things I liked before I start complaining again:
Animation was really good
The aged up cast character designs
Also nice details in aging up the dragons (Toothless’ extra horns and chin nubs, Hookfang’s chin barbs, etc.)
Hiccup’s weapon is pretty dang cool
I’ve said it before but Eret son of Eret is a cool dude
That Stoic death scene was pretty tense
I really like the mid-movie battle in general. It’s grand. It’s epic. Nice.
The song of Valka and Stoic
Cloudjumper’s got an awesome design
Okay, so I’m just going to show you some pictures and ask you to try and find what feels…off about them, especially after comparing it to the first HtTYD. Note that these are each from a different scene:
What bothers me about them? The colors. As pretty as the animation is, I just don’t find this movie visually as appealing as the first simply because of the mirky color palette. Everything feels like dull shades of brown, gray and blue. And it’s not for one scene, either. It’s almost for the entire movie. The only scenes that really have a lot of color to them are those in the dragon hideout Valka lives at, the scene where Hiccup and Valka first encounter one another, and the dragonracing scenes at Berk. The rest is mostly those bland, grim and uninteresting colors with the occasional blue caused by the ice of the Bewilderbeast. This is my main gripe with the movie, and has been for a long time now. It just isn’t too appealing to look at visually? I wouldn’t mind if it was just a few scenes, that could even work! But now the majority of this movie is set in these colors and it just doesn’t look appealing. I know the first movie had some scenes with these colors, too, but not to this extent! If you want to compare for yourself, scroll through these links in order and compare the general scene colors to one another:
Toothless screenshots first movie
Toothless screenshots second movie
As you can see there’s a much wider array of colors used for the scenes in movie 1 (as well as generally more appealing colors). There’s quite a few blues, pinks, purples, greens, yellows and reds. Then there’s movie 2, which has mostly blue, gray, brown and the occasional green. (Don’t get me wrong, though, the colors are still 1000 times more appealing than in Riders/Defenders of Berk and Race to the Edge).
This mostly bothers me in the final battle scene. The scene in and of itself isn’t even too interesting, it’s just Toothless being glowy on an icicle and attacking Drago’s Bewilderbeast with his plasma blasts (and later the other dragons joining in). There is not a lot of movement or twists and turns going on. Just two sides of dragons facing one another. Really not that interesting. And then, to make things worse, it has this boring as fuck grayish atmosphere for some reason? And it’s not the really foreboding dark gray the first movie used, either. Just bland medium gray with some blue ice mixed in.
I just like thinking of how cool it would’ve been if this had like taken place at a bright red sunset, or maybe at night, where Toothless’ glowing scales would’ve really stood out. Now it’s just…really not that much? It doesn’t even look remotely epic.
It just reminds me of one of the major complaints launched at the Lion King 2019 trailer: it looks good, but without all the colors and charm the original had.
So yeah, while this movie thoughts might be a bit negative (and long lol), I really don’t hate this movie. I think it’s good! I just feel like it could’ve worked better.
No comments:
Post a Comment