How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) Review

"It takes more than a little fire to kill me!"

-Stoick

Five years after the events of the previous film, dragons and vikings now live in peace on Berk.  Cheif Stoick (Gerard Butler) is preparing to step down as chief and have his son, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), take over.  Hiccup is reluctant to do so and spends his time with Toothless exploring uncharted lands.  He accidentally stumbles across a group of dragon trappers who work for a ruthless warlord, Drago (Djimon Hounson), who is building a dragon army to rule the world.  Now Hiccup, the vikings, and the dragons have to stand together to take on the mighty wrath of Drago and his secret weapon.

What Works:

How to Train Your Dragon 2 does what every sequel should do, continue to develop the characters, expand the story, and do something different.  This movie does all of this extremely well and is very reminiscent of The Empire Strikes Back.  Hiccup continues to grow as a character, we get to see more of the world, and the story takes on a drastically darker tone, all of which prevent this series from getting stale.

My one criticism about the previous film was the villain, but 2 fixes this in every way.  Not only do we get another massive and uber-powerful dragon to fight, but we get a human antagonist as well.  Djimoun Hounson gives an excellent and fearsome performance as Drago.  He is very intimidating and has decent motivation for his actions.  His dragon, the Bewilderbeast, is a fantastic weapon.  It has the ability to mind control other dragons.  Stripping the vikings of their dragons was a great story choice.  Depriving the heroes of their most powerful assets really increased the stakes and made the story even easier to get invested in.

This film wasn't afraid to get dark and didn't hold back on the punches.  I fully expected someone to die during the first battle with Drago and I figured Stoick was a probably candidate, but the manner of his death was a lot more emotionally brutal than I could have imagined.  Drago uses a mind-controlled Toothless to do the deed.  It's shocking, heart-breaking and gives us even more of a reason to despise Drago.

Though the film is much darker than the original, we still get plenty of adorable and hilarious moments with Toothless, who is simply the best.  He's basically a cat-dragon and I love both cats and dragons.

Finally, I hate it when in sequels the writers force relationship conflict at the start of the film between the two main characters.  It almost always doesn't work.  I was very happy to see they don't do that at all in this movie.  Hiccup and Astrid (America Ferrera) are nothing but supportive of each other the entire film.  They get separated and Astrid's story is about trying to find Hiccup.  That works just fine.  Sequels don't need forced relationship drama and if you're going to do it, have it occur over the course of the film, not at the start.

What Sucks:

I have a couple of very minor complains.  I do think Astrid's storyline with the other young vikings could have used a couple of more scenes.  They definitely got the short end of the stick when it comes to character development.  Also, I was a little annoyed with Stoick's return to his old ways of not really listening to his son.  That was his major development in the previous film and to see him backslide on this was annoying.

Verdict:

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is a sequel that does almost everything right and actually is a slight improvement over the original.  It has better villains, higher stakes, extremely emotional moments, and still manages to be a lot of fun.  I have a couple of minor nitpicks, but, without a doubt, this movie has got it going on.

 9/10: Great