How to Train Your Dragon 2

Thor · June 14, 2014 04:35 AM

Okay so I'm not sure if I'm just friggin' picky about my movies and script these days, so before I say anything about this movie has anyone seen it and what did you think?

CoolDrMoney · June 15, 2014 05:23 AM

I thought it was a great sequel. Was fantastic how they [spoiler]reintroduced Stoick and hiccups mom to one another and gave us an endearing relationship in all but 10 minutes.[/spoiler] The way that they expanded on Hiccups inventiveness, the different dragon designs/animal influences, the bond between owners/pets and how it felt like time had really progressed in this fantasy world. My only gripe was the minor character's (Hiccup's friends) were on the screen too much and did typical Dreamworks shit, the [spoiler]dragon catcher was a lame but nessacary plot device to introduce the real villain[/spoiler], and that [spoiler]Hiccups gives his dad's dragon to THAT lameass? It would have made way more sense to give it to his Dad's friend/Hiccups "mentor", Gobber. I guess because Gobber already had a dragon but still it seemed almost disrespectful.[/spoiler]

But all those minor complaints pale in comparison to the movie as a whole. It was quite good, especially from the middle onward to the end.

Thor · June 15, 2014 07:37 AM

Okay so maybe I'm just really, really picky. Spoilers follow:

[spoiler]
The plot of the movie made no sense at all to me.

The villain's motivation was that he wants to conquer the world. Everything he does is consistent with wanting to conquer the world using dragons and controlling them

Hiccup's motivation was that dragons are friends. He wants to convince the bad guy that dragons can be your friend.

Befriending dragons has absolutely nothing to do with trying to stop this guy from conquering the world, but it's really the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP(TM) that saves the day in the end. It really felt like the movie should have been more about "Humans should control dragons" vs "Dragons belong to no one and they chose to be our friends" because at least there's two opposing world views that clash.

To me, the entire plot kind of felt like fan fiction... Unlike the first movie which had fantastic storytelling that evolved naturally and was driven by the characters, it really felt like this movie had a per-determined list of plot points that they wanted to hit-- for example, how the bad guy know exactly where to attack the hidden dragon haven? Why didn't he attack before if he knew where it was? Did he read the script?
[/spoiler]

CoolDrMoney · June 15, 2014 04:33 PM

[spoiler]He wanted to amass an even larger army and was only forced into attacking when Astrid said Berk had a ton of dragon riders preparing for war and would stop Drago. Feeling threatened he felt he needed to attack now so he could get the jump on him. The whole thing was Drago was a counterpart to Hiccups mom and Hiccup himself. I think it was about negative reinforcement vs positive reinforcement for training dragons. I was sort of reminded of dog fighters or bad owners who control their pets through torture and abuse vs owners who reward their pets. Hiccup and Drago both suffered loss because of dragons and they both reacted opposite one another. So their motivations were as conflicting as you could have it.[/spoiler]

Im gay

Thor · June 15, 2014 06:36 PM

Maybe I was turned off by the sheer amount of monologuing

there was a TON of unnecessary monologuing in there

CoolDrMoney · June 16, 2014 01:48 AM

Yea thats true. In retrospect I think I was wowed by it more because I was expecting it to be utter shit because it was an unnecessary sequel and it was made by Dreamworks. Overall though I still think it was a very good movie.

Bamyasi · June 19, 2014 10:12 PM

One of several movies I want to see when I get back to the States.