How to Train a Character Development Writer (HTTYD2 Review)
I realize that about 99% of individuals who would currently glance at this blog are Arashi fans, or at least Japanese-something fans, and the rest are personal friends, so I just feel like I should preface this by explaining something that would not be obvious on this blog.
Ahem.
I love children's stories most. Especially children's fantasy. In fact, one of my favorite authors is Diana Wynne Jones (for Japan enthusiasts--she wrote the book "Howl's Moving Castle" which Miyazaki reinterpreted in his film of the same name--and both are excellent). I also really enjoy Cressida Cowell's "How to Train Your Dragon" series, C.S. Lewis' Chronicles, The Hobbit, Charlie Bone, Dahl, Harry Potter... I just love stories with that childlike feeling which, when read by an adult, takes on totally different meaning. The goal of good children's literature is to tell the same story to adults and children and have them both enjoy and take away something valuable from it--though rarely the same thing. There are very few adult fantasy series that I really enjoy reading--The Lord of the Rings being one, other works by C.S. Lewis being others, and Naomi Novik's historical fantasy being others--but I love the tales we tell to children. They must be on one level simple, and on another level complex. When I was little I even managed to cry reading "The Giving Tree". That is a story that stays with me even now, very closely, as an adult. It bothers me, but I don't think I actually own it.
So understanding this, it is fairly simple to see why I loved the original "How to Train Your Dragon" put out by Dreamworks. It is an amazing story about a father and son, and about a boy and a pet, and about a boy and his peers. I loved how Gobber fit into the story as an advisor and mediator between father and son, as well as a teacher. I loved how complex the tension was that Stoick felt raising a son that didn't appear to be able to be a good leader. A son who was a disappointment. A son who he felt betrayed him. A son he felt didn't listen. A son he loved so much, but felt as though he could never, ever be on the same page with. I love how Hiccup felt the weight of his father's disappointment, but never saw the tension his father felt between being a leader and a father. I loved the child who couldn't fit with his family and wanted and tried so hard to be the child he thought he was supposed to be. I love the boy who was laughable and easily pushed aside. I loved the one who so desired companionship and understanding, and who found it in a pet. The characters were ones I could feel for, I could love, I could relate to, and I could root for a resolution with. The storytelling was balanced, well paced, and truly very moving. This is why it was loved. Not for its creativity, for its often quite common humor, or even for its message--all of those things are things you can very, very easily find elsewhere. It was because the story, the characters, and the heart of the film commanded these things.
My further revelations--I have indeed seen the TV show. Both seasons. I enjoy them, own them, rewatch them. I look forward to the Netflix seasons which are coming (I think they have confirmed both three and four?) I don't find the heart of the characters and story as compelling--its all undercooked in my opinion, focusing more on the creativity and humor--and I tend to find the plot with the dragons completely underwhelming--but the show is meant, really, to be snippets of stories of extraordinary things in their new ordinary life. In seasons 1 and 2, what you are seeing are children being children. They are learning, growing, developing skill sets--you aren't looking for anything earth shattering. They don't retell the movie, either, which is nice. While they show some retained issues between Hiccup and Stoick--old feelings really do die hard, and their personalities are so set--they do show how respect and acceptance have gone to heal so much of the relationship and it is no longer defined by the pain of the movie, I can't claim the TV show is monumentally good, but they are good twenty minute snippets and stories which feel like they belong to the series.
I was nowhere near as excited about the second film as my two friends at home were. They were incredibly excited. They are members of the fandom, where as I am just a lover of the stories, and I actually read the books which, while completely different (no, really, they are *completely* separate, the dragons aren't even similar, the characters have totally different dynamics, the world is totally different) also has the same heart and warmth as the original film. I mostly want to explain this so as no one will just see this as an overly emotional reaction.
I went to the film preview today, and was not blown away.
It was not bad. Let me repeat that. It was *not* bad. It did not suffer from many of the pitfalls I have seen with big sequels--there was a plot, there were no random romances (*coughHOBBITcough*), and it was definitely *NOT* a retelling of the first film with slightly different details. It was a totally different film, with a different story, different themes, and honestly, it was meant to develop a different emotional response. This being said, there is a massive, inexcusable set of problems--namely, pacing and character development. The reason is an issue that many, many movies suffer from: too-much-plot-icitus.
Don't believe me? Here's the plot of film one:
Boy and father are very different and have battles over it. Boy finds a friend/pet who understands him. Pet happens to lead boy to the dragon nest of the dragons who are attacking Boy's home. Boy tries to convince his father that he has been wrong about dragons. It backfires. Father is disappointed in son and rejects him. Father takes dragon to find nest. Son trains other dragons so that they can go out and rescue everyone from the danger in the nest. They battle the alpha. Boy nearly dies, which causes father a near heart attack, and does lose a foot. Father and son make up. They get over their prejudice and everyone lives in peace.
Its pretty straightforward. Almost 75% of the plot actually happens in the emotional development. The action is actually incredibly simple. Film two? (SPOILERS BELOW)
Father wants son to become chief, son disagrees. Son and girlfriend see a fire in the distance. They discover trappers who are trapping dragons for their boss's dragon army. Trappers are mad because someone (a dragon rider) has been attacking them and destroying their traps and stealing the captured dragons, which ends in them being attacked by their boss. Son and girlfriend escape. They tell Father. Father freaks out and decides to put island on lockdown so as to protect the people. Son escapes to go and try and meet with dragon-army-boss and convince him he is wrong. Son and Girlfriend go visit the trappers again in pretend surrender. Father and dragon riders come to get them because Father is mad. Son decides he has to escape them, so he flies away alone. Son is attacked by strange dragon rider, who takes him back to an icy lair. Surprise! Dragonrider is his long lost and presumed dead mother. She lives in a dragon nest under a very friendly alpha who protects many injured dragons. Flashback of mother being kidnapped by the dragons during an attack after discovering a dragon playing with her infant son which confirmed her beliefs dragons were good. Son tries to convince mother things have changed at home. Fails. On Berk, Girlfriend and dragonriders go to find evil guy because they think Son is there. They kidnap the lead trapper. Lead trapper takes them to dragon boss. They are captured. Dragon boss shows his power. Back to Son and Mother. Father shows up after following signs of Son's progress in the ice and water (we think, they don't really explain). Father and Mother reunite in a surprisingly unawkward manner. Mother does not witness Father with dragons but assumes the best seeing that he isn't killing everything in sight. Back to Girlfriend. They escape from near death with the trapper who was saved by her dragon earlier and has decided he likes them now. They hide on boss's ships as he sails for the dragon nest. Back to family. Father asks Mother to come back with them and be a family. She says yes. They are suddenly attacked by dragon boss. They go to fight. Dragonriders jump out of hiding to help. Alpha comes out to help. Surprise, dragon boss is controlling an alpha, which is why he is powerful. Alphas fight. Dragon boss' alpha wins. Evil alpha hypnotises other dragons and they all join dragon boss, including son's dragon. Son tries to convince evil boss he is wrong. Evil boss tries to kill Son using Son's dragon. Father gets in way. Father dies. Son sends dragon away. Boss takes dragon and goes to Village to take over. Son and Mother bury Father in short scene. They take some baby dragons who were unable to be hypnotized and fly to Village. Evil man begins destroying village with Evil Alpha. Son arrives to save day. Big battle. Son manages to unhypnotize his dragon. Boss man tries to kill son. Dragon protects son. Dragon fights Alpha for dominance. Dragon wins, thus becoming an Alpha, and all the other dragons follow him now. Evil Alpha takes boss man and leaves. Son become chief. The end.
So, I don't know if you noticed, but the plot is about three times as long. Or rather, the *action* is three times as long. As opposed to two plotlines (father and son), there are four (chief plotline, son/dragon, family-reunion, trapper/evil boss plotline). There's also not two emotional climaxes like the first film, but five. That's right. Five.
Beginning to see what the problem might be?
There is just not enough time spent on the characters and relationships to make the movie work well. The father and son have a great deal of predevelopment, as does the Hiccup and Toothless, and Astrid. There's a lot of predevelopment done on the world--nothing really to explain about the original dragon types or anything--but... there's no emotional time in the film at all. There's very, very few quiet moments. Very few just interactions. *Everything* in the film is exposition of the plot. *Everything.* There is a *major* emotional climax and they barely give you the time you need to process it before they move on to the next step in the plot. The human emotion, because it isn't developed, isn't realistic. Hiccup has an emotion, then a complete change, really rapidly in ways which add nothing because they have no development. In fact, all of the characters in the film turned out to be completely flat. If you saw it without *any* of the development in the first film, you would have nothing on *any* character in it. Seriously. There is not a single whole or fully rounded character in it, especially not the boss, who is a cookie-cutter bad guy who wants to make a power-play. That's it. He has a tossed out backstory which you aren't given any reason to relate to. The trapper is utterly unexplained, and while he does have a change of heart, his sudden appearance of confidence and skill with dragons is *never* explained either.
The movie should have cut out a plotline, and I believe it should have been the odd boss. The focus of the film should have been on the family and reunion there. That felt like what they wanted to be the center of the film, but it was tossed to the side because they were squishing a whole other film in there.
If you go to watch action, you will not be disappointed. The film is never boring. It isn't engaging, or truly memorable, but it is never boring. If you go to watch gorgeous animation, you won't be disappointed. It is a stunning film. If you go to watch a good story, you will be disappointed. Not because the story is bad, but because the story is underdeveloped, badly paced, and poorly told. There is a great story trying to get out, but the development requires time. The first film happened over what appeared to be months. They time-lapsed it, but it was still months. That is important. It allowed relationships to grow and change. This film literally happens over the course of *maybe* a few days. Possibly a week at the most. There is no time for the characters to relate to each other, to have relationships... and they don't. They have history, they have reason to have relationships... but they don't have time. This film either needed to be a several episode long miniseries (like 5-8 hours long), or it needed to lose a plot. There is no way around it.
Do I recommend seeing it? Only if you've seen the first film and intend to see the final piece of the trilogy. I know how the story basically ends in both the books and the film trilogy (since they said they intend to end it the same basic way and the books tell you in the first few pages of book 1 how the series will end, but the story is all about the character growing into the adult narrating it, so its OK) and you will need the second film to get there. But don't expect much. You will be more impressed that way, and be able to enjoy it more. There is a lot of really good things in the film, and a person who has a good imagination and heart for characters will fill in the gaps mentally and make the story really work and resonate. But it isn't done for you on screen. So don't expect it to be.
So film one? 10/10. Five gold stars. Film two? 7.5/10. C grade. Not truly bad, but nothing exceptional really. So much potential because everything was there, but like a C grade paper, it wasn't done well and while you believe the student understands, they aren't really showing it.
Ahem.
I love children's stories most. Especially children's fantasy. In fact, one of my favorite authors is Diana Wynne Jones (for Japan enthusiasts--she wrote the book "Howl's Moving Castle" which Miyazaki reinterpreted in his film of the same name--and both are excellent). I also really enjoy Cressida Cowell's "How to Train Your Dragon" series, C.S. Lewis' Chronicles, The Hobbit, Charlie Bone, Dahl, Harry Potter... I just love stories with that childlike feeling which, when read by an adult, takes on totally different meaning. The goal of good children's literature is to tell the same story to adults and children and have them both enjoy and take away something valuable from it--though rarely the same thing. There are very few adult fantasy series that I really enjoy reading--The Lord of the Rings being one, other works by C.S. Lewis being others, and Naomi Novik's historical fantasy being others--but I love the tales we tell to children. They must be on one level simple, and on another level complex. When I was little I even managed to cry reading "The Giving Tree". That is a story that stays with me even now, very closely, as an adult. It bothers me, but I don't think I actually own it.
So understanding this, it is fairly simple to see why I loved the original "How to Train Your Dragon" put out by Dreamworks. It is an amazing story about a father and son, and about a boy and a pet, and about a boy and his peers. I loved how Gobber fit into the story as an advisor and mediator between father and son, as well as a teacher. I loved how complex the tension was that Stoick felt raising a son that didn't appear to be able to be a good leader. A son who was a disappointment. A son who he felt betrayed him. A son he felt didn't listen. A son he loved so much, but felt as though he could never, ever be on the same page with. I love how Hiccup felt the weight of his father's disappointment, but never saw the tension his father felt between being a leader and a father. I loved the child who couldn't fit with his family and wanted and tried so hard to be the child he thought he was supposed to be. I love the boy who was laughable and easily pushed aside. I loved the one who so desired companionship and understanding, and who found it in a pet. The characters were ones I could feel for, I could love, I could relate to, and I could root for a resolution with. The storytelling was balanced, well paced, and truly very moving. This is why it was loved. Not for its creativity, for its often quite common humor, or even for its message--all of those things are things you can very, very easily find elsewhere. It was because the story, the characters, and the heart of the film commanded these things.
My further revelations--I have indeed seen the TV show. Both seasons. I enjoy them, own them, rewatch them. I look forward to the Netflix seasons which are coming (I think they have confirmed both three and four?) I don't find the heart of the characters and story as compelling--its all undercooked in my opinion, focusing more on the creativity and humor--and I tend to find the plot with the dragons completely underwhelming--but the show is meant, really, to be snippets of stories of extraordinary things in their new ordinary life. In seasons 1 and 2, what you are seeing are children being children. They are learning, growing, developing skill sets--you aren't looking for anything earth shattering. They don't retell the movie, either, which is nice. While they show some retained issues between Hiccup and Stoick--old feelings really do die hard, and their personalities are so set--they do show how respect and acceptance have gone to heal so much of the relationship and it is no longer defined by the pain of the movie, I can't claim the TV show is monumentally good, but they are good twenty minute snippets and stories which feel like they belong to the series.
I was nowhere near as excited about the second film as my two friends at home were. They were incredibly excited. They are members of the fandom, where as I am just a lover of the stories, and I actually read the books which, while completely different (no, really, they are *completely* separate, the dragons aren't even similar, the characters have totally different dynamics, the world is totally different) also has the same heart and warmth as the original film. I mostly want to explain this so as no one will just see this as an overly emotional reaction.
I went to the film preview today, and was not blown away.
It was not bad. Let me repeat that. It was *not* bad. It did not suffer from many of the pitfalls I have seen with big sequels--there was a plot, there were no random romances (*coughHOBBITcough*), and it was definitely *NOT* a retelling of the first film with slightly different details. It was a totally different film, with a different story, different themes, and honestly, it was meant to develop a different emotional response. This being said, there is a massive, inexcusable set of problems--namely, pacing and character development. The reason is an issue that many, many movies suffer from: too-much-plot-icitus.
Don't believe me? Here's the plot of film one:
Boy and father are very different and have battles over it. Boy finds a friend/pet who understands him. Pet happens to lead boy to the dragon nest of the dragons who are attacking Boy's home. Boy tries to convince his father that he has been wrong about dragons. It backfires. Father is disappointed in son and rejects him. Father takes dragon to find nest. Son trains other dragons so that they can go out and rescue everyone from the danger in the nest. They battle the alpha. Boy nearly dies, which causes father a near heart attack, and does lose a foot. Father and son make up. They get over their prejudice and everyone lives in peace.
Its pretty straightforward. Almost 75% of the plot actually happens in the emotional development. The action is actually incredibly simple. Film two? (SPOILERS BELOW)
Father wants son to become chief, son disagrees. Son and girlfriend see a fire in the distance. They discover trappers who are trapping dragons for their boss's dragon army. Trappers are mad because someone (a dragon rider) has been attacking them and destroying their traps and stealing the captured dragons, which ends in them being attacked by their boss. Son and girlfriend escape. They tell Father. Father freaks out and decides to put island on lockdown so as to protect the people. Son escapes to go and try and meet with dragon-army-boss and convince him he is wrong. Son and Girlfriend go visit the trappers again in pretend surrender. Father and dragon riders come to get them because Father is mad. Son decides he has to escape them, so he flies away alone. Son is attacked by strange dragon rider, who takes him back to an icy lair. Surprise! Dragonrider is his long lost and presumed dead mother. She lives in a dragon nest under a very friendly alpha who protects many injured dragons. Flashback of mother being kidnapped by the dragons during an attack after discovering a dragon playing with her infant son which confirmed her beliefs dragons were good. Son tries to convince mother things have changed at home. Fails. On Berk, Girlfriend and dragonriders go to find evil guy because they think Son is there. They kidnap the lead trapper. Lead trapper takes them to dragon boss. They are captured. Dragon boss shows his power. Back to Son and Mother. Father shows up after following signs of Son's progress in the ice and water (we think, they don't really explain). Father and Mother reunite in a surprisingly unawkward manner. Mother does not witness Father with dragons but assumes the best seeing that he isn't killing everything in sight. Back to Girlfriend. They escape from near death with the trapper who was saved by her dragon earlier and has decided he likes them now. They hide on boss's ships as he sails for the dragon nest. Back to family. Father asks Mother to come back with them and be a family. She says yes. They are suddenly attacked by dragon boss. They go to fight. Dragonriders jump out of hiding to help. Alpha comes out to help. Surprise, dragon boss is controlling an alpha, which is why he is powerful. Alphas fight. Dragon boss' alpha wins. Evil alpha hypnotises other dragons and they all join dragon boss, including son's dragon. Son tries to convince evil boss he is wrong. Evil boss tries to kill Son using Son's dragon. Father gets in way. Father dies. Son sends dragon away. Boss takes dragon and goes to Village to take over. Son and Mother bury Father in short scene. They take some baby dragons who were unable to be hypnotized and fly to Village. Evil man begins destroying village with Evil Alpha. Son arrives to save day. Big battle. Son manages to unhypnotize his dragon. Boss man tries to kill son. Dragon protects son. Dragon fights Alpha for dominance. Dragon wins, thus becoming an Alpha, and all the other dragons follow him now. Evil Alpha takes boss man and leaves. Son become chief. The end.
So, I don't know if you noticed, but the plot is about three times as long. Or rather, the *action* is three times as long. As opposed to two plotlines (father and son), there are four (chief plotline, son/dragon, family-reunion, trapper/evil boss plotline). There's also not two emotional climaxes like the first film, but five. That's right. Five.
Beginning to see what the problem might be?
There is just not enough time spent on the characters and relationships to make the movie work well. The father and son have a great deal of predevelopment, as does the Hiccup and Toothless, and Astrid. There's a lot of predevelopment done on the world--nothing really to explain about the original dragon types or anything--but... there's no emotional time in the film at all. There's very, very few quiet moments. Very few just interactions. *Everything* in the film is exposition of the plot. *Everything.* There is a *major* emotional climax and they barely give you the time you need to process it before they move on to the next step in the plot. The human emotion, because it isn't developed, isn't realistic. Hiccup has an emotion, then a complete change, really rapidly in ways which add nothing because they have no development. In fact, all of the characters in the film turned out to be completely flat. If you saw it without *any* of the development in the first film, you would have nothing on *any* character in it. Seriously. There is not a single whole or fully rounded character in it, especially not the boss, who is a cookie-cutter bad guy who wants to make a power-play. That's it. He has a tossed out backstory which you aren't given any reason to relate to. The trapper is utterly unexplained, and while he does have a change of heart, his sudden appearance of confidence and skill with dragons is *never* explained either.
The movie should have cut out a plotline, and I believe it should have been the odd boss. The focus of the film should have been on the family and reunion there. That felt like what they wanted to be the center of the film, but it was tossed to the side because they were squishing a whole other film in there.
If you go to watch action, you will not be disappointed. The film is never boring. It isn't engaging, or truly memorable, but it is never boring. If you go to watch gorgeous animation, you won't be disappointed. It is a stunning film. If you go to watch a good story, you will be disappointed. Not because the story is bad, but because the story is underdeveloped, badly paced, and poorly told. There is a great story trying to get out, but the development requires time. The first film happened over what appeared to be months. They time-lapsed it, but it was still months. That is important. It allowed relationships to grow and change. This film literally happens over the course of *maybe* a few days. Possibly a week at the most. There is no time for the characters to relate to each other, to have relationships... and they don't. They have history, they have reason to have relationships... but they don't have time. This film either needed to be a several episode long miniseries (like 5-8 hours long), or it needed to lose a plot. There is no way around it.
Do I recommend seeing it? Only if you've seen the first film and intend to see the final piece of the trilogy. I know how the story basically ends in both the books and the film trilogy (since they said they intend to end it the same basic way and the books tell you in the first few pages of book 1 how the series will end, but the story is all about the character growing into the adult narrating it, so its OK) and you will need the second film to get there. But don't expect much. You will be more impressed that way, and be able to enjoy it more. There is a lot of really good things in the film, and a person who has a good imagination and heart for characters will fill in the gaps mentally and make the story really work and resonate. But it isn't done for you on screen. So don't expect it to be.
So film one? 10/10. Five gold stars. Film two? 7.5/10. C grade. Not truly bad, but nothing exceptional really. So much potential because everything was there, but like a C grade paper, it wasn't done well and while you believe the student understands, they aren't really showing it.