Cinema Report #28 - How to train your Dragon 2
Is there anyone who does not adore Toothless the Nightshadow? He is extremely cute, after all, and funny and brave and apparently you can still learn a thing or two about and from him. So yes, I admit the other dragons and the human characters or the stories of “How to train your Dragon” don’t interest me half as much as this wonderful creature, but he certainly makes these films worth watching.
A few years have passed since the first movie, so Hiccup and his friends are almost grown up now. There had been little change with the dragons, however, only that they are now a fixed part of this community. To be honest, the years haven’t changed the humans much, too, which are still funny and bordering ridiculous all in their own way. Well, Hiccup is a bit more serious than the rest, as always, this time because he doesn’t want to become clan-chief ... and because he doesn’t want to just stand by and hide when his village and the dragons are in danger.
So we meet a new sort of dragon hunters, and at least their boss is quite intimidating - especially since he can apparently control dragons. We also meet Hiccup’s mother, who isn’t dead at all but went away to protect dragons - which leads us to a really big and very varied gathering of them. And one of them really is BIG. This lord of the dragons reminded me a lot of some of the newer Final Fantasy monsters - and then there suddenly were two of them, because the evil Viking had one, too.
The storytelling of these films is a bit like roller-coaster ride, or probably rather like the flight on a dragon. You go from silly dialogues and games to family reunions and lovely pictures to an all-in fight where my darling Toothless gets turned against Hiccup’s father and actually kills him under the influence of the evil Viking. But of course this bunch is made of sterner stuff and they keep going. So even if the good giant dragon is killed, too, Hiccup finds a way to bring back his friend’s true nature and then the Nightshadow somehow even manages to become lord of the dragons himself.
Perhaps I’ll actually read those books one day. They seem to be aimed at children, but considering how often somebody is killed or maimed there, I wonder if they are truly all that childish.
One thing is for certain, for days after I watched this film, my cat Ki reminded me a lot of Toothless again. I believe this will happen every time I see that dragon move and make faces. It fades after a while, but during that time, I have my own little dragon at home.