How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

After two days needed to recover from the awful disappointment after watching "How to Torture Your Viewers 1" (aka "HTTYD2"), I finally found enough strength to write the provisional obituary of DreamWorks Animation ... But first, let's not forget the dragon (big spoilers ahead) ...

The first part is #1 in the top of ever seen animations for me, at the same level with "Emperor's New Groove". Consequently I had high expectations from the sequel, but at the same time I was convinced that it's hard to like it as much as the first. When I recently wrote about "INumber Number", I was saying that there are movies for which the first 5 minutes are enough to say they're gonna be good. Well, it applies also for the bad ones. "HTTYD2" starts with a game of quidditch, the difference from Harry Potter being that the brooms are dragons, and instead of balls we have sheeps. And also, unlike in Harry Potter, where "the quidditch games" still had something to do with the story (e.g., "The Goblet of Fire"), here it's not the case. We don't have any reference to the "athletic competition" afterwards. Just a 5 mins show to catch the kids. Sufficiently to sound the alarm that what's coming's not gonna be good ... (I can't believe I'm comparing Harry Potter positively with something .. this is bad)

From this we jump directly to a cruise on the Scandinavian sea routes, where we discover (years after the first movie) that there are some dragon hunters who are gathering a gigantic army of fire spitting flying creatures, under the rule of Drago (a sort of even more evil Captain Hook, but without the hook, and pissed on dragons instead of crocodiles). What's following is a soap opera where Hiccup finds his mother, celebrates the family reunion in a melodic Disney style, loses his father in Pixar style (that's the twist), and finally kicks the ass of the evil guy with a missing hand. Correction ... Toothless (the dragon) kicks the ass of the evil guy with a missing hand. Re-correction ... Toothless kicks the ass of the big bad dragon controlled by the evil guy with a missing hand. Which big bad dragon is named "alpha specimen" in this movie, having instantaneous hypnotic powers over the smaller flying creatures. I personally prefer the version of the first movie, where the hypnotic power if I remember well was something like: "bring me food or you die". Well, seems that meanwhile the alpha species has evolved ... To be fair though, the final battle between the two dragons is the only piece in this movie that vaguely reminds of the first part, following the idea of "the (apparently) weak one can actually turn the tide and win" if there's enough determination.

I'm too tired to bash the script (I'm just wondering how sinuous and complicated must be those Scandinavian sea routes, covered repeatedly in sightseeing flights since the first movie, to suddenly discover in the area two dragon armies and two alpha giants that everybody missed on the radar by now). Looking at the rest, if John Powell managed to pull an Oscar nomination in the first movie with probably the best score he wrote since "Face/Off", here the soundtrack is abysmal (and badly mixed = my unreliable ear managed to catch at least a sudden tracks alternation without a minimal fade out/in). As visual consultant we have Roger Deakins listed. I'm asking myself how much did they pay him to put his name on the credits, or if the guy reached the conclusion that after 11 Oscar nominations maybe it's the case to try an animation (news: that's not eligible for a cinematography award).

I'll return now to DreamWorks obituary (presumptive = I still hope ...) . If I look after the last "Shrek" (maybe with a small exception in "Kung Fu Panda 2"), DreamWorks started slowly to pixarize itself - "Megamind", "Puss in Boots", "Madagascar 3", "Rise of the Guardians", even "The Croods" .. all took a path on a melodramatic direction that wasn't there before. DreamWorks was funny, DreamWorks was witty, DreamWorks was serving you a meaning between the lines, not hitting you directly - with animated rhetoric through enlightening speeches or tearjerking scenes. What's even worse is that, as with Pixar, it seems that this superficial free serving of morals/values gets to the public's heart. Not for me ...

Rating: 2 out of 5