Movie Review: How to Train Your Dragon 2 [2014]

It was the most anticipated movie of this year and finally, I watched it.

How To Train Your Dragon was a phenomenal animation, nearly as good as Toy Story 3. Unluckily for Dragon fans, which includes me, those two premiered the same year and there was nothing that could beat Toy Story either on market or at Oscars.

This year Dean DeBlois returns with second installment, continuing a splendid adventure of Hiccup and Toothless, fighting for integrity of dragons and safety of Burk. Second movie takes place after five years vikings started to cohabitate with dragons. It's been a quite long peace time for them. No enemy to fight against, Burk turned into a heavenly place. Movie opens with dragon race game, where most outstanding young dragon-riders compete to win. It's a beautifully shot scene, featuring all known and favorite characters and kind of bringing the same emotions we've missed for four years.

Hiccup continues exploring neighbourhoods of his homeland, drawing [probably first ever] map and just enjoying his time, when he finds a new dragon shelter. The shelter was created by his mother [this is not a spoiler, as long as first trailer spoiled it], who allegedly was dead long time ago. It turns out, a mysterious Dragon Rider tries to possess all dragons to conquer the world. To prevent this, Valka, the mom, keeps all dragons in a hidden underworld. As you may guess, the rest of plot spins around a war against this mysterious evil man.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is as good, as enjoyable and well made as the first one. It's a decent continuation of a brilliant start. Having everything that was good about previous installment, it shall be easily called the best animation of the year, so far. The story is original, funny, well written, with witty and hilarious dialogues. It never gets boring, does not feel like "I've seen that" or "when this shit gonna end". All old characters are as awesome as four years ago and also introduces some more new ones.

If HTTYD was the only movie John Powell scored, he could still have been named as one of the best contemporary composers. Every piece of music is genuinely a masterpiece, making the scenes more emotional, exciting and easy to follow. This one is my most favorite.

Shots are as beautiful as it is. A huge palette of colors, charming production design and sequences are filmed with right camera angles. The flying scene is just breathtaking and very very realistic. It seems animation technology has gone far enough after 2010. It's good that How to Train Your Dragon 2 has more action, more fight scenes, more flying parts than the first one. It's kind of amazing and very entertaining.

Oscar chances: It deserves and will get best animated feature nomination. I root for it to win, if The Lego Movie buzz does not get stronger. Personally, I think Lego is nothing as good as this one. Depending on contenders, it can easily get best score nomination, taking into account previous nomination too.