 I just saw How to Train Your Dragon part two and it was amazing. Usually I avoid animated movies in particular. I think in general they're just terrible. However, I saw How to Train Your Dragon a few years ago at a friend's house and I was really amazed at how good it was. I hadn't paid any attention to it at all before that and after seeing the DVD I got online and read about it and read how popular it was and how unusually good a film it was and how audiences responded to it by continuing to go see it week after week when it first premiered and I was impressed. As I was reading about the sequel coming up and how DreamWorks was putting all their efforts and all their money into the sequel to do it right I've always felt that I needed to go see it and I'm glad I did. It was very good. I went to the first showing at my local cinema which is just a few blocks away and you've seen, if you watch my two previous reviews you've seen the video of what my local cinema looks like. It's very poorly attended. It's an old cinema, often a corner behind a mall that's essentially vacant and usually the only attendees at any movie I go see are a handful of geriatrics. Today however, being the first showing of the first day on a summer afternoon it was filled with children from a field trip. The theater was probably 50% full which is a lot for this cinema, I mean a lot. While I was standing in line for food before the movie started I was very concerned that it was going to be difficult, that it was going to be noisy, that it was going to be chaos but no, the kids stayed quiet throughout this entire movie and watched the movie and they loved it and that is special for a movie. Filmmakers who can keep a room full of children entertained and quiet throughout the entire film have accomplished something. Whether you enjoy the movie or not, the fact that they've done this is special but in this case I did enjoy the movie and as I talk about this movie there's going to be a lot of spoilers, okay? If you haven't seen it and you don't want spoilers then go see it first. Seriously, and this is a movie that you should support. I generally don't like Dreamworks movies, I think they make terrible films. Truly, truly awful films. But when they said that they were basically using all of their junk movies to finance this movie they were serious. They didn't just put money into the animation and the promotion of the film they put money into the writing and into the script and into the plot and it showed, it really showed. This movie, it managed to straddle that fine line of having a plot, a story that was complex enough to remain interesting all the way through and yet simple enough to follow. I think any movie could accomplish that. If the filmmakers would just put a little bit of effort into the writing before the production even gets started. It would be the least expensive and the least time consuming. The Transformers movies could be excellent movies. The only reason they're not is because the filmmakers don't care. That's the only reason. And then a movie like this comes along and shows you that it can work. A little bit of effort can make it work. If you've seen the first movie you understand that the charm of this franchise that it's not just the cute design of the characters, it's also the development of the characters. In the first film they had this large cast of characters many of which were children. Each one of them had a role to play. Each one of them had personalities that developed throughout the film and the sequel built on those. Everything that they did right in the first film, they continued to do right in the second film and the storyline was better, I think. One of the things that I was... One of the few things that disappointed me about the first film was the climax of the film, the final act. I've never liked this trope of the Queen B idea of when you're fighting aliens or monsters or whatever that you kill the one queen or the one king and then all the fighting just stops. All the aliens or monsters or whatever either just drop dead or just turn around and become good guys. I've never liked that. It's too simple. I think it's a gimmick that writers use to create a simple ending rather than having to do something difficult. In this movie, they continued that same trope but they made it more complex which was a relief. In fact, they made everything complex in this film. I was afraid when I saw the trailers. The trailers, by the way, didn't show you everything in the movie. There are so many movie trailers these days that show you the whole movie. This is not the case with Dragon 2. If you're afraid of that, don't be. Go ahead and go see it. You're going to see a lot of surprises. The trailer, of course, shows you that Hiccup's mother shows up that he discovers her out in the wilderness and she's some sort of wild dragon master. When I saw that in the trailers, I was afraid that that would be it. That they showed us the whole thing, that there wouldn't be any more to that because we're used to that now. But no. I was also afraid that Hiccup's mother, her name was Valka, by the way, as in Valkyrie, I was afraid that Valka would be... I'm not sure how to put into words what I'm saying here. I thought that she would be simply imparting wisdom to him about dragons and about nature. And that's what I was expecting. And that is not at all what we got. That is not at all what they gave us. They made her so much more interesting and complex than that. In fact, and here's where the spoilers start. So you can skip now. Go see the movie. Go. Just go see the movie. But anyway, here was my response to Valka. They didn't make her a goddess or a leader at all, really. She was... When you saw her in the trailers, she was crouching down. Do you remember in the trailer how she was crouching down and she took off her mask and there was sorrow on her face and she was approaching Hiccup very carefully and she said, oh, mother never forgets. The reason she was doing that is because she was afraid. She was afraid of Hiccup. She was almost too afraid to show her face. She was terribly sorry and terribly regretful about the fact that she hadn't been there in town to raise him, even though she was... She didn't leave voluntarily. She was dragged away by dragons. So it's not... We don't blame her either. But she was almost too afraid to show her face and reveal her name to him. And even after she revealed herself, he didn't go rushing into her arms and there wasn't a big hug and everything. She ran off. She got back on her dragon and ran off into the... She said, come look at this. She was almost a simpleton. It was so unusual. I never expected this at all. It was one of the most unusual things I've ever seen. Her only concern was winning Hiccup's approval. She was showing him all the dragon sanctuary where she had been rescuing dragons all these 20 years. And she was saying, do you like this? Do you like this? Do you like me? It was really interesting. It was really, really interesting. I can't say that enough times. It was interesting. It held my interest so much because they never did what I expected them to do in this film. Even though Valka and Hiccup's reunion, it was very emotional and I teared up a little bit. Even though it was mushy, the kids stayed quiet. The kids watched it. The kids loved it. The kids laughed the most, by the way, when the dragons would roll around with the kids and do all of the animal slapstick and everything. But they weren't laughing hysterically. They weren't hysterical slapstick scenes that were slapstick just for the purpose of screaming and laughter. They worked those kinds of scenes well into the story. They didn't interfere or detract while all the serious stuff was going on. And then Hiccup's father, Stoic, is his name, if you don't know, when Stoic encountered Valka, again, there was not a slow motion running into each other's arms with hearts flying. There wasn't that. There wasn't any of that. They made it so much more of an emotionally complex encounter. And they had to rediscover each other. They had to fall in love again. Stoic thought she had been dead all these years. And Valka had never really known what had become of the town. And she was in some ways too ashamed to even go find out. Wow, it was just so much more interesting than anybody else would have done it. There was a lengthy scene where the two of them were basically starting over from scratch, rekindling their romance, dancing, singing their old songs. While Hiccup and Gobber watched and got teary-eyed. And again, the kids put up with it. The kids stayed quiet. They watched. Even when Stoic and Valka finally kissed. Finally had their big romantic kiss. The kids loved it. Wow, what an accomplishment. And then, again, the one problem I had with the film was the final act. Like before, I thought it was too simple. It was better than the final act of the first one. But again, I thought it was too simple. And in some ways, I thought it didn't do service to what they had established. If I can put it into words. First, though, let me say that the villain... Oh gosh, what was his name? Drago the Bloody Hand? Drago the Blood Hand? I think that was his name? He was not a well-developed character. He was not at all interesting. I knew it was going to happen. I knew he was going to be defeated in the end. He was too simple. When he first showed up, when we first saw him in a flashback, you saw that he had long dreadlocks. And my first thought was, oh no, the villain's going to be a black man. Oh, I was really afraid of that when I first saw his dreadlocks. That turned out to not be the case, but he was still... I still thought the dreadlocks were a poor choice. Because that's what it made you think when you first saw him. And I was like, oh no, no, no, please, please. While that gladly did not turn out to be the case, he was still not an interesting character. I mean, not at all. I wasn't interested in him at all. But then here's my real problem. All through the film, there were messages all through the film. This was definitely a message film. And throughout the film, all the characters would... They would start building up a message, and then one character or the other would put the message into words. They would distill it down to a single sentence to make sure you got the message. They kept saying that a good chief takes care of his own. They said that a number of times. Let me see what was the other one. Oh, I'm forgetting. I'm forgetting. Oh, gosh. Let me think. Gosh, there's so much to talk about, and I'm going to forget. Hiccup and Volka both talked a number of times about how dragons are not our enemies. Dragons can be our friends. We make better relationships with dragons and with other people. When we love them instead of fight them, yeah, on and on. Okay, here's another spoiler. Stoic dies. Stoic gets killed, and he doesn't come back to life miraculously. Whenever everyone realizes that he's dead, he doesn't sit up and say, and everyone goes, yeah, it doesn't happen. And they don't do some sort of Viking magic at the end and bring his soul back or anything. No, Stoic is dead. And here's where my problem... That was a brave thing to do, by the way. Another brave thing that the filmmakers did. Kill somebody, kill a major character, a beloved character, and keep them dead. That's a gutsy thing that filmmakers don't do. But here's my problem. Spoiler. Big spoiler, okay. If you've been okay with spoilers up to this point, this is a big spoiler, and you might want to change your mind. But anyway, here it is. Toothless kills Stoic. Toothless kills him. That cute little black cat dragon that everybody loves. He kills Stoic. And Stoic stays dead. Which led up to the thing that I didn't like. Toothless was trying to kill Hiccup. And the reason he was doing it was because the big evil alpha dragon had taken over Toothless's mind. He was mind controlling Toothless and ordered him to kill Hiccup. And Stoic jumped in the way, blah, blah, blah. You know how that kind of thing goes. At first, Hiccup responded appropriately and chased Toothless off. You know, Toothless cried and everything and ran off and they chased him off. Which was the right thing to do. But then later in the film, after the big climactic battle, Toothless basically became chief of the dragons. And everyone was like, oh, it's okay. It wasn't your fault. In fact, Hiccup said that. It wasn't your fault. He was like, you know it was not your fault. You know that, right? And everybody was okay. That was, if you ask me, that was a bad message. That was a very bad message. And here's the thing that Volka said, that I couldn't remember a second ago, that ties into this. Volka said, good dragons controlled by bad people do bad things. That's a really powerful sentence. And I think kids would understand it. My problem is the way they used it, the way they tied it into Hiccup killing Stoic and everyone being okay with that. Everyone was saying, oh, it's okay. You were being mind controlled. Oh, wow. I don't like that message. I would much prefer a message of all of us having to take responsibility for our actions, no matter who we've been influenced by. I would much prefer that. It's a much more important message, a much more deep message and a much more responsible message. It's a problem I've always had with the silly old comic book stories about Superman being mind controlled by Lex Luthor and like Superman knocks down a building or something and says, oh, it's okay. Lex Luthor was controlling his mind. We forgive him. He's Superman. If Superman or any hero can be mind controlled, how can you trust him? You can't. That's a hard, fast, black and white rule, if you ask me. And it also brings up the whole idea of people not being responsible because they were following orders. I was just following orders. Whatever awful thing you did, however many murders you committed, whatever, however many horrible crimes, I was just following orders. Do we accept that as an excuse? No, we don't. We try not to anyway and we shouldn't. We see people arguing in court all the time that they were being influenced by movies or by violent games or by Fox News or VNRA. Do we accept that? I hope your answer is no. And I'm sorry to see that answer being the wrong answer in this film. It's a real problem for me. I mean, ultimately it's an excellent film and I recommend it. I hope that you'll pay close attention to what the messages are and question what messages they're trying to send. I think as complex as this movie was and as complex attention, as complex as the characters and the plot and the development and everything was, I think they got too simple with that message. I really do. And it bothers me. It's going to always bother me. Okay, back to the review of the rest of the film. Stoic's funeral was very touching. It was the traditional Viking funeral with setting the boat on fire with arrows. And letting his funeral pyre float off into the sea. It was very touching. I cried. I admit it. I think a lot of people in the theater did. The kids sat still through it. Anyway, when Hiccup comes to grips with the fact that he's going to have to be chief now, he grabs Astrid and kisses her. And all the kids went, oh, and then they clapped. So the kids liked it. Yeah, the kids liked it. I did too. And there was one last thing that they did that I thought was excellent. There had been a couple of times in the film when the elderly woman, the old lady of the village, appeared briefly. And they used her as a point of comedy. She would drop something or she would fall down, and they were using her as pratfall comedy, which that concerned me. I didn't like it. I thought they should have been more respectful to her. Well, at the end of the film, when the dragons came back to the village, all the baby dragons went straight to her and piled up on her and made it clear that she's the one who hatches and cares for the baby dragons. And furthermore, when everyone just assumed that Hiccup was going to be the new chief, he did too. But when it came time for him to actually become chief, he turned to the old lady and kneeled in front of her and essentially asked her permission to be chief. And she gave him a look, and then put a charcoal mark on his forehead and nodded. And I liked that. I was happy to see it. I'm trying to think of two female characters having a conversation together. No, that certainly did not happen. So it doesn't pass that test. I thought it did a good job anyway. So other than that one flaw, that one disappointing message, the film was amazing. I highly recommend that you go see it. I recommend that people support good movies, and this is a good movie. It's a very good movie. It's an excellent example of what can happen when you put your effort and your resources into plot and character and script. The dialogue was excellent. Kate Blanchett was amazing. I've been very disenchanted with Kate Blanchett in recent years because of the Woody Allen problem. But she was right for this job. She's good. She's the best. And one last thing. When I left the theater and got up on my bike, I suddenly found myself completely surrounded by little girls in blue t-shirts all streaming towards... I was looking around and they were all streaming towards the bus. The bus was bright red. It was painted bright red, and it said girls incorporated across it. I thought these were kids from school or summer camp or something. But they were from something called Girls Incorporated. What in the world? And the fronts of their shirts all said Girls Incorporated. But as they were all running past me, I saw the backs of their shirts said Science Camp. Science Camp. An all girls science camp. Going on right here in this backwards ultra-conservative county apparently there's a thing called Girls Incorporated Science and Aviation Camp for girls only. And there were tons of them. That's amazing. So I saw a great movie. I learned something new about my community. That was great. That was great. I'm glad I went. Meanwhile, go see How to Train Your Dragon 2. I almost forgot the name of the movie. Alright, next time. Bye.