Wednesday 21 January 2015

How To Train Your Dragon

How To Train Your Dragon is probably one of the best animated films created by Dreamworks the past 10 years (other notable features in my opinion: Kung Fu Panda and Rise of the Guardians). This film has a lot of good features; good story line and plot (based on the book of the same name), well thought out and endearing characters, stunning visuals and a great score to accompany it all.



While the first film is about the discovery of the fact that dragons aren't as bad as everyone has been assuming they were Hiccup tries to convince his village that dragons aren't the evil monsters they make them out to be. When hurting Toothless tail, making him unable to fly, Hiccup learns to understand how dragons work. While trying to get Toothless out of the valley he's fallen down in, a friendship between the two grows. When he finally convinced the children of the village that dragons aren't evil, they try together to convince Stoick, Hiccups father and leader of the village, to stop with the hurting of dragons and instead try to live together. They realised all the dragons are being controlled by some sort of alpha and this one seems to have strayed off the path. In the finale of the film Hiccup and Toothless try to defeat the alpha, hurting Hiccup in the process. Upon seeing that Toothless saved his life, Stoick accepts the dragons for what they are.


The second film occurs five years after the ending of the first film. The dragons are a part of the villages society and everyone has their own dragon as a partner. Upon discovering more islands in the near surroundings, Hiccup discovers a group of people who are up to no good and he has to convince his father that they should interfere. When they realise Drago is the one who hires these people to capture dragons for his army, led by a very strong alpha, Stoick is after war instead of talking, like Hiccup suggests. When Hiccup tries to talk again to the people he gets captured by a mysterious figure, a dragon rider named Valka who turns out to be his long lost mother. Because of circumstances Drago is after war on the dragon riders and again, like the first film, we have a big fighting scene of dragons and even people alike.



What I find really interesting is how the time gap affected all the characters. They genuinely put a lot of effort into redesigning all the (youthful) characters (since they are the one changing the most over five years). All the young characters still resemble their younger selves, but their faces and body language changed very subtle) Besides from that, they all slightly changed personality wise as well. The main traits are the same, but since five years have passed, they are all (ever so slightly) grown up and it shows. Except for change in their personalities and looks the progression of technology is very well visible when comparing the two films. All of the textures have greater detail and all the hair and fur looks much more realistic. Now I wonder if this was maybe an artistic choice as well five years ago, but I doubt it since they went for exactly the same approach and it looks so much better in the 2014 version. In the 2014 rendition of the characters there is also much more diversity in the design of clothing, whereas in the first film all boots and vests look practically the same, with some minor style differences, in the second film everyone has a completely distinguishable look.


A great addition to the cast in my opinion is Valka. Valka has lived with the dragons for 20 years after been taken away by a dragon while the village was under attack. She is a free spirit and sort of "part of" the whole family of dragons she has saved over the years. She is like a mother to them, all of the dragons listen to her authority out of respect, not fear. She has a similar design to Hiccup, to establish that she is his mother, but still different enough to be a complete character on her own, and not just "mother of". She brings a bit more love and light heartedness to the film, which came in at just the right places.


Furthermore I'd like to add that I love how they exaggerated Toothless' mannerisms. While in the first film Toothless already had prominent characteristics resembling the regular pet. I always got a bit of a dog feeling in the first film, but others more that of a cat. In the second film they pushed the mannerisms to a whole new level and they made clearer distinctions to the different characteristics, now Toothless acts definitely more like a cat while other dragons (Astrid's for example) more like a dog (wanting to play fetch etc). I feel there was room in this film for more of these characteristics since they dragons feel safe. They've earned each others trust, so they can act like their true selves around each other. (Speaking of cats, they say the animators studied footage of cats playing around and chasing tails for reference for Toothless' movements)







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