So, the new trailer for How to Train Your Dragon 2 came out. Naturally, that means it's time for me to give thoughts, nitpicks, and miscellaneous fanboyish squeals. Look at that after the break.
Warning: The trailer, and the analysis that follows, contains a rather significant spoiler for the film. It is, however, a spoiler that will be familiar to those who have been following the news regarding this film. Regardless, read at your own risk.
Well, don't say I didn't warn you.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's take a look at what I took from the trailer. If you have any thoughts of your own, feel free to comment.
The Big Things
Here, I'll take a look at the big, important stuff I took from the trailer, both positive and negative.
Toothless: Memo to the writers of Riders/Defenders of Berk: this is how to portray Toothless. Now, I understand that it is difficult to write for a character who can't talk, but countless people have shown that it can be done, and DeBlois and company have once again shown how to do it. One of my biggest fears for this movie was that, much like for most episodes of the TV series, Toothless would just be sort of there, but not really contribute anything outside of transportation and fire.
Here, this is anything but the case. My favourite dragon is back to his old self. As that little opening in particular shows, Toothless is playful and affectionate, but also possesses a brilliant form of silent snark that has, if anything, become more developed since the original. We have yet to see a definitive example of his loyalty (my personal favourite aspect of his character) yet, but I think we can safely assume that there will be something in the film to show this. Hey, if Michael Bay can consistently make Bumblebee loyal to Sam, I'm pretty sure Dean DeBlois can show Toothless' loyalty to Hiccup.
On a more minor note, I'm very pleased to see that Hiccup specifically mentions that Toothless was only gliding in the teaser trailer. You may remember that I was rather concerned that Toothless may have been able to fly without Hiccup. I felt then, as I still do, that this would have weakened their bond (a notion arguably supported by Gift of the Night Fury), so I am very glad to see that my fear was unfounded.
With all that said, I do have my concerns in regards to my favourite character. Toothless certainly has presence within the movie, but I think it is important to ask ourselves, "What is his purpose in the film?" Yes, he is undeniably entertaining here, but so far, he appears to have little role in the story. We've gotten some notion from the trailer, interviews, etc. of Hiccup's problems, and with them, possible character arcs, bit we have no such thing for Toothless. Everything he does is either for the sake of cute gags, awesomeness, or supporting Hiccup. These are certainly worthy things, and more than enough for, say, Snotlout, but I want something more from Toothless.
This stands in contrast to the first film. There, although Hiccup is undeniably the main character, Toothless is still phenomenally important, and goes through his own character arc. As surely as Hiccup had to learn to overcome his fear of dragons, so too did Toothless have to overcome his fear of humans, and learn to trust them (for example, Toothless was entirely prepared to kill Stoic in the ring, yet pulls him out of the ocean in the climax). We have no signs of anything like this in the trailer.
Now, to be fair, there's only so much they can show in a trailer, and I'm very glad to see Toothless even at this level of character depth, but I am concerned.
Hiccup: Oh yeah, that guy. Just kidding. I love Hiccup as a character. He's smart, funny, relatable, and capable of great feats of awesomeness when the situation calls for it. This trend looks set to continue in this film.
In terms of overall characterisation, it was already clear from interviews that DeBlois and company had a basic philosophy of "give Hiccup new personal problems" when making this film. While his particular problems (save for the inevitable confusion, anger, etc. concerning Vaika) are not clear from the trailer, they're logical ones for a young man in Hiccup's position to face, so I have little doubt that they'll get this more or less right.
One thing that we see a lot of in this trailer is Hiccup's new design. Many people have expressed concern over it, and I must admit I wasn't too fond it, but it has grown on me a lot. There's one particular moment in this trailer that sold it for me. It is the moment when Hiccup is looking over the random crystals and says, "What happened here?" It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes this moment work for me, but it's something about the combination of Hiccup's expression and Baruchel's voice (as always, he's doing a good job in the role) that really sells the fact that this is Hiccup, just a little bit older. So kudos to everyone involved for making perhaps the most controversial aspect of the movie so far work. Well, perhaps the second most controversial...
Valka: For those of you who have not been keeping up with the news, Valka is the crazy dragon lady, and Hiccup's mother. Given that I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be a plot twist, I'm baffled as to why they included that revelation in the trailer. It's like if they had revealed that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father in the first trailer for The Empire Strikes Back. But hey, let's put that aside, and just focus on Vaika as a character.
I don't like her.
Okay, I'm sure I angered someone with that line, so let me elaborate a bit.
First, let's focus on the good bits. Cate Blanchett does a decent job, from what we've currently heard. It's nothing special, and could probably be done by most voice actresses just as well (for some reason, I'm imagining Nicole Oliver doing the role with a slight variation on her Princess Celestia voice), but it certainly gets the job done. Her design is pretty good, giving off a noble savage shaman vibe which suits her character. As one comment I've read pointed out, her movements are quite interesting, bearing more relation to those of dragons than of humans at times. Again, this is very suitable for her character.
Why then, do I dislike her?
To explain, I'm going to ask you to use your imaginations. Let's imagine, for the sake of argument, that there was no sequel to How to Train Your Dragon. Now, let's pretend that I I wrote a fanfic with a character of my own creation. This character was Hiccup's long lost mother who knows more about dragons than him, is better at training dragons than him and can take down Toothless by waving her hand in his general direction. I think we can all agree that I would deserve to be the subject of much derision for that.
Now, to be fair, Dean DeBlois and his team can undoubtedly write better stuff in a year than I, or most amateur writers, could write in our entire lives. That does not change the fact that her character is a pretty bad concept on paper. She's overpowered, better than the protagonist at his own game, and her background appears to make little sense. It's implied pretty heavily in the first film that Hiccup's mother was dead, so the questions her existence raises are obvious. What happened to her? Why did she leave? Why didn't Stoic ever find her? For that matter, why is Hiccup even needed to fix the film's main conflict if she's that awesome at training dragons? Even a good writer is going to struggle to answer these questions adequately. That isn't to say that it can't be done, just that it will be difficult, and that I'm not getting my hopes up for it.
For that matter, why does she even need to be Hiccup's mother? Yes, it adds one extra element of drama, but at the cost of a lot of questions that will either go unanswered or bog down the film by answering. And for all of this, the basic plot would still be the same with her simply serving as an opposite extreme to the villain.
Oh well, at least, at the very worst, she'll make being an overpowered, nonsensical character look cool, which is more than I can say for some similar characters in other franchises.
The plot: Okay, this trailer didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know about the overall plot, but for the sake of clarity, I will summarise what we know: Hiccup finds an island of dragons freed by Valka. Random generic villain with M. Bison's life goals comes along and invades it, huge battle happens.
Okay, it's basic, true enough, but in principle, it's a good enough foundation to tell a good story. Let us not forget that the first film had a very generic plot as well, and they did great things with it. In other words, I'm certainly not going to hold tho against them.
At the moment, it's simply difficult to makes any further comments in that regard.
Visuals: Okay, if it wasn't clear from the teaser trailer, then it is clear from this one: this film will look amazing. In a sense, that's not surprising, as animated films in particular have tended to look very impressive for the last decade or so, anytime the studio is willing to throw a decent budget at it. With that said, Dreamworks certainly seem to have raised their bar on a purely technical level, as this is easily the best-looking material from them that I have ever seen. The detail is excellent, and the movements are fluid. Based purely on what we've seen, I doubt it will be the best-looking movie I've ever seen (that honour going to the underrated Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole), but it looks like they're going to give it a good honest shot.
Action: While far from the most important thing in a film, and certainly not something that will compensate for any bad writing, good action scenes can and do enhance the characters and story we are already viewing, as the first film showed. For what it's worth, the action in this film looks like it should be very entertaining. The stakes are high, the armies huge, and the fighting itself looks to be fast, furious, and surprisingly inventive. A particularly good example was the shot where Hiccup uses his bat/dragon/whatever suit to glide onto a ship's sail and then slide down it. I can't for the life of me figure out what Toothless is supposed to be doing in that shot, but I guess that will make more sense in context.
Little things
They're pretty random, and we probably weren't supposed to take anything from them, but hey, it will take more than that to shut me up.
Drago: Okay, we've known he was the villain for a while, and that he has one of the most generic villain names ever, but now, we seem to have actually seen him (he's the one who, you know, looks like a big evil villain). It's a fitting design, I suppose, bringing a certain element of malice to proceedings. It will certainly do the job. I just hope they actually give him some depth.
Other returning characters: I like the new designs for them. They're all very recognisable as the characters from the original, just (in the case of the teens) a little bit older. I love the fact that they actually appear to be wearing some proper winter clothing. It bugs me that, in spite of how cold Berk is supposed to be, most of the characters walked around in a similar level of covering to an autumn night in my hometown.
Also, is that a hint of Snotlout/Ruffnut I see there? Unexpected, but hey, it could work, and good on Snotlout for finally realising he has no chance with Astrid.
My concern for these characters is similar to my concern for Toothless, though obviously less so: what role are they going to play in the actual story? Astrid, at the very least, appears to be with Hiccup for a few scenes, but otherwise, all of the stuff we see looks to be neglecting these characters. Again, I know it's a trailer, and they can only show so much, but I hope there is something more for them in the actual film than "hey, these guys still exist."
New dragon designs: It's tricky to judge these designs from their limited exposure, but we do have a pretty good look at one.
Is it just me, or does this look more like a design from Monsters Inc./University than How to Train Your Dragon? Okay, now even I acknowledge that I'm nitpicking, but it annoys me. It's probably another one of those things that will work better in context.
Trite lines: A couple of lines of dialogue really bug me:
"It's your destiny". In my favourite dialogue exchange in the original film, a big deal is made about the difference between "couldn't kill a dragon" and "wouldn't kill a dragon." In other words, it's about the importance of choice, and how that assigns meaning. To them descend to a clichéd little speech about destiny just feels out of place. With any luck, this will prove to be something that gets subverted in some way, but it's probably not a good idea to get our hopes up on that.
"The thing you're searching for? It's in here." Really? Did Astrid, of all characters, just give that cheesy bit of sentiment? I can understand her leading Hiccup to say something like that, and I can understand her saying something that basically amounts to that once you remove layers of cynicism, but I can't picture her just coming out and saying it.
Of course, there have been plenty of instances of dialogue in trailers not making it into the final film, so maybe we'll be lucky.
Toothless dodging bolos and nets: Yes, this requires it's own point, because, having watched most of the TV series, particularly "We Are Family" and "The Night and the Fury", it is nice to see that it takes more to take down Toothless than some random person throwing a few metal balls on some rope.
Conclusion
In short, it was an entertaining trailer, and yet it honestly didn't get me as hyped as the teaser trailer. I'm honestly not sure why this is the case. Maybe it's just not so much of a step up from what we've seen. Maybe it's a problem with seeing a whole lot of bits out of context. Perhaps it's just that I really dislike Valka right now (please, Mr DeBlois, prove me wrong about her). Regardless, it simply didn't blow me away as that first teaser did.
Regardless, there is a lot to be excited about. It is clear that Dreamworks want this to be their biggest and best film yet. I have no doubt that they will succeed in the first one. The scope of this film is huge, and it will make more money than I or any person reading this will see in their entire lives. Whether or not they'll succeed in the second aspect remains to be seen.
With that said, I support anyone aiming high, as Dreamworks are doing here. Therefore, I am going to make a simple pledge to show my support. I vow to do everything in my power to see this film on released day in the USA. For those who are unaware, I live in Australia, so this is no small commitment, but barring unexpected circumstances, I should have the money to make the trip, and be able to get the time off work.
So here's looking with cautious hope towards that day six months from now, when we'll know once and for all just what Dreamworks and Dean DeBlois can do.
No comments:
Post a Comment