Why How to Train Your Dragon 2 is the Weakest One

funding for Schafer illness is provided by Skillshare the sponsor of today's video tuned until the end to find out how you could try Skillshare absolutely free yes this is real free you will see how at the end so let's do the video now I love the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy nearly every single aspect of these movies is all inspiringly wonderful the pacing is excellent the writing is fantastic the animation is stellar the score is masterful without a doubt this is easily the best animated trilogy of all time even though the second one isn't great bye-bye okay in all seriousness despite my strong affinity for the series as a whole I didn't quite get into the second one as much as the first and third weird huh I mean this is kind of the fan favorite of the trilogy for a lot of people how could it not work for me well it still does keep in mind I'm calling this the weakest in the trilogy not the worst because worst implies the movie is bad which it isn't not by a long shot this is a good movie that I just happen to have some problems with to the point where I can't really call it a masterpiece like the first and third ones and I get why that's a loaded statement but trust me we'll go into sufficient detail on why the hidden world is a cinematic masterpiece at a later date just keep in mind that these are all my opinions and I'm allowed to have them and also we could all agree that this movie deserve the Oscar / big hero 6 obviously so let's get right into it starting with the elements I really like coz I like this movie overall because it is a good movie leave me alone [Music] first things first are my definitions laid out way back when this movie is indeed a perfect sequel it expands the universe by showing us what lies beyond Berk and introducing new concepts like the alpha dragon it continues the themes of uniting humans and dragons in order to attempt to bring peace to the world finally it leaves an undeniable impact on the franchise since the hidden world picks up narrative leann thematically where this one leaves off toothless settles into his role as alpha dragon and a new set of villains following the footsteps of drago bludvist one of the absolute best decisions this movie makes is picking up five years after the events of the first film it allows us to see what a dragon human you toad looks like and lets us focus on the conflict between our merry band the Dragon Riders and the outside world that refuses to adapt even though the third film does this better but again story for another time in addition the time-skip allows us to follow a much more mature hiccup who's still prone to make mistakes and errors of judgment I like him in particular a lot more than I did in the first movie I really like eret son of eret considering how annoying the side characters generally are in this franchise it's nice to see a more grounded supporting player who goes from a villain to a hero in a really natural believable way also Gobber is great as usual I like vowel cos throwaway line about how the baby dragons listen to no one and how it comes back in the climax when all the adult dragons are mind-controlled and without a doubt the best scenes in the movie are the interactions between stoic and Valka their reunion after 20 years and the song they sing together are both insanely moving and these moments are where the film absolutely soars overall there's nothing actually bad about this film well aside from the annoying side characters but they're annoying in all three so like that's not a detriment solely for this film this movie is the same strong elements one would come to expect from this franchise it has stellar animation a really impactful score and a profound story to tell about the relationships between humans and Dragons the problem for me lies with the way the story is paced along with certain characterization choices that I don't really agree with or consider to be missed opportunities the original film had a laser-focused narrative where every single scene was dedicated to furthering the story as well as the growing bond between hiccup and toothless by comparison this film tends to divide its time between hiccup meeting his mother and spending a large chunk of time with her and the villain slowly making progress towards his goal of taking control of all dragons these two halves of the movie don't really gel together and make the pace of the film feel slower than it actually is so let's start getting into why that is let's talk about volka so DreamWorks is pretty great at making sequels way better than the Disney and Pixar anyway but there's this trend that they do and literally every single one of their current franchises that can be a little repetitive not as repetitive as twists villains or splitting the main characters up at the end but still noticeable and a bit overused this trend is parents think about it literally every DreamWorks trilogy has the characters meeting a long-lost parent or parents usually in the second movie now Shrek plays with this concept a little and unsurprisingly handles it the best out of these franchises in my opinion we never actually meet Shrek's parents it's actually Fiona's parents who make an appearance in the second movie and this makes perfect sense because that's the dramatic crux of the story Shrek has to deal with society's expectations of him as well as impostor syndrome he doesn't expect to be able to win over the king and queen and as a result he no longer finds himself worthy of Fiona there's great drama to be found by their inclusion Kung Fu Panda probably handles this second best when the surprise reveal have posed that at the end of the second movie to his organic role in the third I really like how his inclusion perfectly ties in the post tragic backstory and struggle to come to terms with what happened to his race there's still an element of sorrow to be found due to the loss of his mother and I think there's some strong dramatic wait by including Poe's father and then there's Madagascar oh-ho-ho sweet sweet Madagascar you know what this is easily the lamest most out of nowhere implementation but honestly I genuinely do not care this is mainly a comedy series and that's what I love about the second movie it's cute and funny and comparing it to these three franchises just feels wrong so let's not out of the three strong dramatic DreamWorks franchises I think How to Train Your Dragon implemented it the poorest starting from the beginning one of the very few scenes I did not care for in the first movie was stoic giving hiccup a helmet made out of his mother's breastplate it's a moment that I feel should have had more emotional significance since hiccup is accepting a memento of his mother but it feels more like haha hiccup is holding his mom's boob container ha it kind of bugs me but it bugs me even more so that this is the only real mention we get of hiccups mother in the film I wish this film really did more to establish the idea that hiccup takes out his mother's more pacifist ideals this would add some emotional depth for both hiccup and stoic as they both try to reconcile their grief having lost her hiccup having done so before he even knew her but to be fair that's on movie number one how does movie number to set up the reveal of hiccup smother a dozens he briefly mentions that he never met her and that's it she has mentioned a total of two times in both of these movies before she's actually revealed even Madagascar two opened with a scene of Alex as a kid establishing his long-lost father as a character in the movie before the reveal this just strikes me as such a bizarre choice that sucks the dramatic weight out of hiccup and Vulcans first meeting we don't know anything about volka as a character other than she had a breastplate which I guess implies she was a warrior within the village that's not even really true she's just kind of a regular villager who values peace I suppose the breastplate was made for her and she just didn't want to use it which sure makes sense but in my opinion the easiest and best way to establish her character and personality would be by opening the movie with the knight the Dragons took her away think about it it's currently shown to us in the middle of the movie as a flashback with Vulcan narrating what happened that night to hiccup and by extension the audience wouldn't it have been so much more impactful to see this scene play out in its entirety without any narration wouldn't it be stronger to show not tell the origin of Vulcans connection with dragons I'll let the Magnificent score convey the emotions of the scene wouldn't it be more powerful to show this dragon scratching hiccup and then see a still master Valka recognize him in the present day by the scar on his neck wouldn't it be an exceptionally strong juxtaposition to start the movie off by showing the grief and havoc dragons used to cause the village then cutting the twenty years later where we can see the profound positive impact of hiccups actions in the first movie this is such a simple change that would have dramatically improved the emotional impact of the story imagine if Toy Story four just started with the toys in Bonnie's room no flashbacks tea with Bo Peep just our toys being toys live in their best life then later on when woody finally encounters Bo she says oh I remember the night we said goodbye then we see a flashback of that event taking place I wholeheartedly believed that would have Butch the dramatic impact of her reveal and the actual goodbye scene itself both of which are really great moments in the film as it currently is and this is exactly how I feel about the way this film introduces volka I don't feel anything because I don't know anything about her and it feels like the characters don't really care about her that much they never really talk about her another solution if you really want to keep the dragon attack seen as a flashback would be to establish her personality earlier on through a dialogue between stoic and hiccup it really irks me that the talk they had at the beginning is only related to us through hiccup relating it to Astrid it's a cute scene and a creative way of giving us this information but I don't see why the movie would want to rob us of a potentially crucial heart-to-heart between father and son it's a great way to directly illustrate the contrast between stoic and hiccup it's a moment where they can talk about volka what she means to both of them and it's kind of important to give stoic as much characterization and screen time as possible to make his death later on all the more impactful and if you really don't want to show us this potentially groundbreaking an emotional scene then all you gotta do is have stoic vent - Gobber about how much he misses volka and how much hiccup reminds him of her seriously I don't understand how the screenplay possibly benefits from not mentioning volka in any substantial way before her reveal is it to keep her presence in the movie a surprise that'd be great if it wasn't in the freaking trailer my other issue with Valka is that she doesn't serve much of a purpose to the story like she's living at the place where the alpha dragon lives so that's important but really you could remove her from the story and very little would change hiccup could simply find the alpha dragon deduce its role and the story could continue from there Valka doesn't have any sort of heroic moment in the climax or really any story significance outside of the middle chunk in the movie even the third film just doesn't use her at all and it's baffling but volka isn't the only parent of hiccup I take issue with in this movie let's discuss Viking dad now Oh No stoic dyes that means I'm automatically obligated to love this movie because it has real dramatic stakes and stuff right okay so Stoics death is a great idea from a storytelling point of view I love that toothless is responsible for it that's something most animated franchises wouldn't have the guts to do I think the scene itself is really strong aside from the actions of the villain which I will get to later but like I alluded to earlier I don't know if the narrative really had enough focus on stoic and his relationships to the other characters to justify his death in this movie if anything I'd feel sadder if he died in the first movie unable to fully reconcile his ideological conflict with hiccup before getting killed I don't think that was the right place in the narrative to kill him off but given how crucial he and his relationship to hiccup were to the first movies story it would have elicited a much stronger emotional reaction out of me Stoics death just doesn't mean much to this movie story honestly it's a regular old low point that the characters just kind of get over before riding to the 3rd act and this is because of what comes both before and after the death occurs as I stated stoic just doesn't impact the narrative much early on he tells hiccup not to try and reason with Drago but hiccup just defies him anyway so it doesn't really make a difference you could argue that hiccups defiance of Stoics order is what ultimately gets stoical killed and that's kind of true but that idea never even crossed his hiccups mind if he had a moment where he realized he got his dad killed because he tried and failed to change Drago's minds against his father's wishes that would have been really emotionally powerful but he's more so just sad and mad at toothless for like a minute but never mad at himself I feel like this is a huge missed opportunity that doesn't take advantage of the moral complexity of the situation he says things that vaguely allude to this idea like I'm not the Peacekeeper I thought I was but on the whole he doesn't seem as broken up about the situation as he probably should be I mean the entire conflict of the movie was his mistake it really disappoints me that the weight of his personal failure never really registers with him this is the same thing that disappoints me about the last Jedi and muddies that films message of failure being the greatest teacher the characters who fail never really seem like they even realized the IMP act of their failure I mean I get the not every character can be a Zuko in terms of emotional complexity especially in the medium of film but one moment of emotional vulnerability where hiccup blames himself for his father's death is all we needed I think this is why Lion King is so beloved because it's all about how he process grief and guilt it's powerful to see Simba come to grips with his father's death and yet this movie makes Stoics death feel like an afterthought by the end I feel like this event could have happened earlier in the film because it leads to a relatively rushed climax but we'll get to that later for now let's turn to Valka and how she reacts the Stoics death you think after 20 years of not seeing him then finding out he grew to appreciate dragons and the time she was gone that she'd be a little remorseful at all the wasted time they spent apart nope she's more concerned with telling hiccup about how good dragons can be influenced by bad people and I'm sorry ma'am your husband is dead can we get some sort of emotional remorseful statement on this turn of events please I also really wish we could have gotten more of the two of them together or even flashbacks to their time before she left I said earlier that their reunion scene and their song and dance routine were the best parts of the movie but I really wish they had more scenes together to establish what their relationship was like I really like the fact that stoic is instantly dead from toothless attack unable to give his wife and son any last words but I want to know what last words they wanted to give him especially Valka even at the funeral she doesn't have any words for him ultimately what did their relationship really amount to in the context of the film's story we had a couple of really excellent scenes that didn't really go anywhere I don't feel much remorse at the idea of Valco returning home after 20 years without her husband being around because that's not a concept the movie really bothers with it's frustrating because the pieces are all right there I know these writers are capable of this level of emotional resonance they just don't feel like putting the pieces together for some reason speaking of pieces the writers didn't really feel like touching I said earlier that I like hiccup a lot better in this film that I did in the previous one he's really coming to his own as a person while still keeping some of his trademark awkwardness and it's really cool to see I also like stoic when we get to see him and Gobber as awesome as ever but every other main character really isn't that great let's start with Astrid whose role just feels significantly reduced she and hiccup have amazing chemistry when they're allowed to play off of each other and she's also grown up quite significantly compared to the last time we saw her I really do feel like the two of them are in love and it made one of the few kind of forced elements of the original film really pay off he or she's mostly doing her own thing with the annoying side characters it's just not nearly as interesting as the stuff hiccup is doing they decided that since stoic and Gobber haven't returned with hiccup after an indiscernible amount of time naturally they should go find and take on Drago themselves what I'm sorry you all heard the story about how he's a mass murdering lunatic right how is this a good idea in any shape way or form so surprise surprise they get captured and they inadvertently convinced Drago to start attacking Berk this is what I mean when I say I don't like some of the decisions characters make in this movie they just seem to come from a place of ignorance and stupidity even though it doesn't really fit asteroids character if it were just the side characters who developed this plan I wouldn't even mind I know they're idiots but this just seems like a huge leap for someone like Astrid anyway let's talk about the annoying side characters real quick I tolerated them in the first movie but it feels like they're obnoxiousness was cranked up to the max here I mean I like Fishlegs that's about it nearly every other joke they make is just painfully unfunny and truly adds nothing to the story I feel like they even tend to kill the tone of potentially dramatic scenes dragons this is a consistent issue in all three movies but at least a third one realized they were annoying and played that up with grimille saying what the audience was thinking about rough night I also liked that she leads him back to new Berk because again she's established to be so stupid that it's believable for this to occur it's also a great instance of grim moe exploiting his enemy's weaknesses and the second movie ruffnut is just here to thirst after eret son of eret and its stuff whoo I'm laughing so hard at this right now okay can you hear my laughter in is infectious Wow also maybe the reason I like the third movie so much is that there's no TJ Miller hallelujah but anyway let's move on to this movie's saddest sidelining toothless what you exclaim what do you mean toothless is sidelined he's in the movies so much yeah but he doesn't really feel like much of a character in this one until the end when he has to fight the alphas control the first movie excelled at giving this dragon a strong personality and really building a significant bond between him and hiccup the third movie establishes him as his own being and examines what he wants out of life independent of what his best friend once I just don't get any of that interesting characterization from the second film it just feels like he's along for the ride as hiccup comes to terms with how he feels about his father and becoming chief as well as his newfound relationship with his mother toothless just doesn't feel as important this time around until the movies ready for him to be important in the last act much like Stoics death and the reveal of alka it sucks some of the dramatic weight out of crucial moments for his character the scene where he confronts the Alpha is super badass but it doesn't really feel like the movie took the time that build up to that moment and it's not quite as impactful as it could be because this movie never really made toothless feel like a central character so giving him this moment at the end doesn't really feel owned but at the end of the day the character that disappoints me the most out of everyone in this movie is drago bloody fist I don't really like drago bludvist on paper he's a pretty scary antagonist but I never really felt a sense of dread from his presence especially when he does that goofy shouting thing and everyone just lets him do it now's your chance focus stab him now he literally turned around he can't see you come and stab him just just do it you see grim will always felt like a perfected version of what they were going for with Drago he's the polar opposite of hiccup gaining praise and adoration from his village not by taming a Night Fury but by killing it and going on a genocide Aram page as a result he feels much more cunning smart and manipulative to the point where I'd call him the lots of to Drago stinky Pete basically the same villain but the third movie did it much better than a second don't get me wrong Drago is a very menacing design and voice plus the backstory stoic tells about him is pretty chilling you believe he's this murdering maniac who can't be reasoned with but this presents its own problem the idea that Drago can't be reasoned with because he kills without reason doesn't faze hiccup in the slightest it just says maybe but yeah he'll learn his lesson when I talk to him and honestly I don't believe hiccup is that naive it might just be a matter of him overestimating his own abilities like I said earlier but hiccup still doesn't really have to internally grapple with the consequences of his mistake again this is a story about failure with no payoff or tangible growth from said failure and those kind of stories frustrate me one could argue that's the reason he doesn't try to change criminals hard at any points and the reason he ultimately decides to let the Dragons go at the end of the series that's actually some great narrative cohesion between installments but it doesn't do this installment any favors I want to get invested in the conflict of ideologies between hiccup and Drago but it turns out that Drago is just kind of an [ __ ] [ __ ] he and hiccup don't even meet until the 1-hour 8 minute mark cuz hiccups big quest to change Drago's heart took a complete back seat to him meeting his mother which has no narrative relevance to the Drago storyline outside of introducing the Alpha when they do finally meet Drago explains his pretty standard tragic backstory and why he wants to get rid of dragons but hiccup picks his story apart pretty quickly for me you need dragons to conquer people to control those who follow you so yeah Drago is just one big world domination machine the idea of redemption should be out of hiccups mind at this point since this guy isn't motivated by tragedy or fear of dragons like stoic was he's motivated by power he basically admits that he's just an [ __ ] who wants to take over the world reminds me a lot of getss actually look I'm not gonna pretend like r-mo is this amazing three-dimensional character he's also just kind of some [ __ ] but he's a cold slimy intimidating [ __ ] who actively outwits the heroes at nearly every turn Drago is the one responsible for Stoics death but he doesn't even comment on this development or try to taunt hiccup about it grimille is such a bad [ __ ] that he sneaks in the hiccups room completely undetected and they have this exchange most crucially the narrative is not about hiccup trying to redeem grimille if you want to make the hero's goal redeeming a villain try developing the villain more than not at all a villain with conflicting ideologies to that of our hero would be really neat but this movie doesn't give us that grimille is the one who presents hiccup with the notion that humans and Dragons shouldn't mix grimille is the one hell-bent on the extermination of all dragons because of his twisted ideals drago just once will take over they tri-state area with the Alpha in a tour and not much else really but the thing that really bugs me about this dude is that he just walks away as toothless is about to kill hiccup then he turns around sees hiccup is still alive and just keeps walking bro you have all the dragons just kill the Vikings burn their whole fleet of ships down you kill without reason why are you not killing right now when you have a viable reason that in the climax he tells hiccup you should hard to get rid of yeah because you didn't even try Drago doesn't even really get a satisfying death he literally just vanishes when his dragon goes under the water I kind of thought they were setting him up to return in the third movie but nope he's dead it really feels like such a waste of a potentially stirring villain but even so the ending is pretty nice it's a very nice wholesome ending to a pretty good movie I enjoy a lot but it just doesn't feel like a masterpiece to me not in the same way as its predecessor and successor okay so since I just talked about the stuff I don't like for this movie for a ton of time that means I hate the movie right no it's still a solid seven out of ten for me which is apparently a bad rating because we live in the age of hyperbole where every movie has to be perfect or a cinematic disaster I'm opting out of that if I call something perfect I really mean it I'm not over using that word if I call something a cinematic disaster like I probably will with Ralph breaks the internet eventually then you know I mean it how to train your dragon to is neither it is a good movie that I simply have more issues with than I do with the first and third ones and if you disagree that's totally cool this movie absolutely reeks of passion and you can tell everyone involved wanting to make it the best project it could possibly be it should have beaten big hero 6 for the Oscar unless the lego movie was nominated in which case that should have won obviously that was belonging to a person of the male genders previously mentioned action that is misguided this is a strong sequel by all accounts that I simply wish could be better with a couple tweaks to the writing this could easily be just as strong as the other two films in the series it's not a movie that needs a lot of restructuring for it to be a masterpiece it's just brought down by a ton of little things that ultimately piled up for me but at the end of the day it's still how to train your dragon I love what it contributes to the world of dragons and I'm grateful that it set the stage for what is perhaps the greatest conclusion to a trilogy ever made and I know that so many people hate this movie or consider it disappointing or believe it's contradictory to the themes of the first two and to that I say people said the same things about shrek forever after stay tuned day of reckoning is coming one more thing about How to Train Your Dragon though how come these movies don't actually teach me how to train my dragon I actually want to learn that but instead these movies think I'll be content with magnificent stories and gorgeous animation yeah yeah that's nice but I want to spend my time learning valuable skills where can I go to do that oh yes go share cool skill share is an online learning community that offers membership with meaning with so much to explore real projects to create and the support of fellow creatives Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth Scotia offers classes designed for real life so you can move your creative journey forward without putting life on hold you can learn and grow with short classes that fit your busy routine seriously most of these classes are under 60 minutes in total length and the lessons are only a couple minutes each so you can learn and bite-size chunks at your own pace Scotia offers thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people on topics including illustration design photography video freelancing and more whether you're a beginner or an old pro there's so much value for Scotia to offer you right now I'm watching Sorella Moore's class YouTube success build an authentic channel that's worth the follow she provides amazing advice for people who want to start out on YouTube but don't know how Plus for veterans like me it's great to hear about ways to further develop your authenticity through your channel skill share is also incredibly affordable especially when compared to pricy in-person classes 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Channel: Schaffrillas Productions

Views: 989,326

Rating: 4.8926291 out of 5

Keywords: Schaffrillas Productions, How to Train Your Dragon 2, How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup, Toothless, Dragons

Id: R1nN9zZ43OU

Length: 27min 15sec (1635 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 04 2020

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