Underplayed Gems

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 poster
Directed by
Dean DeBlois
Genre
comedy film, fantasy film, action film, adventure film, monster film, children's film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 45m
Rated
PG
Rating
7.7 of 10 from 10,521 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like thisWatch the trailer

or watch the trailer on YouTube

How it feels

Five years after the first movie, a young Viking named Hiccup now leads his village in a peaceful coexistence with dragons. He reunites with his long-lost mother and must stop a warlord who wants to build a dragon army to conquer the world.

upliftingepicemotionalbittersweetadventurousheartfeltvisually stunningfamily-centric

What happens

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is a 2014 American animated fantasy film written and directed by Dean DeBlois, based on the book series by Cressida Cowell. Produced by DreamWorks Animation, it is the sequel to How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and the second installment in the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kristen Wiig and T.J. Miller reprise their roles from the first film, with Cate Blanchett, Djimon Hounsou and Kit Harington joining the cast. Set five years after the events of the first film, it follows 20-year-old Hiccup and his friends as they encounter Valka, Hiccup's long-lost mother, and Drago Bludvist, a madman who wants to conquer the world by use of a dragon army. A sequel to How to Train Your Dragon was announced in April 2010, with the outline first drafted in February. DeBlois, who co-directed the first film, agreed to return on the condition he would be allowed to make a trilogy. He cited The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and My Neighbor Totoro (1988) as his main inspirations, with the expanded scope of the former being particularly influential. DeBlois and his creative team visited Svalbard to look for inspirations for the setting. Composer John Powell returned to score the film. It was DreamWorks' first film to use scalable multi-core processing and the studio's new animation and lighting software. How to Train Your Dragon 2 premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2014, and was released in the United States on June 13 by 20th Century Fox. Like its predecessor, it received critical acclaim, with praise for its animation, characters, writing, voice acting, score, action sequences, emotional depth and darker, more serious tone. It grossed $622 million, becoming the 12th-highest-grossing film of 2014. The film won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature and six Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The final installment in the trilogy, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, was released in 2019. A live-action remake is scheduled for release in 2027. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.