So... A slightly more detailed, and spoiler free, review of HTTYD2. First and foremost, it is an amazingoy BEAUTIFUL movie. It proudly states that it is the test bed for the first generation of the Apollo animation engine... and Oh Wow! Every single frame of film is fully rendered with surface effects that leap out at you in even 2D. The skin on everything is Fully, and I mean FULLY, realised in every damned frame, Dragon skin, people skin, every damned snowflake... To further the magic, the Storyboard for this film was not a sketch... it was a series of digital oil paintings by a rather famous cover-artist. Normally they are rough sketches or stick figures... in this case it was a series of 40 PAINTINGS, which appear as part of the end credits. They felt it would be more inspirational and help tie everyones work together better. I am going to go ahead and say it certainly did not hurt! (I want to buy the prints of a few of those paintings!). Next... they used claymation modelling and lighting and weather effects, to scan into the animation engine so that light and water and such would always flow across the characters correctly. Again. It worked! okay, that is the technical stuff out of the way. The bits that are easy to talk about and dont make you cry. The story is beautiful. it flirts with being a feel good bit of fluff and fan service. And then it exceed expectations...and then it handed the script writing to George R R Martin and Joss Whedon for an afternoon. Or it certainly plays like it. The story develops certain characters with beautiful pathos and interaction. You get magical interplay between humans, and between dragon, who are not quite mimicking them, but offering a sort of commentary. Lots is done by showing you instead of having a character Tell you things. And there is a song... which Works. if making you cry can be considered working. Which it can.... And then...the story starts hitting CONSEQUENCES. Bad things happen. They cannot be undone. This is not just a kid losing a foot here, these characters are about to become grown ups, and there is no shortage of harsh lessons to be survived. This is a film that starts with addressing expectations, and then gets down to dramatically and emotionally evolving the principle characters. In this regard it *almost* lets Astrid down. It was almost always going to. It is really hard to keep writing a Girl that is all chaos and sarcasm and an equal part host to rage and wisdom. The writers managed it. Not perfectly. not brilliantly... but they managed. She is not weaker, she is not dumber, she is not just a supporting character to Hiccup. But it is a near thing. I am going to cut the review short here. Although anyone that has read this far may doubt that this is short. Should you see this film? OF COURSE YOU SHOULD. We plan to see it a few more times in the cinema before buying the DVD. If this is still not my very favourite film of the year by the time December rolls around, it will mean that something almost impossibly amazing has hit our screens. right now, You get to go and see HTTYD2, Malefficent, and Edge of Tomorrow all of which are playing simultaneously and all of which are very good indeed, and worthy of your money to see on the big screen.
Posted on: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 09:14:17 +0000
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