Watched: How To Train Your Dragon 2 (2014).
Maybe it was the fact that we watched this the day after the first film in the series, but both Arden and I were struck by how pretty this was - there’s a depth to the scenes and the expressions, while still cartoonish, feel a lot more honest. In general, it’s just a better film.
There was the odd point of tension - it’s extremely unfortunate that the film’s villain is also the only person on screen whose skin is darker than a glass of Baileys, and there’s a weird aside from a character which the writers later tried to claim was them making huge strides for LGBT representation (it isn’t, and it’s honestly kind of awkward). It’s telling, though, that these feel more like they belonged to a different film altogether; generally, there’s a progressive feel to these films that is brilliant up until the point that it suddenly isn’t.
Still a great film, though. And outright unfair that they made Hiccup attractive. I mean, how dare they?