Sequels. Crap.

Ha! You thought I was going to tell you about metaphors, but I didn't!  Ha ha ha! See? that's what evil writers do. They raise your expectations by hinting at things to come, but then they blindside you with something totally different! Unfair huh? Just like cliffhangers. All that anticipation is SO rude. Anyway, down to business-I just saw How to Train Your Dragon 2 and one of the parts that sucks about being a writer is that as soon as you publish something, that means everyone in the world can diss on your material. In other words, you get to feel like dirt when people say that the precious baby that took four years of blood, sweat, and tears to grow look ugly and doesn't deserve to live. But luckily, I don't have to say anything like that about How to  Train Your Dragon 2. It was an awesome movie! In fact, I spent most of the time drooling over how handsome Hiccup had become. As soon as we left the theater I wanted to see parts of it over again. But it wasn't the same speechless awe I felt after seeing the first film. The second movie had a lot more emotional scenes, which was fine, but it stretched out the pace and the part (SPOILER!) when Hiccup is trying to free Toothless from the control of the Alpha dragon just through virtue of their friendship. That part felt a little cliche to me since every time someone in a movie suffers from mind control, if someone loves them enough, you can always snap them out of it. (END SPOILER). In the first movie, the emotional ups and downs were woven tightly into scenes with a lot of natural, organic conflict. I didn't like the villain for the second movie. He was definitely scary, but in the first movie, Hiccup's defeat of the monstrous dragon healed his relationship with his father while showing the entire village that he was amazingly cool. Of course, you can never do an origin story twice, but the climax to the second movie wasn't as triumphant. Also, the tragedy in the middle was a little too much and so I wasn't able to cheer as much as the end. The second movie has a lot more sadness, and not enough joy to balance it out. The first movie had the perfect balance between the tragedy and the joy so that everyone could cheer for the happy ending. Hopefully the original audience has grow up enough to deal with it properly. We hope. Stay tuned next time for what writers mean when they say 'organic.' And don't worry, I'm not trying to trick you this time...no really! I'm not...