Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch How to Train Your Dragon 2
2014 · Dean DeBlois · How to Train Your Dragon 2 on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch how much of the film sits in dusk and overcast. (light)
Roger Deakins consulted on the lighting and it shows. Key light comes from believable sources: low sun, fire, ice glow, gray sky. Family animation is usually lit flat and bright. This is not.
Payoff: The lighting tells you the tone before the plot does. Shadow is allowed here, and it does real work.
Look at how far away the horizon is during flight. (camera)
The layout team uses long lenses that squash dragon and rider against distant terrain, and moves the camera in long sweeps. Flight is staged as choreography, in widescreen, with real landscape behind it.
Payoff: DeBlois was aiming at David Lean, and the compositions say so. The scale is the point of this sequel.
Watch how Toothless moves like a cat or dog. (performance)
Head tilts, ear flaps, the way he settles, stretches and pounces. Simon Otto's animation team grounds the dragon in behavior you have watched in a real animal. Nothing about him is designed as a mascot.
Payoff: You believe the friendship because you recognize the animal. The fantasy rests on observed behavior.
Count how few cuts a flight sequence uses. (cutting)
John K. Carr holds the camera move rather than chopping the action into pieces. You can follow where a dragon is and where it is heading. The quiet scenes are cut just as patiently.
Payoff: Legibility is what makes flying feel physical. The joy comes from following a body through space.
Look at how many new places the film visits. (setting)
The first film had one island. Pierre-Olivier Vincent opens the map: ice nests, sea stacks, trapper ships, an armada. Sanctuaries glow and warm. Conquest spaces are dark, iron and trap-laden.
Payoff: The design sorts the world into shelter and conquest, and you can tell which you are in at a glance.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the light. This is a family film that spends most of its time in dusk, fire and gray weather.