(Blogger’s note: Hey, I didn’t die, I swear! Things have been going on in my life that I had to take control of. I have been watching movies throughout these past few months, I just haven’t posted any reviews for any of them yet, haha. The following review was written largely back in May, but I’m getting around to showing it today! Thanks for your patience and I hope you keep on reading.~)
In a world where to have to “grow into” their playtime roles exists a place called Uglyville. This is a place where “ugly” creations roam free and live their unique lives out. But one pink Ugly doll named Moxy believes there’s more to her than just staying in the same place. She dreams of finding a human child to love and be loved by, After much waiting, she and a group of friends decide to take action and head into another world, The School of Perfection. The school is designed to help build the perfect doll, and despite a jerkish attitude from the headrunner doll named Lou and his lackeys, Moxy and friends decide it’s not worth giving up. Even if they are seen as “ugly” by others, does that Moxy and others can’t earn their happy endings?
I’ll start off with the elephant on my train of thought: none of the “Ugly Dolls” are actually ugly. I know this is to be expected, as in animation (and really any family film) there are those that we call “Hollywood Ugly”. Which is a way of saying, they’re supposed to be ugly but the audience thinks they look normal.
But it is what it is. Let’s start talking of the characters.
Remember back in Wonder Park review I (eventually) realized how the porcupine is played by John Oliver? And how apparently he was not the only celebrity who was casted, but definitely the most noteworthy? (Or perhaps that is just me and my British sensibilities…)
Well, in Ugly Dolls, I recognized a lot more of the celebrity voice actors! Moxy is voiced by Kelly Clarkson, Ugly Dog is Pitbull (is fiction becoming reality?), Wanda Sykes plays the orange ugly doll, Nick Jonas plays Lou, and so on. I’m not naive to ask why so many celebrities got into this movie (typically it’s about more publicity), but at least the voice work is good if distracting at times. And the voice actors/actresses that must sing, sing well enough.
Why do I mention singing? Well, because this is a musical. Within the first two minutes of the film, the audience is given a song by Moxy that shows her idealistic nature and dreams to be with a human. It’s very endearing and bouncy, and shows Uglyville as a place of happiness and love for all.
Moxy is a sweetheart with a big dream, but that’s all there is to her. I feel like her story arc goes in cycles, from “I HAVE A DREAM!” to “this is really hard.” Rinse and repeat. She has optimism but then is just as easily dismayed. I can admire her patience for hoping a human will come along and her pro-activeness in improving her situation, I think that sends a good (if predictable) message.
I don’t really know much about her friends; I didn’t remember anyone’s name. Well, except Ugly Dog, and that’s only because he’s Pitbull and is a canine charmer. The group has a big brute, a snarky sassy gal, a kind but neurotic one, and the green mayoral figure that had a connection to the villain but that backstory is so rushed you’d think the plot was in a NASCAR rally.
At the school of perfection, a lot of these characters are really identical to one another. There’s a group of popular girls, and I really only liked one of them.
Mandy, the one popular girl I liked, technically isn’t like the other girls. See, she has a big secret: she needs glasses to see, but glasses are “ugly”, so she pretends that she doesn’t need them. I too wear glasses but don’t have much experience socializing so the jury is out on if this is that relatable. Plus I never had much fondness for my own glasses nor extreme hatred, so that character trait it’s just kinda there for me.
As for the others … I remember they were British and snooty and had crushes on Lou. Not much to them.
Speaking of him, Nick Jonas as the villain Lou is obviously talented; when he needs to sing his villain song (with it’s basic lyrics), he can hold the momentum throughout. But at the end of the day he’s just a blonde brat that wants to be in a position of power that really doesn’t deserve it. There’s even a twist where he’s afraid of the other dolls finding out his horrible truth (that he’s actually a beta doll that can’t ever be with a human). Hmmm… a blonde brat … position of power … afraid of people knowing his personal details … why does that sound so familiar?
Well, anyway, as a villain he does have this sly sense to him. This movie is so risk-averse, though, that his threats are never seen a legitimate. I mean, putting the Ugly Dolls in the washing machine doesn’t seem to have any bad consequences in the end. I thought for sure maybe they’d be weaker for the climax but no, the machine was more of a sight gag than anything else.
The biggest question never answered: who made the first “Lou” doll or “Moxy” doll or the School of Perfection or the doll making factory that gives life to toys? Humans are in this world (in an alternate universe, kind of), but it’s never addressed if the School of factory had a specific figure head. The dolls just sort of come to life; they never acknowledge a hierarchy of power or someone in charge.
Maybe discussions of a toy’s religion and God and life-making are too extreme for a movie mostly focused about loving yourself with all your flaws. Which I agree with. Except still: Lou is a prototype. SOMEONE, somewhere, made him as such. Who is this person, or persons? If this person isn’t even at the School, then Lou could have left anytime, right? Unless that magic mirror portal is somehow controlling things, but even then where did that come from?
I’m thinking too much, probably.
I guess at the end of the day, this movie is predictable and cliche, but harmless. I do think having a movie that pushes the “you’re great no matter your flaws” is a good moral to have. And I have had more than one positive talk about the song “Broken & Beautiful” by Kelly Clarkson. This movie is far from the worst movie or even musical Ms. Clarkson has ever done. (That honor probably goes to From Justin to Kelly, which I know mostly from a YouTube DIY tie skirt video someone made for her Halloween costume. Tangential, I know.)
I guess don’t go into this film expecting expecting a refreshing take on Toy Story just because of the “toys come to life” aspect. Go in expecting a movie about ugly-but-not-really-ugly dolls learning that bullies suck but that doesn’t need to mean their dreams are pointless. Nothing offensive nor uniquely memorable. Like the dolls themselves, this movie is ugly in name but in practice it’s much more run-of-the-mill.
Adventurer/monster hunter Lionel Frost has seen many creatures in his life, but finds that he can never manage to be accepted by the local gentlemen’s club no matter how hard he tries. That is until he gets a big tip of a lifetime: a bigfooted creature exists in the great wilderness of Northwest America and is seeking Frost’s assistance. Traveling from Europe to America, Frost eventually meets Mr. Link, a.k.a. Bigfoot, a.k.a., Susan. Frost comes to an agreement with the great and kind beast, and together on a quest go find Susan’s potential relatives in the Himalayas (the Yetis). Along the way, they bring along Adelina Fortnight, a woman who holds a contentious relationship to Frost and a sassy attitude as large as her updo. Once word spreads, the gentlemen’s club is none too pleased about Frost’s latest developments, and a series of assassins are sent to stop the trio. As the party of three journey across the world, Frost, Susan, and Adelina come to realize that what they’re looking and what they need are not the same thing after all.
Right off the bat when I was seeing the trailer the first thing I said was, “Victorian aesthetics, yes!” (Side note: I hear that the Victorian Romance Emma English dub is coming out later this year and I’m seriously considering doing an overview of it for this blog. We’ll see as we get closer.)
Laika never disappointed me before. Comparison is a cruel devil, but I must mention that I noticed in the trailers that this movie seemed less “dark” than previous films. Honestly, that was interesting and appealing to me. Stop motion, I feel, has the stereotype that it’s just for scary films/Halloween appropriate features. Laika is obviously not just making scary films, but The Missing Link especially drives home the idea of a feel-good, have fun and learn a lesson type film.
While watching I noticed that this movie went by very fast. And not in a “it’s too short” way, but more that a lot happens in a short amount time. Throughout this movie there are action scenes galore. It seems that with every country the group of Frost, Susan, and Adelina visit there has to be a fight or at the very least a chase scene. I did enjoy the one on the boat to Europe the most; the camera angles make it hard to ignore. The Missing Link has quiet moments, of course, but it feels as though the movie is trying to take on Avengers: Endgame for the “Most Action Scenes Per Hour” award. And this movie is less than half the run time of Endgame!
That being said, the climax here is pretty anticlimactic and overly long. The main villain essentially sabotages himself by breaking the ice in the end. I’m telling you they were all walking on thin ice as it was. Yeah, the visuals were cool, but it wasn’t as chilling a climax as it could have been. (Okay, enough word play.) It seems silly to me how two of the three bad guys fall through a broken ice bridge (that again, the main villain Lord Piggot-Dunceby caused of his own volition), and the last moustached fellow slips off the edge after a physical game of King of the Icicles with the main trio. It’s a scene of who can ignore gravity/physics the longest, basically. But the fact stays that these baddies didn’t leave much of an emotional impact (be it scaring the heck out of kids watching or just being humorous). They’re just sort of there to be a rival for Frost and to teach him the lesson that he shouldn’t want to be just like them.
Adelina is my favorite character in the movie. Firstly, Victorian aesthetic. Secondly, I feel she contributes a lot to the plot beyond a “will they or won’t they?” relationship with Frost.
Okay, yes, she’s played as the love interest, or potential love interest, to Frost. All the stones were in place: she’s newly widowed, she goes around the world with him and Susan, she matches the “gotta go fast” attitude Frost has. I mean, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of Frost and Adelina getting together, but it really seemed like that’s how this film was going. As long as they aren’t horrible characters I can stomach it.
Frost isn’t despicable, not like his “gentlemen” friends in the club anyway. No, his issue is that he’s socially aloof and has to be constantly told to treat others kindly. Obviously he learns the error of his ways by the end of the film, but it’s a gradual change.
Why does his friendship with Susan prove to be “the one”? I don’t really get why these two become such besties. Frost repeatedly has to be told by Adelina to talk to Susan as an equal. Yes, Frost has to be reminded to be honest and kind to big monster that can potentially hurt him if things were to go really wrong …
Not that Susan/Mr. Link would go all King Kong on anyone. (Heck, even King Kong had feelings). Susan is such a sweetheart, kind of like a grizzly version of Emmet from The LEGO Movie. But Frost doesn’t take much initiative in his relation to Susan, not as much as the latter anyway, and it’s hard to believe these two become so attached that they decide to be monster hunters in crime at the end of the film.
Susan did mention he was lonely in the woods. Once the yetis turn out to be jerks I am sure that shakes his world. Perhaps staying with Frost is Susan settling on his part to be connected to society in some way, so he won’t have to be lonely anymore.
Then again it’s hard to know how Susan feels sometimes. His character is so rushed and anti- “show, don’t tell”.
Who taught him how to read and speak? Oh, a shaman that presumably either didn’t know Susan was a rare creature, or did know and did Frost’s job of educating the wild creature years in advance. How lucky that our bigfoot is an articulate fellow!
Who left a significant impression on him to want to be named after that person? Oh, a girl named Susan way back whenever that we never see nor hear mentioned again. Thank goodness he did meet her, apparently; it’s his namesake after all.
How did Susan come to be the last bigfoot in the area? Is there some hunter in the great wilderness mistaking Susan and his kind for big bears? Is this a sport of the area? Who knows.
If Frost is not going to be a part of Susan’s upbringing “from scratch” so to speak, then it’s critical to show how the Susan in this film came to be the Bigfoot he is at the start. Similarly for Frost, why would he want to be part of the club of jerks (er, “gentlemen’s club”) in the first place? He seems more the type to not care about fitting in a group structure so much as being the spotlight and capturing snapshots of things to make him look better.
This is a part of why I love Adelina the most: it is because she is decently fleshed out compared to her counterparts. She knows Frost through her husband, but her husband recently passed away and she spends most of her time alone in her home. She is mad at Frost because he did go to her husband’s (his own brother’s) funeral due to being too preoccupied with miscellaneous monster matters. Adelina also knows how to shoot a gun and ain’t afraid to use that skill. There’s meat to her bones, and I adore her.
But you know what the best part is? At the end of the movie, when Frost makes a move towards her, she rejects Frost. They don’t get together as a couple. They almost kiss several times, which is why one thinks she will get with him, but at the end she decides to go off on her own journeys.
I am so proud for her refusing him. In my head I like to believe that she doesn’t really like him because, let’s face it, he did some awful and negligent stuff in his life. Someone’s wrongdoings of the past are not easily negated by a single good action, or actions, in the present. She calls Frost a good man at the end, but I am certain that he’ll need to perform a few more acts of goodwill before he really changes for the better and atones for his … personality, let’s say.
Plus, Frost didn’t go to her husband’s funeral. That’s just poor Victorian social protocol. (Again, he wanted to be in the Gentlemen’s club? No wonder they turned him down, they didn’t want a guy who doesn’t know how to respect nor pay respects.) Again, he does change for the better, eventually.
If I were to recommend this movie, firstly I would. The moral of finding your own place in life is very comforting. The plans we make for ourselves are not necessarily the ones that should stick. And while inability to be accepted somewhere can hurt, it does not mean we need to keep things as the status quo either. There’s also the idea of reconciliation and forgiveness. While rightfully angry at him initially, Adelina comes to see that Frost can be a decent man with the right push without falling in love with him (the opposite extreme, basically). The title The Missing Link has a double meaning, now that I think about it. It obviously refers to the bigfoot character, but is also references the idea of finding the missing part in one’s life that will bring them happiness, and how the missing part is realized over time instead of already known. Plus there’s the link between the past (who we were) and the the future (who we want to/can be). Sometimes the present is missing because we fixate us on memories or goals instead of the here and now, but other people can show us new ways we can get joy out of life.
You will believe an elephant can be CGI animated to look like he’s flying.
Tim Burton decided to remake a movie about an elephant who could fly with his ears. It surprisingly wasn’t as dark as could have been.
Well, this movie does have a bit more weight to it. A father and circus performer named Holt Farrier comes home to his kids after the end of World War I. At the same time, circus ringmaster played by Danny DeVito buys an elephant named Mrs. Jumbo. The elephant is pregnant and soon gives birth to a baby with floppy large ears that the locals nickname “Dumbo.” The kids quickly realize that with help from a feather Dumbo can use his ears to fly, and the circus comes to use the flying elephant as an impossible-yet-possible act. Over time the circus workers come realize that Dumbo and his mom are meant for more than just circus performances and set on a plan to get the elephants a better life.
I guess some people might be curious why I am writing a review on the live action remake on a blog called Anima of Animation. My logic is that (a) this is a remake of a well-known animated movie, and (b) this film does use (as is the norm these days) boastful amounts of CGI for the titular character and special effects. If this means a lot of films are now in contention for a write-up, yeah, pretty much. (Also means someone will have to take a look at the Sonic the Hedgehog movie coming out this year that she found out the other day is in fact coming out this year. But that’s tangential.)
Let’s talk characters.
Blue-eyes Dumbo is the titular character, yet at points in this movie is a non-entity. Elephants are actually one of my favorite animals (I’ve had an elephant plushie key chain since high school). And while Dumbo here is cutely brought to life via the magic of CGI, he doesn’t really matter much in terms of the story.
Well, okay, it depends on how you see Dumbo the character. If he’s just a plot element for the human characters to learn a lesson and get their just desserts, then Dumbo is fine.
But if we are to see Dumbo as a main character that the story revolves around, it’s not really told in that way so the audience can’t absorb it. The ending of the movie doesn’t serve much for Dumbo’s purpose as much as it does to validate the good humans and make them very politically correct, for lack of a better term. I understand why this happen, as animals are not entertainment props but rather creatures with their own agency. (Except the horses apparently, which the circus decides to keep in the end…) It just makes the conclusion a bit boring and mistitled.
The scene where he gets his “Dumbo” name is really clever though. He’s “officially” Jumbo Jr., and the circus puts up a sign with moveable letters that spell (if I recall) “Dear Baby Jumbo Jr.” I don’t know why some humans are such bullies when it comes to the baby elephant, but I really enjoyed Dumbo blasting water at a group of teasers during one of the circus scenes.
The father in this movie is incredibly boring. Coming out of a war should not be a boring character background, yet for him it is. I don’t care much for him or his missing limb. Is that mean? I do feel sorry for him, but a character should never warrant pity over passion, you know?
The father in this movie is incredibly boring. Coming out of a war should not be a boring character background, yet for him it is. I don’t care much for him or his missing limb. Is that mean? I do feel sorry for him, but a character should never warrant pity over passion, you know?
The daughter is a dull fest. She’s into science, like Emma Watson in the live action Beauty and the Beast. But whereas I understood why Emma liked science (her father was an open minded inventor), I don’t get where this daughter gets it from. Her mother passed away due to a deadly flu that was spreading around, so one might guess that maybe she developed interest in the science world for a desire to contribute in the medical field. Nope, no connection, her mom’s just an unfortunate victim of an illness and the daughter just happens to be (boringly) into science. Not that interests have to be inherited from your parents or need to have a traumatic start, but some meat to her interests would have been good.
Plus at the climax of the movie, she tells Dumbo that since he doesn’t need a feather to fly, nor does she need her key necklace. Then she proceeds to toss her mother’s key necklace into the fire at the circus tent.
No. This doesn’t compute. The feather Dumbo uses to fly is not the same thing as a key necklace passed down from her mother. One is a placebo to do something, another is the mom’s necklace that was passed down. It’s not like Mrs. Jumbo had feathers her baby elephant could pluck anyway, it was always more of a good luck charm (and using scientific words, a catalyst) for him to fly than a reminder of his mom. If she had given Dumbo her key necklace to encourage him to fly, but mid-air he loses the necklace and realizes he can fly anyway, that would have been a much better way to show Dumbo’s confidence and the daughter (in a strange way) moving on from her mom’s death.
The brother isn’t much more interesting than his sister, but at least his delivery is much more tolerable.
I enjoyed Danny DeVito as the ringmaster, monkey antics and all. A part of me wishes he could have been the father to the kids. He’d be the zany guy to contrast his down to earth (nicely speaking) kids. He’s much like the father in that he underestimates Dumbo, initally disregards the daughter’s scientific savviness, and comes to realize that maybe animals are not meant for the circus. But you know, it’d be interesting with DeVito, because he knows how to act in interesting scenes.
Then there’s the villain named Vandevere (because yes, Dumbo needed a villain apparently.)
His motivation makes no sense in any context. He wants Dumbo to fly because obviously it’s a spectacle any circus would want. So he makes it happen by keeping Dumbo’s mom at arms (trunk’s?) reach, which makes Dumbo want to fly as he is motivated to find his mother. But then Vandevere wants to kill Dumbo’s mom to make Dumbo sad and potentially stop flying because…?
All of this is happening because Mr. Vandevere didn’t grow up with his father so he feels Dumbo doesn’t deserve his mom. That’s a weak motivation, honestly. He’s evil enough to put horrible horror make-up on Mrs. Jumbo, why couldn’t Dumbo’s flying act be done alongside whatever the mom’s act is? And it isn’t because Dumbo can’t fly when near his mom; the ending of this move prove that.
There is a very funny scene in the climax where the villain is in the watchtower trying to restore the power to Dreamland, but in spite of another person’s warning, Vandevere starts angrily pressing every button on the control panel and things go out of control. He’s like Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, he’s so goofy and over the top but he just can’t help it.
Look, I reviewed Wonder Park recently, and that movie didn’t really have a villain. Dumbo (2019) does. One must question what is going on when a movie, a live action remake no less, uses a villain in this way.
I guess I can say this movie doesn’t rehash the animated version, which following Beauty and the Beast was a mild fear of mine. Some moments are similar; “Baby Mine” is a song here, obviously Dumbo likes feathers, and the idea that Dumbo can fly in an otherwise grounded reality (if the talking mice and crows can only talk to other animals, anyway). Yet some are welcome additions: Burton turned the animated film’s trippy Pink Elephants scene into a circus performance with bubbles, and the concept of Dreamland being a place where the impossible becomes possible is very grand and charming. I’d rather have a remake be too flawed with its changes than be flawed because it didn’t change enough.
As hinted earlier, the ending of this movie has Dumbo and his mom go back to the “Far East” and live in the wild. And Dumbo still willingly chooses to fly around for cinematic poster shots. Again, it’s nice to see them back home, I suppose, but there’s not much gravitas to this ending. It’s not like the human characters came with with Dumbo to see this, or that Mrs. Jumbo was shown captured by poachers at the start and we the audience would want to see her return to the wild. I mean, obviously we would in the real world like to see that because a circus would never be able to fully care for her nor Dumbo. But in a movie like this set pieces and thematic moments should be better established.
I know poaching is a dark topic, but this is a Burton film where a man DIES early on due to a botched circus performance. Giving more weight to the elephants’ story would have helped with their characters and end goals. The animated version had the benefit of some talking animals like Timothy the mouse and the crows who Dumbo could get pep boosts from; he connects with the world around him with some humanness. In this live action movie all Dumbo has are the boring kids, the monotone father, some feathers from unnamed sources, and occasionally eccentric Danny DeVito or the French acrobat lady. It’s not much room to grow Dumbo as a character so he just stays as a plot device.
To close, Dumbo (2019) has a cute elephant in it, but it was always going to be a tall order to make a groundbreaking remake of the animated version. The animated movie itself was never a groundbreaking movie as much as it was a feel-good story about a flying elephant and a reason to put in a song that couldn’t fit into Fantasia. I feel like the live action remake is too long and drawn out. Perhaps if they had cut out some of the first few circus scenes, humanized Dumbo more, got to Dreamland sooner, and established the villain with a more competent backstory and motivation, this film would have worked better. As is, if you’re into circus films like The Greatest Showman, take a watch if you have the time, but it’s not a must-do by any means.
Already off to a poor start — the park in this movie is actually Wonder Land. ;P
Did you ever want to see the animated version of a lackluster vacation to a sub-par Disney World? Well, never fear, they made it!
Wonder Park is about a girl named June Bailey. She’s something years old — a part of me says 1st grade but she says some precocious things throughout so who knows. June and her mother invent an imaginary world called Wonder Land that features talking animals as the main highlight. One day June’s mother gets ill and needs to step away, leaving June wondering if her theme park idea is worth imagining. That is until the real life version of Wonder Land comes to life, and a dark force is threatening to destroy it. Can June and her animal friends restore the park to it’s “Splendiforous” state?
So, right off the bat, I remember being very hesitant to see this movie. It looked well animated and colorful but didn’t seem to have a story worth feature length. That fear was simultaneously weakened and heightened once buying my ticket and starting the movie after all the trailers. (Side note: I realize now that I will be seeing a lot of the same trailers over and over these next few months.)
Starting with characters, June reminds me of what a young Rapunzelfrom Tangled may have been like. She enjoys designing and expressing her imagination, she has some mommy issues, and has a propensity with animals. June, unlike Rapunzel, is two-dimensional and bland. I feel that part of the problem is her age: I don’t really know how old she is so I don’t know if how she’s acting is totally out-of-line. One minute she’s building a real-life rollercoaster from stolen street objects, heads out to math camp, and is offering to help her dad do taxes. The next minute she’s carrying around a monster backpack with googly eyes and coming up with a fantasy that her dad will blow up the house due to negligence. Is this funny because a 6 (ish) year old is thinking that stuff up when clearly she shouldn’t know those things? Where are the bounds of logic?
If I had to guess, I would say June is probably a gifted 1st grade student; she exhibits high-level language while keeping a child-like attitude. Maybe the idea is that she grew up too fast because her mom got sick of a mystery illness (but didn’t die, that’d be way too much for this movie to handle.) But even before the mom leaves June is showing her skills off. June’s dad even calls her a “lunatic daughter” early in the movie! Are the writers suggesting she’s off her rocker? One of the animals even suggests that they could figments of her crazy mind. And you know, they never disproved that either. She could be imagining the whole theme park with itsLooney Tunes antics on the bus ride to math camp; there’s no way it took her 30 minutes to get back home from the woods anyway.
So let’s just agree that June’s true age is indeterminate. (Get it? I made a math joke and a reference to how a part of this movie is about math camp and singing a song about pi. For some reason …)
The animals are just talking animals. I know everyone has a famous voice actor but honestly, I only knew John Oliver was playing the porcupine. I’m sure the character has a name but I’m too disinterested to bother.). And sad to say, I didn’t even know it was him until halfway through when his character started screaming; John Oliver has a very intentional and recognizable scream.
Also, a small animal likes being around a warthog? This is the romantic-free version of Timon and Pumba. (At least Timon and Pumba know how to talk about deep concepts.) I don’t care how many times John Oliver yells Spanish phrases of adoration, I am not going to buy it.
The animal that wasn’t really shown in the trailer but should have been highlighted would be Peanut the monkey. When I first saw him, I thought he was going to be the twist/hidden villain, because then it’d make sense why you barely see him. Then I remembered that this isn’t a modern-day Disney film, it’s a Paramount/Nickelodeon team up. That meant his story would be even more cliche and less memorable. Peanut is basically June: his muse went away and he’s sad and scared to create new things. I don’t know why he’s absent in most of the promo materials, considering he’s the one with the magic pen that creates anything and how much of a reflection to June he really is. The filmmakers went, “Nah, let’s just stick with the Charmin bear reject.” Peanut deserved better, even in this film. Though he does have that creepy smile every so often that makes me hesitant to want to always see him.
(Speaking of creepy choices, why are there so many extreme facial close-ups in this movie? Is cornea storytelling the new thing in children’s animation?)
June’s Mom and Dad are nice I guess, but they hardly matter as individuals and only June’s mom matters in regards to how the mom getting sick affects her daughter. I don’t even know what June’s mom was sick with! I do like that one scene at the start of the movie where the parents get the bad news from the doctor. That was a quiet scene but it didn’t need words to muck it all up. Of course, I much prefer how Pixar’s Up did this scene, but that’s a common thread throughout the movie.
June’s friend is a mild stereotype. He’s nice but not interesting. The most memorable scene he’s in is when June’s coaster contraption nearly kills them both and he says, “Thank Vishnu!” It’s funny because he’s Indian …? Why was he in this movie? They didn’t even do a parallel between June/her friend’s crush and lady warthog’s/Oliver porcupine’s crush. June doesn’t spontaneously decide to like her friend after her adventure, so his character really just serves as a plot point for June to get off the bus to math camp and get to the park.
Would I recommend this movie? Only if you liked Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. A lot of people evidently hated that movie too or thought it was a mediocre use of high list celebrities. Quite frankly because Emporium was live action I more appreciated the visuals there because I know props and sets take a long time to make. Wonder Park is also lively and colorful, but to a fault considering it looks like a generic animated film. This movie is a time passer, but not much more in my honest opinion.
(Please see my review for the second movie in case you haven’t. Or be a rebel and read on. Either way, cool with me.)
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, confusingly not titled How To Train Your Dragon 3, is the third and final film in the Dragon series. (Unless DreamWorks decides on a great idea for a fourth movie that absolutely needs to be told 9 years later.) Briefly summarizing, The Hidden World takes place a year after the second (so six years after the first). Hiccup is now the chief of Berk, and his close dragon friend Toothless is the alpha for his kind. A new threat comes to Berk which has become overrun with dragons. Hiccup seeks the Hidden World where he believes his people and the dragons can finally live in peace, and Toothless comes across a rare Light Fury that shows him the route to going away from humans.
Did you ever see that episode of Pokémon called “Pikachu’s Goodbye” where Ash, Pikachu, Brock and Misty find this hidden society of Pikachu, and Ash’s Pikachu becomes friendly and content with the wild Pikachu? Ash couldn’t really bond with the wild ones because they were easily scared of humans, and Ash starts to wonder if Pikachu is better with his kind, and even mentally battles (haha … wait, this was a sad episode) the idea of going their separate ways.
The Hidden World is basically that episode stretched out to 90 minutes with more fighting, romance, (slightly) less goofy villains and, in my eyes, a less enjoyable ending. But we’ll get to that.
Let’s talk new characters.
There’s the Light Fury named … they actually never name her. I suppose because naming her would be indoctrination? But that won’t do, she needs a short-hand, it’d get boring to call her the Light Fury.
So I’ll call her “Angel 2.0”, because she reminds me of Angel from Lilo and Stitch: The Series who was also the female counterpart to the already popular dangerous yet adorable creature that was Stitch. (Chris Sanders, incidentally, was involved in both films. I wonder if he was the one to suggest a gender flip of Toothless?)
Angel 2.0 just the love interest, honestly. I mean, it was adorable all the scenes they showed of her and Toothless flying together, flirting on the beach, cooing at each other. I also like how she ends up saving Hiccup at the end. I don’t know why the villain and his lackeys released her though. It seems stupid on every front. She can attack them in vengeance, she can fly away and never be seen again, she can join Hiccup’s crew and then they have TWO all powerful dragons. Wouldn’t it have been much more interesting if they used the mind control juice the “bad dragons” on Angel 2.0 and she had to fight against Toothless who was battling his love for her with his duty and loyalty to Berk?
Nah, the story stays safe and make Angel 2.0 a morally good creature all throughout. It’ fine, but boring. Like Hiccup comments in the film when making the sketches, “Just make her a white version of Toothless.”
I already started the villain talk, so let’s discuss Grimmel the Grizzly, the dragon slayer who is surprisingly is not Malcolm McDowell.
This isn’t the exact scene I wanted to use this quote with, but regardless: “He’s climbing in your windows, he’s snatching your dragons up.”
I think Grimmel as a character is pretty interesting and funny. He really reminds me of Bog King from Strange Magic. (Yes, I saw that movie and willingly read some fan fiction, that movie is “so close yet so far” but I think it is somewhat decent. I digress.) Or for a more pertinent comparison, Grimmel is like the lead Scroll in the new Captain Marvel. The villain in The Hidden World is obviously an imposing figure, but at the same time he’s able to throw in some dry sardonic humor. He does not like Ruffnut (as do quite a few of us, especially in this movie.) He is suave and we’ll spoken, but then he also constantly has his patience tested.
As a villain though? I think he falls short because there’s little gravitas to him. For example, I feel like there’s an undisclosed history Grimmel has with Berk. With Drago, it was made clear that Stoic knew him. Yet with Grimmel, when he comes to an abandoned Berk, he notes something along the lines of, “It’s good to be back here.”
What does he mean by that? It’s never explained. Why did he decide to start killing all dragons? He mentioned how his village praised him after his first dragon kill, but was that village Berk? If so why did he leave? If not how the heck did Hiccup and anyone else NOT hear about the other village that holds “Grimmel the Grizzly”? Why is this coming up now?
And wouldn’t Hiccup have learned his lesson than to try and negotiate with crazy dudes like Grimmel? Especially because in the second movie his dad gets axed off because of his try-to-do-good nature? I know he’s a pacifist but still.
Grimmel’s lackeys are brain dead. I don’t know how Grimmel doesn’t sock all of them in the face. He could totally do it too, if he has the physical fitness to sneak into Berk without being notified and also the ability to, you know, kill dragons single handedly.
Speaking of brain dead characters someone should clobber: Ruffnut.
Is she really that stupid? Did she really think the villain would let her go with no repercussions, or that he wouldn’t follow her back to the new island?
“I never look back, Hiccup”? What the heck?! No wonder the others weren’t jumping for a rescue mission, Ruffnut makes it a mentally frustrating time.
There aren’t many young women in this village, just Ruffnut and Astrid. Let me say, Ruffnut makes Astrid, even with her flaws, look like a GODDESS in comparison.
I am happy to report that Astrid has really come around from my initial impressions. She is still supportive of Hiccup while maintaining her edge. Given that this movie has a flash forward, I understand why Hiccup and Astrid get married and have kids, but, ehhh…. It’s so nice to see her initially be liberated. She starts off not really pushing commitment and in fact acknowledges she and Hiccup are still too young for tying the knot.
But then it happens, and they have kids, then we see that Toothless and Angel 2.0 are “babies ever after too”, gah, it’s just so sappy. I understand this is the Viking times, so marriage and kids are expected, but I don’t know if we needed to see that.
This movie’s ending can be good or bad, and that really depends on how you feel about Hiccup and Toothless splitting apart to do their own things.
I like the idea of “follow your own path” being applied to even the dragons. It shows how much the Berks, especially Hiccup, care and respect these creatures. I really like how the opening scene narration in this movie is now a speech Hiccup gives the dragons he saves, keeping consistent with the previous movies but also showing he understands how to communicate with them. I also enjoy the look of the Hidden World too, even if we don’t see it for too long in the film. It reminds me of the color scheme of the Land of the Dead from Coco mixed with the function of bat caves.
Everyone giving up on dragons, though, is really unfortunate and telling of a bigger problem. Berk just … gave up reforming the world and instead chooses to let the dragons hide away from the truth. That is, the truth that they aren’t monsters but rather creatures that hold no vendetta against people so long as the humans are kind in return.
I mention in my second movie review that peace and unification is not a black-and-white issue, there are levels in between which typically means those who want peace need to fight to defend it.
Yet I also felt that Hiccup should have learned that among his own people, if people like Stoic and Eret could be swayed, then a good chunk of the other villages could follow suit in his “don’t kill dragons” mentality. Part of the education process is understanding that some people like Drago and Grimmel may be too far gone due to their own stubbornness. But! I’d also argue that those people are in the minority, and over time most people would come to see dragons as friendly within reason.
Letting the dragons hide away makes sense in the movie’s narrative. I get it; Toothless became the alpha in the last movie and wants to rule his own kind in the Hidden World. It also stops treating them as pets for the villagers and starts treating them as creatures able to control their own kingdom.
But it’s sad the dragons have to do so in secrecy, and not alongside humans who could have come to respect their intelligence like Hiccup and his people came to do. As the case is, other outside villages may follow suit in Grimmel’s philosophy of killing all dragons because the counterexample of Berk no longer domesticates and befriends them. It’s just a case of “separate but equal”, and even the flash forward scene suggests humans and dragons can only rarely see each other.
So I can go on and on about if the ending works, but overall, I did like this movie. I think my personal ranking goes 2 being my favorite, then 1, then this movie. But none of them are bad movies by any means. This is one of the strongest trilogies in the animated world, and I am so proud that DreamWorks knew when to end it. Do I believe they’ll stop at three films? I hope they do.
(Please see my review of the first movie if you haven’t already. But if you like spoilers, more power to you, you might be a dragon rider.)
Last time we saw Toothless, Hiccup and his (unbecoming) friends, the kids were all fifteen year old teenagers, dragons were revealed to be a non-threat with enough practice, and the Vikings of Berk ceased to kill the beasts. Five years later, Berk has drastically changed; dragon riding is the new sport of choice, and seemingly everyone has a flying reptile of their own. The village under Hiccup’s lead and his father’s support has become a big sanctuary for rescued dragons. That is until Hiccup and Toothless stumble upon a large Oasis for hiding and protecting dragons, and all of it’s being run by a mysterious woman connected to Hiccup’s past. But another person connected to Berk arrives, and he’s not as pleasant to deal with. Hiccup now needs to step up his game to prove his dragon pacifism is simultaneously the least intrusive and the most powerful of methods, and learn some new things about Toothless and the other dragons along the way.
As I understand it, while the original Dragon came out in 2010, How To Train Your Dragon 2 came out in 2014. DreamWorks pretty much did what Sony Pictures Animation did with LEGO Movie 1 and 2 by having the time gap between movie release dates be about the number of years as the time gap between the stories within the movies. As I mentioned last time, and by the nature of this blog, I didn’t necessarily grow up with these movies. But either way, I always find it a nice meta choice to have matching time gaps, as it allows the audience to age up with the characters they enjoy, and it also allows for more interesting story opportunities with aged up characters.
Let’s talk characters.
Hiccup, Astrid, Toothless, Stoic, and others come back.
Also, I took the time to learn the other kids’ (er, young adults’?) names in this movie. “The Twins” are the blonde pair of twins (as the nickname suggests). The male is Tuffnut, and the female is Ruffnut. “Try-Hard” is the short black hair guy and is named Snotlout. “Brute” is the blonde big guy and is named Fishlegs. I’ll admit these characters have more memorable parts in this movie, so I’ll be fair and name-drop as needed.
Toothless in this movie acts more like a “cartoon dog”, which isn’t my favorite choice, but at least there are other dragons to balance him.
As for new characters, we have Hiccup’s mom Valka.
I appreciate her love for dragons and ability to become a one woman band is sorts.
What’s less enjoyable is her initial thought that, “No one can change, that’s why I left.” She talking with emphasis on how Berk was violent towards dragons in the past, but obviously she herself was capable of change by going from the village chiefess to crazy dragon lady. (Okay, that’s mean, she’s not crazy and she can walk on on dragons while flying which is cool.) But my point is that she believes other people can’t make steps to a new future when that’s basically what she did when she was already adult.
Perhaps it was a thing she could control within herself but not others, but even that doesn’t add up because Hiccup was a baby when she got away. Baby humans may be like baby dragons in that they don’t pay attention to people, but she just kinda chose the dragons over her own family.
Plus there’s the issue where, you know, because Stoic and Hiccup and everyone in Berk thought Valka died in the raid, that likely fuelled the desire to kill all dragons. Which kinda goes against her whole point in leaving, you know?
Being a dragon saver is epic and all (actually, Valka looks like an older version of the daughter from Epic… hmm…). But my opinion still stands, she’s not the best mother in animated history. She subverts the “dead mother” trope, at least?
Then there’s Drago, the villain that’s connected to Berk.
He reminds me of Shan-Yu from Mulan (why I keep bringing up that movie in my Dragon write-ups, I don’t know.) But like Shan-Yu, Drago is a unit of a man, leads spectacles of violence, and screams a lot. I think half of Drago’s lines are just screams.
For someone who was established to be connected to the history of Berk, there’s barely anything there worth mentioning. I know the idea, as Hiccup’s father mentioned, is that Drago was fueled by control and domination which eventually led him astray. Which in turn means he’d be less open to negotiation and peace talks, unfortunately for Hiccup.
But if you really think about it, in a broad light, Hiccup and his people releasing other people’s dragons from captivity can be seen as forceful. While dragons are well established to be sentient and emotional animals, it’s similar to the idea of hunting or poaching. While one society may see one or both as wrong, for another society it may be the norm and may even be party of their culture or economic well-being. So Hiccup boldly practicing his “gotta release ’em all!” ideals is less noble when we realize that he’s probably forcing his personal philosophy onto others without any talks.
Of course, dragons are well worth the dangers and I do agree they’re meant to be treated better than being locked in a cage. But a part of foreign relations is the ability to agree to disagree, and not to force our ways onto others.
It’s a complicated issue that can’t be summed up with, “They’re bad, we’re good.” I mean, here it is because Drago is unfortunately two-dimensional and bland and just wants to rule the world, but I can see that his character could have potentially shown some connection to Hiccup’s lineage, and maybe show the audience that a group leader does not and cannot always account for each group member’s personal beliefs. That not all fights can be talked down.
In fact, the entire climax of this movie where Toothless challenges the alpha and wins is essentially telling the moral, “Sometimes you can’t talk your enemies down, but instead you need to be the stronger person and beat them.” At least Toothless is on the “good” side and has history with humans treating him well, so his alpha status can’t be abused by Hiccup or anyone else.
To be fair, Hiccup does get jaded and doubtful of his beliefs in this movie, and I’m sure after what happens to his father he does come to realize that, confusingly, he needs to fight to defend the unity and well-being of dragons that he wants. So weirdly enough Drago teaches us all the importance of not having a black-and-white mentality, we sometimes must make exceptions to support the bigger picture.
Next there’s Eret.
If it means anything, this was the only scene in two trailers he appeared in. Let that sink in.
I know he’s supposed to have an arc where he learns the error of his ways, but as I mentioned earlier, nothing is quite as black and white as one would like to believe.
So the arc he goes through isn’t that interesting. I’m glad he goes to Team Hiccup, but we as audience members need to acknowledge that we are biased to be on the main character’s side.
What I do like is less with Eret and more how other characters react to Eret. for example: Snotlout is trying to win Ruffnut’s favors, but she keeps getting swept away and willingly roped into Eret’s schemes. That’s funny. Eret in general plays a straight man to the choices around him as well. I like that. This movie can get quite somber so we need the humor somewhere.
I didn’t mention this in my last writing, but considering what happens in this one, I think it’s a fair point to bring up now.
These movies can really punch you in the face with how real and tragic they get. Toothless loses a part of his tail at the start of the first film, then Hiccup loses his leg at the end.(To quote George Lucas, “See, it’s like poetry, it rhymes.”)
In the sequel, the villain’s dragon gets his tusk blown off, but dismemberment is far from the worst thing to happen.
Let’s start off with Hiccup reuniting with his long thought to be dead mother after 20 years. They quickly realize that even apart they developed to be quite similar.
Or how about the fact that Stoic’s first reaction to seeing his wife isn’t angry or sad, but relief and soft joy. Which then makes Valka’s fear of coming back home for two decades all for naught.
Or the fact that just when family is about to come back together it all gets broken when Toothless fatally injured Stoic.
People in this movie get so close to peace and happiness before it gets challenged and taken away. And I absolutely love how DreamWorks is willing to go there, present the idea emotions are not permanent, but you know, bodily harm disappearances typically are.
I don’t like the part where Hiccup lashes out at Toothless after attacking Stoic. Toothless was clearly under control of the alpha and Drago at the time, yet Hiccup gets angry at Toothless directly and tells him to go away. I guess it was to drive home the point of, “Oh no, they got Toothless and the other dragons, now what?” That, and I am sure having your father die before your eyes is horrible, but wouldn’t the attack make Hiccup more angry at Drago rather than the Night Fury?
On a less depressing note, I really like the relationship between Astrid and Hiccup here. In the first movie, as I mentioned in my write up, I felt they were just dumb teens who got together because he thought she was cool and she was impressed mostly by the dragons. Neither are wrong or immoral, but I never sensed anything deeper than that.
In 2, both are five years older, so they thankfully stepped out of superficialities and gotten to (I would hope) know each other much better. I adore the scene in the start where Astrid and and Hiccup have a heart to heart while playing fetch with Toothless. I feel that Astrid is still persistent and unafraid of confrontation, yet she shows she can slow down sometimes and give Hiccup emotional support every now and then. Hiccup also shows a lot of care her way as well; these two obviously respect one another on a deeper level than in the first movie.
This review is going all over the place. But to sum up, I do like this movie willing to take risks. Not many animated sequels would kill off a main character and essentially say peace is impossible to maintain permanently, This one did, and it’s nice that DreamWorks is taking the idea of “Vikings mixed with dragons” more seriously and realistically than the title would suggest.
Next time, the third and final chapter. Until and unless they decide to make a part four. But for now, number three will be the last one in the series. Till soon.
DreamWork’s How to Train Your Dragon, based on the series of children’s books by Cressida Cowell, is about a young boy in the age of Vikings named Hiccup. Living in the village of Berk in a time where men and women alike must constantly fight off against countless dragons, scrawny Hiccup worries he cannot ever match with his clan’s ways nor ever make the chief proud to be Hiccup’s father. That is, until, circumstances allow Hiccup to tame and learn more about dragons through a Night Fury he names Toothless. Hiccup uses his newfound knowledge to become the top student in his dragon lessons while making sure to keep Toothless a secret from the others. Eventually a bigger threat emerges and Hiccup has to prove to his people that with right mindset dragons can coexist with humans and together they can soar to new heights.
So some personal backstory. The first exposure I ever had with How to Train Your Dragon was via a trailer before The Princess and the Frog. My dad and I went to see that movie around Christmas 2009, and the trailer played at the start. I don’t recall much of the initial impression beyond, “That black dragon is way too cute to kill.”
That being said, the first exposure that I ever had with How to Train Your Dragon that remember being consistently engaged in (somewhat unintentionally) was The Big Four craze of Tumblr a few years ago.
Four CGI characters (Merida from Brave, Rapunzel from Tangled, Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians and Hiccup from this movie) join together with some portal magic to fight some evil force and they represented different seasons and …
I actually don’t know much else about the crossover honestly. At the time people seemed to romantically pair Merida and Hiccup, which was strange because even I knew one of them wasn’t single in their own universe. I guess The Big Four was a crossover story with no boundaries; there were crossovers of this crossover with other crossovers (Harry Potter and Avengers references were common), manipulations of images to join the characters so they could be in the same scene, music videos, tribute videos, parody videos, and fanfiction galore.
I didn’t join in partially because at the time I had only seen Tangled and Brave, and partially because there was some confusion on how The Big Four was supposed to exist (if it was these four stories blended together by purposeful plot points, if it the characters were always together in this world, or if The Big Four was just a codename for meaningless images of these four characters together). Regardless, it was a fascinating period of my online life.
… This post was about dragons, let’s get back to that.
Let’s start with the characters.
Surprisingly, for a wimpy apprentice, Hiccup has some good verbal zingers throughout the film. I personally love his foreboding, “There’ll be consequences!” If he wasn’t in the Viking age, he’d make a decent retortist or witty Twitter user in today’s society.
That’s a thing that this movie balances well: the dialogue. When characters speak, they do not necessarily speak like Vikings. I mean, many have the looks and accents down pat, though Hiccup sounds pretty modern American. That’s besides the point. This movie could have gone too far in the other hand and made everything a modern day tone to the point that we’re questioning the setting of this world. Hiccup and his peers speak like modern day people but it’s toned down just enough to not be “try-hard”. Plus part of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of modern speech in a loose historical setting.
Hiccup in this movie changes mainly in the sense that he stops being driven by fear and more willing to act with his own agency. He doesn’t automatically know how to handle dragons or how to communicate with them or how to fly on them. Rather, he make the choices to learn more, to try new things and to push the boundaries between the known and the unknown. It’s a coming of age tale for him, where he learns that not everything his dad says is the right way and that his own ways are not tested but may be the better choice.
I’d argue that he doesn’t develop so much internally, as he’s always on the side of not killing dragons (which most audience members undoubtedly would root for after seeing Toothless). Hiccup is an important character less because of how he grows and more because of how he serves as a catalyst for his village to change for the better. I like the type of story where the main character is not the one that really needs to change (though they definitely do learn more about themselves), it’s more so the society around them that has to change to match the main character’s ways. Mulan is another great example of that story. A revolution often involves large groups of people, but are often started by a small number of critical individuals.
Wimpy Hiccup can be annoying to some people; him asking questions about dragons in the middle of dragon training was a bit much. But aside from an issue related to the romance between him and Astrid, which I’ll mention later in this post, he’s pretty enjoyable.
Toothless reminds me of a giant Stitch. Which makes enough sense; Chris Sanders of Lilo and Stitch helped design the dragons here.
Part of the mystery behind Toothless’s kind of dragon was that no one had ever been in close enough contact to handle one. Hiccup manages to do so by luck of the straw (or dragon net, as the case may be.)
What I like about Toothless is his nature. He’s understandable and approachable once researched, but is still undoubtedly feral. Now, “feral” does not equal “evil”, and really like how Toothless doesn’t become a cartoon dog (i.e., too cartoony and anthropomorphic) as Hiccup domesticates him. There is nothing wrong about making a giant animal into a dog-like creature in order to play up friendliness and/or kindness, but I feel that it has been done a lot. Especially in the age of the silent animal companion that a lot of animated movies chose these days, it’s refreshing to see the balance between feeling “He can hurt you without trying” and “Who’s the good boy?!”
Hiccup is constantly trying to win his father’s approval, but also doubts his own ability and morals to live up to the dragon-killing Viking ways. The father himself, Stoick the Vast, tends to push Hiccup away without care. It’s not so much disdain or disgust for his son, but rather confusion at how to deal with someone who doesn’t fit into the Viking culture. It’s also being unsure how to communicate well. Leading is Stoic’s strong suit; listening, not so much.
I mentioned before that I’ve seen Brave, and this dad really reminds me of that one. Both are bumbling yet bold, sentimental yet serious, and have lovely red hair. But whereas Brave dad has his wife, Stoic is going solo, which also accounts for his uncertainty in dealing with his son.
The fact that Stoic would disown Hiccup seems a bit out of place, and it breaks me that it happens at all.
But hey, as flawed as this dad is, he’s much more identifiable and understandable than the dad from Chicken Little. When Hiccup wants to do dragon training, Stoic lets him start with some outside persuasion. Hiccup doesn’t need to become awesome at dragon training and win the big game to get some approval, Stoic is trying to meet him halfway. Effort is always a plus in my eyes; it’s better to try and flounder than to assume your son is a lost cause and will always bring you shame (Chicken Little flashbacks…)
Astrid, the bad-to-the-bone blonde that she is, is in my eyes another “she can take care of herself” character. Nothing horrible, it’s just not my favorite personality to see in a movie. I am curious now, where are her parents in that clan? Hiccup is the only one to have his parent on screen.
Anyway, I do like how Astrid was the first one to learn about Toothless, and it was through Hiccup and more through sneaky shadowing. I wonder why she didn’t figure out sooner though — I thought the eel trick Hiccup used was so obvious!
Not strictly about Astrid, but I do not like how the relationship between Hiccup and Astrid goes down in this movie at all. They become the poster couple for the Dragon series, and I am sure it gets better over time, but something wasn’t fully realized with this relationship in this movie.
I get it, he’s a dorky wimp, she’s a brash tomboy, and they’re both teenagers around 15 years old. A relationship at this age isn’t going to be Thomas Hardy levels of nuanced.
But it seems as though Astrid only starts liking Hiccup after she finds out about Toothless and goes on an (admittedly pretty) sky ride, and it seems that Hiccup doesn’t learn anything new or deep about Astrid to make his interest anything more than a physical infatuation.
And okay, maybe Astrid can arguably be seen as someone who realizes Hiccup is an inherently good person and that being physically weaker than others isn’t bad, different people have different strengths, etc.
Here’s the thing, though. Hiccup started off with a crush on Astrid. The first scene we see of her is when she walks away from a burning shack in slow motion as seen from Hiccup’s point of view. Basically, he thinks she’s pretty and tough and popular — all surface level things that he’d probably be into because he’s lacking in those departments. (Well, okay, I personally think Hiccup, as far as animated boy characters, is cute, but that’s besides the point.)
From the start Hiccup was decent to her without intentions for specific situations, yet she doesn’t treat him with any care until after she finds out he’s hiding the pet (well, Toothless isn’t really a pet, but nuance.)
Hiccup is totally okay with this too. He never calls Astrid out on the less than nice ways she treated him before, or questions why she started liking him (it’s totally because of the dragon).
Yes, Hiccup taming and learning from Toothless shows how keen, curious, and risk-taking he is, which would all be good traits for someone in a Viking village to have and explain why Astrid would be into that.
The thing is, Hiccup was ALWAYS keen, curious, and risk-taking. He was the one begging to be involved and help out with the dragon fights. He was the one to stay into the night reading old books about dragons. He was the one to sneak away from his apprentice duties to try and capture a dragon. He’s already everything that he is later revealed to be, if that makes sense. Astrid never saw this because she never gave him the time of day.
See, I don’t get why Hiccup doesn’t have any doubts that Astrid’s interest in him isn’t anything more than shallow fascination that he can “talk” with dragons. If a girl lost weight and a guy suddenly starting liking her, or if a man won a million dollars and a woman started talking to him, an outsider would question intentions just a bit. In this film, it never gets called into attention by anyone. So I guess Hiccup is shallow too, if he doesn’t seem to mind why the pretty girl he liked suddenly sticks around.
I’ll give her this: Astrid didn’t abandon Hiccup after his father disowns him. It’s the first sign in the movie where I felt her interest is genuine. I’ll grant, too, that sometimes a big event needs to kickstart the relationship, and over time the people get to know each other better in sincere ways. It’s just a bit harder to swallow here. Maybe the relationship was too rushed and not given enough breathing room?
Teenage love. Sometimes the couple is happy but the situation is nonetheless insipid.
As for the other teen characters, I never really bothered to learn their names because I saw them as more pointless versions of Astrid. I honestly just thought of them as “The Twins”, “Brute”, and “Try-Hard”. Not the worst, but nothing memorable. I feel like if the modern dialogue can get frustrating, it’s because of these four being delivered as the de facto bullies. Thank you, next.
“I believe in learning on the job.” Hey, that’s the motto for most college grad entry-level work!
Minor role, but I like Gobber a lot. He’s the one to convince Stoic to let Hiccup start dragon lessons, and he has this nonchalant attitude I really enjoy.
On the whole, I really liked this movie. 2010 for me was The Year of Tangled for me, but in hindsight I wish I had made time for this one too. Given that there are two sequels now, plus a TV show, specials, and other media, it would have been nice to grow up alongside Hiccup. But in my adult eyes, I can also better understand the moral of the story, which I feel is best summed up as, “When life gives you fire breathing dragons, make friends with the beasts and conquer your fears to make a better tomorrow.” Or something thereof.
(Please see my review of the first movie here if you haven’t already. Unless you dig spoilers. In which case, awesome.)
Did you ever want to see an animated movie that had funny trailers and is based on a pre-existing story, but then when you go in you realize it’s an animated musical?
First of all, see Disney’s Tangled first. Nothing to do with being better or worse than this film. To quote John Oliver, I’m just a fan.
Second of all: yup, LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part is an animated musical! In practice only two of the songs are sung, so it may be a lose definition of a musical, but the characters with their meta self-awareness even call it musical numbers, so that’s what I shall go with as well. Stay until the end credits by the way, you’ll enjoy the song choice there if you let the lyrics marinate in your mind.
We have a lot of the old characters back again. Emmet, Lucy, Princess Unikitty. (Not Vitruvius, he didn’t get a magic revival potion, RIP.)
But we also have a lot of interesting newbies here too!
The movie isn’t shy to acknowledge the live action world, and in fact does so pretty early on by showing us the brother and sister in the real world. So let’s talk about Bianca, the sister of Finn from the first movie.
… I barely know anything about Bianca, other than she’s blonde, she’s really into outer space themes, and really loves her older brother and wants to play with him. It’s basically the same thing that happened with Finn in the first, where his personality is expressed more through the LEGO figures than with himself.
So that being said, let’s talk about Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi. (Thank you Wikipedia for giving me the spelling).
She has a really colorful presence, and I’m not just talking about the bricks she’s made of. For a character that gets to sing two of the musical numbers, the idea of a figure that can morph into any other figure she chooses is such a beautiful idea. Her name sake comes from a thing the brother said to Bianca when she was small, but for me I am also reminded of the Barbie slogan, “You Can Be Anything”. (Yes, I know they’re different brands). It’s not so much the looks of the toy as much as the heart of the message. And quite literally the Queen’s revealed to be the heart Emmet makes as a peace offering at the start of the movie. The Queen to me is the desire of Bianca to want to connect with her brother through playtime, which they even mention in the pre-wedding scene as a joining of two worlds. She (the Queen and Bianca) try so hard to prove they’re not bad and “un-conniving”, but it takes a while for the others to see that largely because of biases.
Then there’s General Sweet Mayhem.
She to me is the sister’s idea of hiding her girliness in an attempt to better connect to her brother. Of course, given that Mayhem kidnapped some of the main cast (or in the real world, when Bianca takes some of her brother’s toys up to her room), she seems sketchy and dangerous much like the Queen initially. But once the mask comes off, much like in real life, people start to trust her more.
Also, Mayhem looks like an older, space age version of Loopy from the Kablam mini show Life With Loopy. Does anyone else see that?
And Rex Dangervest is, in my mind, what would happen if you made an American version of the Crocodile Dundee and made him (more) stereotypically masculine. Rex even has a bunch of dinosaur crew members he got by going back in time after combining Bill and Ted’s phone booth, the Tardis, the Delorean from Back to the Future, and other time travel doo-hickeys to build an ultra time machine.
… Yeah, okay, Rex’s entire existence makes this movie more confusing, but I’ll touch on that later. He does serve as a good foil for Emmet, and a living example for the type of man Lucy claims she wants until she doesn’t. Which gets a bit tragic the more I think about it but again, more discussion on this later.
So as I alluded before, the live action twist of the first film is more of a side story in this film. Unfortunately I find the live action parts, while decently acted, just a little boring.
In my opinion, this movie is MUCH more predictable than the first partially because the live action world has to be involved early on. “Systar System”? “Our-mom-aggedon?” Gee, I wonder what those things are supposed to represent. Yes, the move pokes fun at the names, and I have nothing against spoilers per se. I’d just rather not have the movie hold my hand so much.
Granted because this movie literally picks up where the last one ended, live-action bits are to be expected and people like me are going into the film aware of the “real world.”
The movie’s self-knowledge goes probably to the point of over emphasis, though. I’m thinking of the kids’ mom going, “I’m not the bad guy, I’m just the side character!”
Maybe the mom is that woman from the live action Rocky & Bullwinkle movie(the lady who goes, “I didn’t write the script, I’m only one of the characters!”) Trading one crazy life for another.
HOWEVER. I do feel that LEGO Movie 2 has a stronger LEGO core than the first movie did. The Second Part doesn’t connect the LEGO plot to the live action world as much as the first did. Considering a movie series can’t pull off the same twist two movies in a row, it’s a real good thing that this LEGO story is worth watching with great new characters and (mostly) great old characters.
Emmet is adorable. He builds Lucy a dream house and a double decker swing chair. He tries to be more broody and serious to make Lucy happy, which drives a large part of the LEGO narrative. It’s nice that a guy wants the “white picket fence” dream. I mean, it’s dated, but also nice that he’s allowed to have it.
Batman is a heartbroken man who finds happiness with the Queen. Those two deserve each other, and I mean that in a non-condescending, truly sincere way.
Princess Unikitty embraces her inner demon now. That’s good, and in a bizarre way scary how 180 she went from sunshines and rainbows. Must have a lot of pent up anger.
Lucy is still the insecure rebel we all moderately enjoy. In the first movie, as I pointed out in my review for the film, the characters talk about how she kept changing her name until reaching on “Wyldstyle”, and she even acknowledged feeling sad that she couldn’t be the “special.”
However, LEGO Movie 2 states she went as far as to alter her physical appearance with a marker to hide from her horrific past of being a … bubbly pop singer? Really, Lucy?
Maybe in LEGO Movie 3 we learn she had a nice family but she wanted so badly to be special and have excitement she decided to run away from home to become a Master Builder. Good Cop/Bad Cop from the first movie had parents that he betrayed, why not Lucy?
Please don’t misinterpret, Lucy is a good character if one wanted a personification of female empowerment in their movie. She’s not morally despicable or even trite. I just find some of her choices frustrating and annoying. I’d even argue that she has more growing up to do than Emmet, because he is more willing and more readily interested to compromise than she is.
General Sweet Mayhem (and the Queen to a lesser extent) do better in the “girl power” role largely because of the connection to Bianca. The concept that one needs to be masked or constantly say that they’re not inherently evil in order to be taken more seriously, those are misguided choices because they arouse more suspicion, but a young girl would believe that it’s for the best. Many times girls who present themselves can be taken less seriously and get shunned. I’d imagine that Bianca felt being a girl was bad and therefore the problem preventing her from playing with Finn, so she did everything possible to lessen the girliness and therefore lessent the “badness”.
Lucy is connected to Finn, so the symbolism isn’t as strong.
Speaking of gender dynamics: Rex.
He’s the older, jaded, more “manly” version of Emmet who time travelled back in time to lead Emmet down the same path. When Rex first showed up, I believed he was going to be the teenage son’s idealization of a hero. Compared to naive, simple Emmet (hey, the movie straight out says it, why can’t I?) Rex seems like the antithesis (or, another antithesis if we consider Lucy a foil to Emmet, which I do). Rex seems cool, rugged, willing to take risks, and distant from his feelings. The perfect male action hero.
Maybe Finn over the years changes his mind on what a hero can be, decides Emmet is not up to par, and uses Rex. And perhaps with Bianca playing with LEGOs too, Finn felt having a “soft” male character in his story was too girly and weak. Would also explain why Lucy wants Emmet to grow up too, in spite of Emmet’s kindness and naivety being the key to saving the day multiple times in both films. It’s Finn projecting through his toys on how he thinks guys his age are supposed to play.
How interesting is that, a kid going from one favorite main character toy to another. Using other figures to bully a “lame” toy. And the love birds Emmet and Lucy, would Finn try to push together Rex and Lucy as a couple because Finn thinks (to quote an obnoxious Tik Tok meme), “good girls like bad boys”? How fascinating! Can toys get jealous? They can fuelled by anger, if we’re to believe Rex’s backstory. There are so many possible connections to the live action world that can be explored!
But no, Rex’s existence makes no sense at all. He has complete agency of himself. Rex really is the future version of Emmet. Finn didn’t decide to make up a time travel subplot. This is all really happening, and yet not because everything else has some connection to the real world while time traveling macho guy doesn’t.
Also, where was Lucy in future Emmet’s/Rex’s timeline?! I’m surprised no one addressed this. Did she never try looking for him? Was she not able to get her own agency and do stuff on her own? This movie shows her seeing the humans, much like Emmet did in the first. Was that to suggest she can one day get her own will and move around on her own? Maybe not, but that’s such a shame because her last words before getting kidnapped by Mayhem were that Emmet needs to be more serious. Would future Lucy regret those last words, or miss Emmet? Had future Lucy told future Emmet/Rex this, would he have reverted back to normal? Don’t know, it’s never explored.
In hindsight I suppose Lucy hiding her past from Emmet is some concoction of Finn’s teenage brain to be edgy, but it’s not the best laid out. I only see Lucy as someone who’s ashamed of her “uncool” past, when truth be told the biggest thing she has to feel ashamed of is making hasty decisions without thinking them through. (Oh, if only Vitruvius could see her and make a joke about irony now! RIP.)
In her defense, present Lucy does eventually realize that she doesn’t need to hide from her inoffensive past, and I do like the scene where she apologizes to Emmet for wanting him to match her misguided ideals. I just struggle a little to understand why she’s so darn broody and unappeasable with herself even after 5+ years. Even in the context of Finn’s imagination, I don’t understand what he’s going for with her.
In the live action realm, I am also extremely confused as to why the father is absent except for voiceover. Especially considering how obsessed the man was in the first one. Now I am no stranger to mini-obsessions; I have one every month or so. This guy was a collector of LEGO for 7+ years though. You’d think he’d be more active in his son’s and daughter’s fighting. He just bolts as soon as the brother and sister have to start playing together.
Also, as randomly funny as the scenes were, I can’t help but feel there’s a missed opportunity with the Bruce Willis cameo. I’d have done a bit where Batman is also the scene, and someone calls out “Bruce!”, and both Willis and Batman react, but Batman has to backtrack and say, “Uh, Bruce, that’s not me, cool name though.” Can you hear his voice? Can you see how funny it’d have been? Oh well, there’s always fan fiction…
I do really like the scene between Lucy and Emmet on the wedding cake. But it is also so heartbreaking! He genuinely believes that in order to to make others happy, to make Lucy happy, he needs to alter himself and become a tough guy. No, it’s worse than that. He thinks Lucy is brainwashed and lying to him when she says she likes the kind, naive, real Emmet, and he replies, “The real Lucy would never say that to me.”
Emmet becomes rugged inside (and during the climax, physically as well) in an attempt to become the man Lucy claims she wants even though he’s not comfortable. Unfortunately she’s not the best person to be giving self help advice, given that she feels the need to alter herself too. This movie is all about how being a strong support for others starts with being confident with yourself first. There’s no shame in your sister playing with LEGOs, there’s no shame in being a “soft” male, and there’s no shame in a tomboy not matching every stereotype of a tomboy.
Another missed opportunity: no I Love Lucy reference. Or maybe I wanted a reference because I would understand it more clearly than the “Special Best Friends” deal Emmet and Lucy do get. I see Sony took notes from the ambiguous “You know you love me!” scene from Zootopia, where some like the voice for Nick see it as romantic while others like the voice for Judy think it’s platonic. True story.
Overall, I love the story with the LEGO toys in this film, less enjoyed how it connects to the live action world, but even the live action bits are decent enough. If you liked the first movie but thought it needed more pre-teen flairs, existential drama, and extra musical numbers, go see The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. Then in the coming weeks, go enjoy the music stuck inside your head while pondering on how much money the family in this movie must spend on LEGO toys every year.
The LEGO Movie is about average-joe Emmet Brickowski, who turns out is so average that he may be the special key to saving the LEGO world. Joined by punky Wyldstyle, old sage Vitruvius (who up until reading the Wikipedia character list I thought was named “Lord Truthiness”… Too much Colbert?), Batman, and other well-built characters.
So, years following it’s release, was this movie as awesome on the first watch as its theme song proclaims?
For the most part, yeah. However, some things could have been better if one were inclined to dive deep. Given the entire movie with its self-aware tone and twists (more on that later), though, that makes some choices more forgivable than if these same plot and character choices were in, say, a straightforward three-act film.
Let’s start with characters and work our way down.
Emmet is the “special” who isn’t a typical hero, but at the same time, he is special in his own way. He’s a nice character, personality wise. A bit boring and “sunshine and rainbows” at the start, but it’s understandable. He never really knew drama or turmoil until it one day landed on him. I don’t know many other Emmets in media, except for the Emmett from Legally Blonde (the musical version being far superior to the film version). That being said, LEGO Emmet makes me appreciate the name all the more. Plus, sad to say, I didn’t know that Chris Pratt voiced him until about a week ago. I definitely see a bit of Andy Dwyer in him in hindsight. I like Emmet; I see him as the innocent bystander that happens to be the key to solving the problem.
What I don’t see is why many of the other characters label him as both an idiot and an unoriginal person. I don’t think that either of those labels fit him.
He’s always inclined, at the start, anyway, to follow the instructions while building with Lego bricks. I’ve always been a “wing it and see what happens” person myself. Instructions aren’t a bad thing though, and given that the average LEGO has intricate parts and pieces like this –
Yeah, I think following directions would be the smart thing to do here.
Even when he’s not being copy and paste, though, he gets weird looks. For instance: Emmet’s Double Decker Couch idea isn’t stupid at all! Even before it came in handy in saving lives, I have no clue why that was the crew was scoffing at it. Those things technically exist already. They’re call loft beds. The top is usually a plain bed, but some have the bottom level couch be a bed, or a pull out bed under the lower couch. Unless pull out beds can’t exist in LEGO Land because LEGO bricks don’t have a sliding mechanism?
I’m thinking too much about LEGO furniture …
Maybe the idea is that they’re saying “stupid” when they really mean “naive”? Even so, most ideas and things, no matter how niche, can have a purpose.
Another point is that when he is being questioned by Bad Cop, Emmet learns that no one really in his city sees him as special, nor does anyone know a trait about him. Emmet immediately lets himself feel sad because, hey, that’s a mean thing to learn about your coworkers. He’s open to negative emotions and accepts them, unlike Princess Unikitty who takes until the climax to let go of her forced smiles. He also offers emotional support when (it seems like) Wyldstyle’s boyfriend has left. Emotional intelligence is a huge sign of intelligence, and I’m really glad they let a guy character have good emotional capacity of without going too far in the other direction and making him also unproductive. Yeah, he’s not as life threateningly active as Wyldstyle, but I don’t think he needs to be. He’s obviously not lazy; he’s a construction worker and tries his best to help out when possible.
Speaking of which, let’s move onto Wyldstyle, also known as Lucy (mostly because that’s her given name).
She’s the modern heroine – strong, slightly snarky, but deep down is a fluffy bunny. Kind of a common character type these days, if I may say so, but she’s not a bad character in the slightest. I especially think that young girls would like her, especially when she’s able to hold her own ground and save others.
That being said … she kind of emotionally cheats on her boyfriend throughout this film. Does anyone else catch that? Firstly, when she mentions she has a boyfriend to Emmett, I thought it was one of those “I have a boyfriend” lies to get unwanted attention to go away. But then, Batman comes in and she wasn’t kidding. Good for her, Batman is a catch. Yet she constantly flops between maybe giving Emmet a chance and sticking with her “babe”. Even though it’s established that Batman is not an awful boyfriend (with a close call with the Star Wars cameo that I was expecting to go a more cliche route), she seems indecisive between the two of them.
Her backstory is glanced over for the most part (in a funny way, mind you), but one part that stuck out to me is that Vitruvius mentioned her as being the student that kept changing her name. She’s established as a fickle lady and scared to show her true self.
It’s the foil to Emmet’s character development, actually. While Emmet is an average person who has to figure out how use his own skills, Lucy is the character that needs to learn that not being the “special” doesn’t diminish who she really is.
Batman was cool, as always. This version is more self absorbed than others, but I see it more as another self-reference the movie has to poke fun at the fact that they’re using LEGO as the main set (pardon the pun). The movie knows it has all of these licenses behind it, while also trying to do something deeper than just advertising. Earlier I mentioned he’s a good guy when it came to Lucy’s flip-floppiness. Morals and traits of dressing as a bat and fighting crime aside, in this movie anyway, he’s not a jerk to Lucy when he realizes she likes Emmet more. I like that. It would have been so easy to go the, “He’s a jerk so of course she’d leave him” way. The LEGO Movie story is much more interesting to me. There’s no drama, it’s just something that happens in all of these people’s lives.
Tangent: Will Arnett voices Batman?! Like, Bojack Horesman Will Arnett? I would have tuned in much sooner had I known that. That voice will make watching The LEGO Batman Movie down the line more enjoyable than I’ve heard said film already is.
With the big twist this movie has (Emmet and co. are real LEGO toys being played with by a collector’s son), I’m likely thinking too deeply about character motivations. All the character positives and negatives are moot. Not pointless, because I did enjoy all of these characters, but they are moot because it’s not so much about what the characters do, it’s how they connect to emotions.
LEGOs already have a nostalgic vibe to them, having been around for so many decades. The film is smart enough to use LEGO as a visual choice, not to advertise and make more toys to cater to Millennials and Boomers and what have you (though undoubtedly that happened as a side effect). This film throws in self-references and a funny tone early on to prepare the viewer that this film is not trying to get into our wallets, but into our hearts as an enjoyable watch. The LEGO Movie can be seen as the rekindling of a father-son relationship expressed through Lego characters that the child defined, and while not perfect, the LEGO characters most assuredly play their parts both in their animated world and in the live action world.
Again, if these choices — Lucy’s boyfriend floundering, Emmet being slightly undermined, the use of LEGO in general — were in a film that didn’t have the live action twist, I’d imagine it’d be a very frustrating movie to watch.
But because of the choices the staff made, The LEGO Movie puts the “meta” in “metamorphosis”. That is, in my eyes, it completely revolutionizes the idea of meta, self-referential humor to be so much more meaningful, endearing, and tantalizing to one’s inner sense of wonder.
I really want to go play with LEGOs now and build a Double Decker Couch. I don’t actually have Lego bricks mind you, I’ll just pretend that I have one of those expensive sets.
Hi-hi world, my name is Kelly. I’m a college grad from NYC living the humble life working in a non-profit. I majored in English Literature in college with an Art History minor. I wrote a lot for my academic life, which is fine by me because I love writing even if I do have a tendency to overthink my words. I also really love animation, from the conception stage to storyboarding to layouts to the final product.
Welcome to my blog Anima of Animation. The process of animation is all about putting life and soul (or trying as much as possible to do so) into fictional characters and worlds that we can draw and bend to tell stories. I’m half Italian on my mom’s side, and “soul” in Italian translates out to “anima”. Animation has soul in it; that goes for both the word and the medium. Carl Jung psychology also speaks of anima, which in his own words is, “a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man’s psyche.” A man accepting his anima will let him be more intuitive, imaginative, and creative, among other things. Animation as a medium, likewise, starts in the mind of people who choose to embrace an idea and make it a reality through deliberate outward actions. Hence the name Anima of Animation.
But enough talking about lessons from Psychology 101, let’s get back to the blog.
This is a “start-up” blog and an experiment of sorts on my end. I really want this to be a place where I can review theatrically released animated films coming out in 2019 and just write about animation in general. Nothing to rival the Chicago Sun-Times or The New York Times, but more just a simple outlet for me to talk and learn more about animation.
I don’t necessarily know how long/in depth I can write a review for a new film (do those YouTube reviewers take notes at the cinema?) But this blog will feature honest and sincere writings.
This year the following animated films are coming out with the date of release in parentheses.
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (February 8, 2019)
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (February 22, 2019)
Wonder Park (March 15, 2019)
Dumbo(March 29, 2019)*
Missing Link (April 12, 2019)
Uglydolls (May 10, 2019)
POKÉMON Detective Pikachu (May 10, 2019)
Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie (May 15, 2019)
Aladdin (May 24, 2019)*
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (June 7, 2019)
Toy Story 4 (June 21, 2019)
The Lion King (July 19, 2019)*
Wish Dragon (July 26, 2019 (China))
Playmobil: The Movie (August 16, 2019)
Angry Birds 2 (September 6, 2019)
Spies in Disguise (September 13, 2019)
Abominable (September 27, 2019)
The Addams Family (October 18, 2019)
Frozen 2 (November 27, 2019)
Klaus (December 25, 2019)
*These films are not necessarily pure live action, but I feel they will take a lot of sensibilities from their animated counterparts, for different reasons that I’ll talk about in each respective write up. That’s why I’m including them.
As the list suggests, a lot of sequels and remakes are heading our way.
… A lot of sequels and reboots that belong to film series that I haven’t actually seen.
I don’t know how film critics do their reviews for theatrical releases, but for my end, part of the deal is to actually know what the sequels are sequelling about.
That’s why throughout the year I’ll be including longer write-ups for the older animated films, just to address the gap in my knowledge and hopefully not be out of the loop when the actual sequel arrives.
In addition, whenever there are gaps or lulls in the theatrical release schedule, I’ll make a point to review other films that are part of other series I haven’t seen yet, or are stand alone features that I’ve heard good (or bad!) things about.
How much can I write about animation in a calendar year? That’s the question that I hope this blog will answer.
Enjoy your stay and stay tuned for future updates. 😉
Anima of Animation 