Thursday, August 1, 2013

Descriptions of the HTTYD2 clips

Comic con Played two clips from HTTYD2 and thankfully some people kindly wrote out descriptions of what happened. I've found (or been given) two of these descriptions, and I want to thank the people for writing these things! These clips sound amazing, and in a later post I will certainly have to write out all my thoughts on them! For now, I'll just post the two descriptions. The second is probably a more accurate description than the first...but that is just a guess. Ooooooh this stuff is just so good! I can't believe how great HTTYD2 is looking. Seriously, later I'll definitely be writing a long post on what excites me in these clips.


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Today I was excitedly in attendance at the Dreamworks Animation Panel this morning at San Diego Comic Con. After discussions and clips for Turbo and Mr. Peabody and Sherman, the attention turned to the much anticipated How to Train Your Dragon 2. The characters are aged up five years and the focus is world exploration and pushing further out into the world. A threat is discovered where a deranged villain, Drago Bloodfist, is capturing dragons with the help of Eret, a cocky 25 year old who is a self proclaimed world’s best dragon trapper, in order to form an army of dragons. There is a lone dragon rider that Hiccup will run into at some point and the character of Valka is saving dragons and hiding them in the Arctic. One of the main issues that Hiccup will be dealing with is that of his self identity. Since he is becoming a young man and is at that 19-20 age, he is trying to figure out who he really is as a person. 
Dean stated that he agreed to do the sequel only if he could do three films in order to tell the story he wanted to tell. He also stated that one of the biggest inspirations for the sequel was Empire Strikes Back. Considering how dark that movie is, I’m pretty worried that we’re in for a roller coaster of emotions. In a good way though of course. 
John Powell will be doing the score again and is collaborating with Jonsi, the artist who did the end credits song, on three pieces for the film. The piece they used for temporary music for the first clip was a Jonsi song and I’m confident that the soundtrack will be wonderful once again. Very glad that they are bringing Jonsi back in addition to Powell.
Now for the clips! I’ll try to describe them as best as I can. The first clip was essentially the scene that they primarily used to generate the teaser trailer we saw last week. We see Hiccup and Toothless flying through the skies and having a great time, with Hiccup later falling off and testing his flight suit. Toothless even spits out some fire spurts for Hiccup to practice maneuvering around. Everything seems to be going well until they get into some thick clouds and suddenly see a large stone piling. Hiccup’s suit malfunctions and it looks like he’s going to crash into the stone. Toothless swoops in and catches him, crashing into the stone and landing on a cliff side. This part was an incredible call back to when Toothless caught Hiccup at the end of HTTYD, especially since Hiccup emerges in a similar fashion and the camera cuts to his prosthetic limb as he checks himself to make sure he didn’t lose something else. Once he’s regained himself and witnessed the stone piling collapse thanks to the force of Toothless’s blow, he notices that they’ve stumbled on undiscovered land. Hiccup is excited about this, but notices that Toothless is peeved that Hiccup hasn’t thanked him for saving his life yet again. Hiccup notices this and starts teasing Toothless about it, then wraps his arms around the dragons neck in a hug. Toothless lifts him up and with Hiccup dangling from his neck, traipses over on his hind legs to the cliff edge and pretends that he’s going to put Hiccup over the edge. Toothless then turns him back around and the two fall to the ground, playing and laughing with each other with Toothless later licking Hiccup all over his face. It’s a great display of their friendship and incredible bond. They then go back to the outlook over the new land and Hiccup pulls out a map. He holds up a piece of blank paper to Toothless who licks it, then Hiccup adheres it to the ever-growing map and begins illustrating what he sees, asking Toothless what the should call it. When he notices Toothless itching his arm pit, he laughs and goes, “Itchy Arm Pit it is." There is then a sound behind them from the brush and the clip ends. The clear thing in this clip was that even though Hiccup has grown, he is still the Hiccup we know and love. 
We also got a second clip, this one with a darker tone. This clip took place after Hiccup has a huge fight with his father, Stoick. He’s flying on Toothless just above the clouds and is simpering. He then flails and shouts about on Toothless in frustration before flopping backwards on the dragon’s back musing to himself about the argument. A mysterious figure dressed in blue ceremonial clothing appears from the clouds, standing on a new dragon’s back. Before seeing them, Hiccup thinks it’s his father and starts to say something along the lines of, “Not now, dad." He then sees the figure and becomes alert, telling Toothless, “No sudden movements." The figure and dragon disappear beneath the cloud cover before abruptly reappearing in front of Toothless and Hiccup, causing them to reel back in surprise. There’s a bit of a scuffle before the new dragon grabs Hiccup and takes off with him, leaving Toothless falling helplessly to the icy waters below with both frantically trying to reach the other. Toothless crashes through the ice and into the water, then comes back to the surface only to see Hiccup disappear in the clutches of the dragon and mysterious rider. As Toothless continues to attempt to reach him fruitlessly, these eel-like creatures approach eerily from behind and as they pass Toothless, sweep him beneath the water. The clip ended there and I swear my heart was in my stomach. Hence why I’m pretty sure that this movie will be much darker than the first and the stakes much higher. 
There were announcements regarding voice acting made at the end. Cate Blanchett is voicing Valka, Kit Harrington is voicing Eret, and Djamon Honsou is voicing Drago Bloodfist. Much to our surprise, Kit Harrington showed up for the last fourth of the panel and we got to see a character test of Eret with his voice acting. I can say that he does the role justice and is a fantastic addition to the cast. Eret was further described as always having to introduce himself as Eret, son of Eret, and that he will align himself with the side he thinks will win. Therefore leaving the possibility open that he is not truly evil. He is cocky and doesn’t really have many good come backs to Hiccup until later in the film. 
I asked about the current television series and how that would tie in to the film and was told by Dean that the first two seasons are more in tune with the first film while the third season (a third season is not confirmed, but in my opinion due to the success of the show and franchise, entirely likely) would set up things for the second film. 
Overall, this movie looks very promising and I can say that my anticipation and excitement has only grown. I think we’re going to get everything we expect and more.



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Badpoet’s SDCC reports: HTTYD 2 Panel and Footage
Ok, so first of all my apologies for not updating more regularly throughout the weekend! I went to the Con at about 6 am on Friday intending to go back to the hotel that evening before heading out to camp in line for Hall H, but when I was about to leave after the Flashpoint film it was approximately 9 at night and the line was already dangerously long so I ended up having to just camp out without leaving the Con and so I couldn’t get my wifi. And basically the same thing happened Saturday night, so I was literally at the Con non-stop from 6:30am Friday through 5pm Sunday. I found pockets of wifi here and there but wasn’t able to really do much.

ANYWAY.

Here’s a run-down on the How To Train Your Dragon panel, and I realize this is late news now because other people who were there probably have already spoilered you guys rotten, but I said I would tell you about it and I’m a person of my word.
CHARACTERS.
The new character played by Kit whatshisname looks really promising. For those of you who read a lot of fantasy as kids, his relationship with Hiccup looks like it’ll be reminiscent of Taran and Ellidyr in “The Black Cauldron"—not exactly of course, but there’s a similar age gap and he apparently has a giant ego and likes bragging. His name is Erret, Erett, something like that … [EDIT: I just checked and it’s apparently spelled Eret. Okay then.) He’s a dragon trapper working for the next two movies’ big bad, and he’s apparently extremely good at his job (and knows it). He’s an antagonist for Hiccup but I have the feeling he’s going to eventually become an ally. The filmmakers said he has an ‘interesting arc’ and indicated that his dragon-trapping skills as well as his loyalty are both admirable traits, it’s just that he’s given his loyalty to the wrong man. He figures the villain’s going to win the fight, so he might as well get on the winning side. I assume that his views on this will change. In the character animation test he looked more Celtic-influenced than Viking-influenced (which I LOVE). His character design looks a bit influenced by the character designs for The Croods; he’s dark-haired and he has a prominent chin and from what I recall I’d say he’s a little bit like that stuck-up chieftain’s son who competes for Merida’s hand in “Brave", you know, the dark one. So a cross between that guy and Grug from The Croods. If you can imagine that sort of thing. He’s got tattoos of some kind on his chin, three lines (red or blue, I can’t remember which) running down his chin vertically. I think he’ll be a great character.

Not much news on the big bad. We do know that he’s building an army of dragons who he traps and then forces to serve him somehow … in this way I guess he’s a dark version of Hiccup, someone who can in fact train dragons and is using this ability in an attempt to rule the world and go on a rampaging conquest across the map. We saw no character animation for him or designs or anything. His name’s Drago Bludvist, which got a bit of a chuckle from both panel and audience because if there was ever a name that screamed “I’M AN EVIL DRAGON TRAINER" it would be this one.

The third new character they talked about, and who I think is the most intriguing, is Valka the sort of dragon training resistance fighter. Something of a vigilante, she rescues dragons from Drago. Now, I’m speculating a bit here, but I believe this character is a she and that it’s in fact Cate Blanchett’s character. This is based upon the footage we saw at the panel and descriptions I’ve heard from other footage shown elsewhere. I’m getting the impression that she’s dangerous and not necessarily an ally to Hiccup to begin with at least. If I AM right that Valka is the character we saw in the footage, then her look is FANTASTIC. It’s got a sort of tribal feel to it, African or South American I don’t know exactly … she’s got a wooden stave with a crooked top that’s as tall as herself (and she’s tall), and a really intimidating and impressive mask/headdress. This is why I’m just guessing it’s a her—the design is obviously supposed to be androgynous, with body shape swathed in fabric and some kind of armor I think, and a mask completely covering the face and her being very tall. The headdress is like tall spikes radiating sunbeam-like from her head.

FOOTAGE.
The footage shown consisted of two pretty lengthly clips. I tried to sketch out some of it, as did my brother, so I can make an image post later to try to give you guys as good an idea of what we saw as I can. I’ll try to describe it here first, however.

The first clip started out as basically the teaser trailer we’ve all seen online. It was, however, better than that trailer for a few reasons (and I really liked the trailer, so by this I mean it was near ‘Test Drive’ quality): firstly, the director said that the music in the trailer is not the music that will be played over the scene in the film. Neither, apparently, is the music they played over the scene when they showed it at the panel, but the music they did play—a Jonsi song, apparently!—fit so much better. Also, the flying sequence was more exhilarating and fun because I think they cut out bits for the teaser trailer. Seeing it in full, it flows much better, like Test Drive did. Also, Hiccup is much quieter in the actual scene. In the teaser trailer he kind of whoops, yells things, and so on, and it was a bit jarring. In the actual scene, he only whoops maybe once, and at an appropriate point, so that worked a LOT better.

Anyway, so they fly around, it’s fantastic, and then Hiccup tries out his glider-suit contraption. So cool. This is basically where the teaser trailer ends, but the scene continues. Hiccup begins losing altitude, so Toothless drops behind and below him and shoots a fireball beneath him. The resultant burst of hot air pushes him up. This is evidently a system the two of them have been practicing, as Hiccup dips again, Toothless blows fire to raise him up again, and this happens about five times. Then, looming out of the clouds ahead of them, is a giant rock formation. Since Hiccup’s just gliding, he can’t really avoid smashing into it, and Toothless—his tail locked in one position since Hiccup’s not on his back—can’t avoid it either. Toothless panics, surges forward, and shoots a fireball at the rocks right before grabbing Hiccup and curling his body around him. They smash through the fire-weakened stone and crash-land on a grassy cliff some distance behind it. Shakily the two get to their feet—they’re uninjured. As Hiccup brushes himself off, the rock formation they smashed through is visible behind him and it slowly breaks apart and falls into the sea, making both Hiccup and Toothless wince guiltily—but not TOO guiltily. This is the part at the end of the teaser, where Hiccup takes off his helmet to reveal his 19-year-old face as well as his stubbly chin (YES HE HAS STUBBLE AND WISPY LITTLE HAIRS ALONG HIS JAWLINE I CHECKED YOU’RE WELCOME). A note from the filmmakers here: they said they have yet to finish the animation and so if his face looked a little too smooth and unblemished in the teaser, that’s why. They made specific mention of still needing to add his freckles, for example. So rest assured he will look awesome. Even if the details still need work, I can vouch for the fact that his body language and expressions are 100% Hiccup and it’s fantastic.
Hiccup sees their little crash-landing as more amusing than anything else, but Toothless is sulky about it. What follows is a glorious slapsticky scene where Hiccup tries to distract Toothless out of his sulk by wrestling with him. He’s bigger now, but so is Toothless, so the dragon just sits there unmoved while Hiccup shoves at him. Hiccup then tries to get Toothless in a headlock, wrapping his arms around Toothless’ neck. With a very deadpan expression, Toothless simply stands up on his hind legs, the result being Hiccup now dangles from Toothless’ neck with his feet well off the ground. He refuses to let go, so Toothless waddles on his hind legs towards the edge of the cliff, the end result being that Hiccup is dangling off the edge over a very long drop. He wheedles with Toothless, something about how it’s not right to treat a cripple that way, and so Toothless relents … there’s more tussling that happens, but I forget exactly how it goes (though I remember I and everyone else in the room was delighted by it) until Hiccup ends up pinned and a now cheerful Toothless licks him enthusiastically on the face, with Hiccup complaining about how dragon saliva stains.

Apparently Hiccup and Toothless have been taking time away from Berk to go exploring since the end of the first film. Hiccup’s natural curiosity is now manifested in trying to expand the borders of Berk’s maps. After the cute boy-and-his-dragon play fight the two get up and from the cliff he is standing on he can see a totally new landscape stretched out below him—I remember it being a little jungley, certainly trees everywhere and lots of mist, and lots of rolling hills. He soaks in the delight of finding a new place for a couple seconds, and then gets straight to business. He closes the wings on his glider-suit, and then starts pulling out all sorts of new gadgets. He has a flip-out compass, for example, on one arm’s bracer. On his right arm he has a gauntlet that he can unlatch and it opens up to reveal a book, which he tears a page from so he can draw out his new map. I REALLY WANT A BOOK GAUNTLET NOW. There were other cool things on his outfit but I forget what now … Basically everything seems multipurpose, so again it makes sense that this is something Hiccup would design—and it looks cool! Though the filmmakers said that their goal was to make him an outfit that you could imagine Hiccup crafted for himself and wears proudly, like dragon-riding bike leather, but which Astrid also mocks him mercilessly for.
Oh, he also changes his prosthetic foot; it’s rotatable so he flips it from dragon-flying foot that locks into Toothless’ stirrups to a flatter-bottomed foot for walking on. Looked cool.

Anyway, he takes out a map and using Toothless’ saliva as glue adds his new bit of paper to one edge, then asks Toothless what they should call the new land they’ve discovered. Toothless sniffs at Hiccup, who nods and says “All right, Stinky Armpit it is" or something like that. Turning a little more serious, he tells Toothless something along the lines of maybe they’ll actually find another Night Fury here, so beyond just wanting to travel and explore it seems another motivation for this exploration is finding Toothless a Night Fury friend. The scene ends with a strange noise causing both Hiccup and Toothless to whip around to look behind themselves with looks of alarm on their faces.

SCENE THE SECOND apparently takes place after Hiccup has an argument with Stoick. He’s soaring above thick clouds with Toothless—like how he and Astrid flew over clouds so thick it looked like a solid floor in the first film—and after a bit of fuming he yells in rage and flops back to lie on Toothless’ back. Toothless looks concerned. Hiccup murmurs something to him about how he won’t let anything happen to him. Then a figure rises out of the clouds they are skimming over; Hiccup assumes it’s his father following him on dragonback and so starts saying something angrily, but then he looks up and realizes with a jolt—it’s not Stoick. It’s the tribal-looking Dragon rider I’m assuming is Valka.
The visuals here are fantastic and really spooky—she’s utterly silent, and you cannot see her dragon, as it’s beneath the clouds cover. She just looks like she’s standing with her feet drowned in golden cloud, gliding along ahead of Toothless, her staff in one hand. She motions to Hiccup, then slowly sinks into the cloud. Hiccup of course is flabbergasted, and then a giant dragon erupts from the clouds—I’d say it was probably about seven times Toothless’ size, with a massive wingspan. It has an almost turtle-y head, with big tusk-like things curving around its mouth from its jaws. On its back is Valka. Hiccup tells Toothless to hold, and so they just hover there, beating up great smoky plumes of cloud with Toothless’ beating wings, and the other dragon does the same thing, which seems to unnerve Hiccup though he still tries to play things cool for Toothless, telling Toothless repeatedly to wait and not make any move. But then Valka’s dragon darts forward and grabs Hiccup in its talons, which is something totally unexpected. It drags him from the saddle so the harness snaps and Toothless, artificial tail-fin thus rendered useless, plummets while frantically trying to pursue Valka. Hiccup is screaming for Toothless but gets carried higher into the air and then away; Toothless falls and hits the ocean, sinking into icy water. There’s frightening-looking creatures in the water that attack him, kind of mantis-ray looking dragony things. He’s fighting them off and trying to stay afloat and obviously desperate to get to Hiccup, but his efforts don’t work and he sinks under the water. There’s a shot from Toothless’ underwater POV looking up at the light filtering through the water and a shot from above showing he’s totally under, and then Hiccup’s empty helmet bobs desolately to the surface of the water, and the clip ends. It was all pretty intense. Also I was heartily distracted because over the Toothless falling/drowning bits they were playing the Bridge of Khazad-dum music from Fellowship of the Ring, you know, the sad music after Gandalf falls? It was pretty funny. But the footage itself was superb. The whole room gasped in horror when it ended XD
OTHER ODDS AND ENDS
"Empire Strikes Back" was mentioned a lot as an influence, or at least as a model they took for what a good second-parter in a trilogy should do. A LOT. This is both wonderful and worrisome. The director also said that he only agreed to make sequels to the first film if he was allowed to make two films (to make the whole set a trilogy), because he felt if he could make the entire first film a part one of a thematic whole then he could make it work, and he also stipulated that films two and three had to go together—the ending of film two has to make audiences frantic for film three, has to make them want to see what’s going to happen. So basically I’m now terrified that film two will see Hiccup and Toothless getting separated in some awful way. No matter what, I’m betting there’s a lot of emotional pain coming for Dragons fans!

And this was a lot of typing, but hopefully it was a worthwhile read! I could not have been happier with the footage shown, nor with what was said about the film’s creative directions and where things are going plotwise. This could be animation’s Lord of the Rings, and how fantastic would that be? I’m looking forward to this movie a lot. Tonally it looks excellent, visuals look superb, new characters seem great and old characters seem to have evolved sensibly but still are clearly the ones we fell in love with in film one, and since Empire’s an influence this film will probably hurt a lot. Huzzah! XD

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