How to Train Your Dragon 2

Plot

Five years after the Viking villagers of Berk and the dragons have made peace, Hiccup and his Night Fury best friend, Toothless, map out unexplored lands. Hiccup's father, Stoick the Vast, pressures him to succeed as chieftain, although Hiccup is uncertain whether he is ready.

While investigating a burnt forest, Hiccup and his girlfriend Astrid are ambushed by dragon trappers led by Eret, who works for Drago Bludvist, a warlord who plots to enslave all dragons into becoming soldiers. Hiccup and Astrid escape to Berk and warn Stoick about Drago. As Stoick fortifies Berk to prepare for battle, he explains that he once met Drago at a chieftain gathering, where Drago offered them protection from dragons if they pledged to serve him; upon denying him, he had his dragons attack them, leaving Stoick as the sole survivor.

Hiccup refuses to accept that war is inevitable and flies off with Toothless in search of Drago to change his mind. Instead, they encounter a mysterious dragon rider, who is revealed to be Hiccup's mother, Valka, who was presumed dead after being taken away by a dragon during a raid. Valka explains that, like her son, she could not bring herself to slay dragons; instead, she rescues them from Drago and brings them to an island nest formed out of ice by a massive, ice-breathing alpha dragon called a Bewilderbeast, which can control smaller dragons by emitting hypnotic sound waves. Stoick and his companion Gobber track Hiccup to the nest, where Stoick discovers that Valka is alive, and they finally reunite. Meanwhile, Astrid and the other riders force Eret to lead them to Drago, who captures them. Upon learning of Berk's dragons, Drago directs his armada to attack the dragon nest. He also tries to execute Eret, but Astrid's dragon, Stormfly, saves him, prompting Eret to help the others escape.

A battle rages at the nest between dragon riders, Valka's dragons, and Drago's armada. Drago unveils his own Bewilderbeast to confront the alpha, killing it and becoming the new Alpha, thus controlling all dragons. Hiccup urges Drago to cease the violence, but he refuses, citing his family's deaths from dragon attacks in his childhood and his desire to conquer the world. His Bewilderbeast hypnotizes Toothless and forces him to kill Hiccup, but Stoick sacrifices himself by taking the fatal blast instead, and Hiccup drives Toothless away out of grief. The group is stranded as Drago takes control of their dragons and rides Toothless to conquer Berk. After the group holds a Viking funeral for Stoick, Hiccup feels lost without his father and his dragon, where Valka reminds him that his father believed he could unite humans and dragons. Inspired, Hiccup and his allies return to Berk on baby dragons, immune to the Bewilderbeast's influence.

Voice cast

Jay Baruchel as Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, the son of the Viking chief Stoick the Vast and Valka, and Astrid's boyfriend.

America Ferrera as Astrid Hofferson, Hiccup's girlfriend.

Cate Blanchett as Valka Haddock, Stoick's wife, Hiccup's long-lost mother and a dragon rescuer.

Mary Jane Wells provides Valka's singing voice during "For the Dancing and the Dreaming"

Gerard Butler as Stoick the Vast, chieftain of the Viking tribe of Berk, Hiccup's father and Valka's husband.

Craig Ferguson as Gobber the Belch, Stoick's closest friend and a seasoned warrior.

Jonah Hill as Snotlout Jorgenson.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Fishlegs Ingerman.

Kristen Wiig and T.J. Miller as Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston, the fraternal twins.

Djimon Hounsou as Drago Bludvist, a ruthless warlord and dragon hunter who seeks to take over the world with a dragon army.

Kit Harington as Eret, son of Eret, a dragon trapper who sells captured dragons to Drago.

Randy Thom as vocal effects for Toothless and Stormfly.

Production

Development

After the success of How to Train Your Dragon (2010), the sequel was announced on April 27, 2010. "How to Train Your Dragon … has become DreamWorks Animation's next franchise. We plan to release the sequel theatrically in 2013", said Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation's CEO. It was later revealed that DeBlois had started drafting the outline for a sequel in February 2010 at Skywalker Ranch, during the final sound mix of the first film. The film was originally scheduled for release on June 20, 2014, but in August 2013 the release date was moved forward one week to June 13, 2014.

The film was written, directed, and executive produced by Dean DeBlois, the co-writer/co-director of the first film. Bonnie Arnold, the producer of the first film, also returned, while Chris Sanders, who co-directed and co-wrote the first film, acted only as an additional executive producer this time due to his involvement with The Croods (2013). When offered the sequel, DeBlois accepted it on condition he could turn it into a trilogy. For the sequel, he intended to revisit the films of his youth, with The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and My Neighbor Totoro (1988) having the pivotal inspirations for the film. "What I loved especially about Empire is that it expanded Star Wars (1977) in every direction: emotionally, its scope, characters, fun. It felt like an embellishment and that's the goal."

The entire original voice cast—Baruchel, Butler, Ferguson, Ferrera, Hill, Mintz-Plasse, Miller and Wiig—returned for the sequel. On June 19, 2012, it was announced that Kit Harington, of Game of Thrones fame, was cast as one of the film's antagonists. At the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that Cate Blanchett and Djimon Hounsou had joined the cast; they lent their voices to Valka and Drago Bludvist, respectively.

While the first film was set in a generic North Sea environment, the creative team decided to focus on Norway this time around. Early in the sequel's development, about a dozen of them traveled there for a week-long research trip, where they toured Oslo, Bergen and the fjords. DeBlois, together with Gregg Taylor (DreamWorks' head of feature development) and Roger Deakins (a cinematographer who served as visual consultant), then broke off from the group to visit Svalbard and see polar bears in the wild with the assistance of armed guides.

DeBlois explained that he had learned from directing Lilo & Stitch (2002) that "if you set an animated film in a place you want to visit, there's a chance you might get to go there." He had wanted to visit Svalbard for some time, after learning of its stark beauty from a couple of backpackers he met during earlier visits to Iceland to work with post-rock band Sigur Rós on the documentary film Heima (2007).

Animation

Over the five years before the film's release, DreamWorks Animation had substantially overhauled its production workflow and animation software. How to Train Your Dragon 2 was the first DreamWorks Animation film that used "scalable multicore processing", developed together with Hewlett-Packard. Called by Katzenberg as "the next revolution in filmmaking", it enabled artists for the first time to work on rich, complex images in real time, instead of waiting eight hours to see the results the next day. The film was also the studio's first film to use its new animation and lighting software through the entire production. Programs named Premo and Torch allowed much more subtlety, improving facial animation and enabling "the sense of fat, jiggle, loose skin, the sensation of skin moving over muscle instead of masses moving together."

By the time production was complete, over 500 people had worked on the film at DreamWorks Animation's headquarters in Glendale, as well as its branch offices at PDI/DreamWorks in Redwood City and DreamWorks India in Bangalore.

Release

The film was screened out of competition on May 16, 2014, at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. In the United States, the film premiered on June 8, 2014, at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles, and was theatrically released on June 13, 2014. The film was also digitally remastered into IMAX 3D and released to international theaters on June 13, 2014.

Home media

How to Train Your Dragon 2 was released digitally on October 21, 2014, and was subsequently released on DVD and Blu-ray (both 2D and 3D) on November 11. The Blu-ray and digital releases are accompanied by a new animated short film entitled Dawn of the Dragon Racers (2014), in which Hiccup and friends compete to become the first Dragon Racing Champion of Berk.

A double DVD pack with the film and Dawn of the Dragon Racers was released exclusively at Walmart stores. As of February 2015, 7.5 million home entertainment units have been sold worldwide.

On January 22, 2019, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray version of How to Train Your Dragon 2 alongside its predecessor, making them the first catalog DreamWorks Animation films to be released on that format.

Reception

Critical response

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 92% based on reviews from 184 critics, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Exciting, emotionally resonant, and beautifully animated, How to Train Your Dragon 2 builds on its predecessor's successes just the way a sequel should." Metacritic gives the film a score of 77 out of 100 based on reviews from 48 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore during the opening weekend gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Audiences were a mix of 47% female and 53% male. Children and Young Adults responded most strongly, with those aged under 25 giving a grade A+.

At the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Peter Debruge of Variety praised the film and its ambitions: "The pressures to make a giant four-quadrant monstrosity must be enormous, and yet, like his unflappable hero Hiccup, How to Train Your Dragon 2 writer-director Dean DeBlois has prevailed, serving up DreamWorks Animation's strongest sequel yet—one that breathes fresh fire into the franchise, instead of merely rehashing the original. Braver than Brave, more fun than Frozen, and more emotionally satisfying than so many of its live-action counterparts, Dragon delivers. And good thing, too, since DWA desperately needs another toon to cross the half-billion-dollar threshold." Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News gave the film three out of five stars, saying "It's the unflinching edge that gives the film its unexpected depth." Jocelyn Noveck of the Associated Press gave the film three out of four stars, saying "How to Train Your Dragon 2 doesn't play it safe, and that's why it's the rare sequel that doesn't feel somewhat stale." Joe McGovern of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B, saying "The flight path needs straightening, but this is still a franchise that knows how to fly." Jody Mitori of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch gave the film three out of four stars, saying "For audiences who want a sweet story, they can't beat the first film of a boy finding his best friend. For those who are ready for the next stage, try this one about a boy becoming a man."

Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic gave the film four out of five stars, saying "It seemed as if there was nowhere new to go after the first film, but this is a richer story that dares to go darker and is thus more rewarding." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "Dragon 2, like The Empire Strikes Back, takes sequels to a new level of imagination and innovation. It truly is a high-flying, depth-charging wonder to behold." Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film three out of four stars, saying "DeBlois, who also wrote the script, successfully juggles the multiple story lines, shifting allegiances and uncharted lands." Rafer Guzman of Newsday gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Gruesome? A little. Scary? You bet. But that's exactly what makes the Dragon films so different, and so much better, than the average children's fare." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "For once, we have an animated sequel free of the committee-job vibe so common at every animation house, no matter the track record." Stephen Holden of The New York Times gave the film a negative review, saying "The story seems to be going somewhere until it comes to a halt with the inevitable showdown between the forces of darkness and the forces of light." Peter Howell of the Toronto Star gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Taking its cues as much from Star Wars and Game of Thrones as from its own storybook narrative, How to Train Your Dragon 2 breathes fire into a franchise sequel."

Box office

How to Train Your Dragon 2 grossed $177 million in North America, and $445 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $622 million. The film is the second-highest-grossing animated film of 2014, behind Big Hero 6, and the twelfth-highest-grossing film of the year in any genre. While How to Train Your Dragon 2 only earned $177 million at the US box office, compared to $217 million for its predecessor, it performed much better at the international box office, earning $438 million to How to Train Your Dragon's $277 million. Calculating in all expenses, Deadline Hollywood estimated that the film made a profit of $107.3 million.

In the United States and Canada, the film earned $18.5 million on its opening day, and opened at number two in its first weekend below 22 Jump Street, with $49,451,322. In its second weekend, the film dropped to number three, grossing an additional $24,719,312. In its third weekend, the film stayed at number three, grossing $13,237,697. In its fourth weekend, the film dropped to number five, grossing $8,961,088.

Its $25.9 million opening weekend in China was the biggest-ever for an animated film in the country, surpassing the record previously held by Kung Fu Panda 2.

Music

Composer John Powell, who earned his first Academy Award nomination for his music in the original movie, returned to score the sequel. Powell described the project as "a maturation story" and stated that he too tried to achieve the same maturation in the structure of his music by developing further every aspect of his compositions from the original film. Recording took place during April 2014 at Abbey Road Studios in London with a 120-piece orchestra, a 100-voice choir, and a wide array of ethnic instruments, including Celtic harp, uilleann bagpipes, tin whistle, bodhrán, and Highland bagpipes; the latter of which were performed by pipers from the Scottish group Red Hot Chilli Pipers. The ensemble was conducted by the composer's usual collaborator Gavin Greenaway.

Sigur Rós' lead vocalist, Jónsi, who wrote and performed the song "Sticks & Stones" for the first film, provided two new original songs for the sequel in collaboration with Powell: "For the Dancing and the Dreaming" (performed by Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson and Mary Jane Wells) and "Where No One Goes" (performed by Jónsi himself). Belarusian-Norwegian artist Alexander Rybak, who voices Hiccup in the Norwegian dub of the film, also wrote and performed the song "Into a Fantasy", which is only featured in the European versions of the film.

The soundtrack album for the film was released on June 13, 2014, by Relativity Music Group. The album features over an hour of score by Powell; additional music by Anthony Willis and Paul Mounsey, as well as the two original songs written by Powell and Jónsi. Rybak's song "Into a Fantasy" was released separately as a single. A deluxe edition, consisting of previously unreleased music, was released by Varèse Sarabande in May 2022.

Video game

A video game based on the film, also titled How to Train Your Dragon 2, was released in June 2014 by Little Orbit. Developed by Torus Games, the game is available for Xbox 360, Nintendo 3DS, Wii, Wii U, and PlayStation 3.

Related projects

Sequel

The third installment in the trilogy, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, was released on February 22, 2019; the release date had been changed multiple times due to various distributor changes. DeBlois, Arnold, Powell and all of the main cast (with the exception of Miller, whose role was recast to Justin Rupple) returned for the third film, with Blanchett and Harington reprising their roles from the second. F. Murray Abraham joined the cast as Grimmel.

Live-action remake

On April 2, 2025, Universal Pictures announced a live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon 2, following the live-action remake of the first film. How to Train Your Dragon 2 is scheduled for release on June 11, 2027. In January 2026, it was revealed that Blanchett would reprise her role as Valka, and that Ólafur Darri Ólafsson had been cast as Drago. Phil Dunster was later announced to have been cast as Eret.