2014: #20a

Readers, I've miscounted again. Can you believe this s*@t?

I assure you, it will all add up/work out in the end.

Get it together, Mulhern! (shouts profanities, headbutts mirror, etc.)

#20a How to Train Your Dragon 2

There's a scene in Clerks where Dante and Randall are discussing the merits of Empire Strikes Back vs. the merits of Return of the Jedi. Before Randall launches into his brilliant take on the construction politics surrounding the building of the second Death Star, he simply asks "Which one you like better? Empire or Jedi?" Dante, ever the cynic responds: "Empire...it has the better ending. Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader's his father, Han gets froze and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's all life is...a series of down endings. All Jedi had was a bunch of muppets."

If the lovable Dragon series goes trilogy, which I imagine it will, consider the second installment its Empire Strikes Back. The tone is twice as serious and glum as the first, and it made watching it at times a little more excruciating. We have fast-forwarded a few years in the future, and Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is still attached at the hip to his Night Fury dragon counterpart Toothless. Now that the village has come to revere the scaled beasts, dragons are being utilized for recreation, racing and companionship. Stoick (Gerard Butler) is hoping that Hiccup is ready to take the reins as the leader of their Viking clan when the time is right, but Hiccup has other ideas. One day he and Astrid (America Ferrara) are out exploring ice caves with their dragons when they come across dragon trapper Eret (Kit Harrington, AKA GoT's Jon Snow) who is working for evil warlord Drago (Dijmon Honsou). They fly back to warn Stoick and co. about it, and though he tells them to help fortify the town, they defy him and go try to talk to Drago instead. On the way, they're captured by a different trapper--an older woman named Valka (Cate Blanchett) who turns out to be Hiccup's long lost mother. Soon after, Hiccup, along with both his parents, Astrid and others, are in a deadly trap set by Drago, who boasts a gargantuan Alpha dragon (the mothership, essentially) named Bewilderbeast.

Baruchel nails the confusion and angst of Hiccup as he works through the pitfalls of Viking adolescence. Everyone else is serviceable, and obviously Honsou's voice alone can move animated mountains. There are sad moments throughout, but the toughest part comes when our prodragonist Toothless, under the mind control of the Bewilderbeast, does something unthinkable. The biggest strength may just be the animation itself. If it's more complex than the first, it looks even better, with the seas and mountains of Scandinavia appearing inherently real and the flight of the dragons a thing of beauty.