DreamWorks’ brilliant and surprising How To Train Your Dragon proved that excellent animated films do not just come from the Pixar factory. The aptly named sequel, How To Train Your Dragon 2, hopes to keep that track record going, with new dragons, new battles, and new characters, but plenty of the same high-flying action that made the original so much fun.
A newly released trailer for How To Train Your Dragon 2 gives us a bit more plot than the previous ones have, along with hints about characters new and old. Our good friends Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his dragon Toothless have returned, leading the charge of Vikings on dragons and dealing with some growing pains of their own. When they discover a secret ice cave that’s home to dragons their homeland never even knew existed, they’re pushed into a new adventure involving Hiccup’s vanished mother (Cate Blanchett) and a villain named Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou), a dragon hunter.
The trailer features a lot of flying and swooping, but also some hints about the pasts and futures of our characters. Why did Hiccup’s mother leave her son? What impact will the discovery of the new dragons have on our fearless duo, and their homeland? How awesome will this movie look in 3D? These are all questions that the trailer attempts to answer.
How To Train Your Dragon 2 is shaping up to a major release on the upcoming summer slate. It’s also one of the few sequels I’m actually excited about. Hopefully DreamWorks Animation can fulfill the unenviable task of making a film that’s a reasonable extension of the original, and not just a repeat of the same tropes.
We’ll soon find out if How To Train Your Dragon 2 is as good as it looks when the film comes to theatres June 20. Until then, you can watch the latest trailer below.