How to Train Your Dragon 2 director Dean DeBlois talks soaring sequel

It's nearly half term and family movies are bound on the agenda for many of you. So there's no better time to start pencilling in the forthcoming release of animated sequel How to Train Your Dragon 2.

In 2010, How to Train Your Dragon soared into the hearts of audiences both young and old with its thrilling story of Viking loser Hiccup and his unlikely friendship with a captured dragon named Toothless. Now, both characters are back for the sequel – and according to director Dean DeBlois, Hiccup's changed quite a bit!

"We start five years later," he explained at Comic Con 2013, "and we do something that rarely happens in animation which is age our characters… We step into Hiccup's coming-of-age, he's a curious character and an innovative character. He's working on aerodynamics, he's made his own Viking 'bike leather' and his hobby is to explore the Viking map."

Jay Baruchel, most recently seen in RoboCop, returns to voice Hiccup. Given that the character was such a loveable doofus in the first film, how has he changed in the past five years? "He's the runt of the Viking litter," DeBlois says, "so we didn't want to abandon that. He's now 20 years old and we wanted to give him an element of cool. However, it's a questionable cool!"

Cool or not, we can't wait to see Hiccup saddle up Toothless once again for the sequel. Tell us whether you're excited about How to Train Your Dragon 2, which is released on 4 July.

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