DreamWorks Animation still lags slightly behind Pixar when it comes to making genuinely first-class animated movies, and probably will for as long as it insists on its overambitious pace of two films per year. But in How to Train Your Dragon, the studio has a property to equal just about anything in its more garlanded rival's back catalogue. The first movie detailed weedy teen Hiccup's efforts to convince his motley tribe of boisterous Vikings that the winged beasties that are the scourge of their village should be loved, not feared. Now comes the sequel, for which bloggers and journalists were treated to almost an hour of new footage in London on Friday. It looks set to send the saga soaring to new levels of scaly, flame-spewing brilliance.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 finds Hiccup five years older and threatened with the imminent prospect of assuming the chieftainship of Berk, the Scandinavian island where everyone is Scottish apart from the youngsters, who are inexplicably American. Our hero may have developed a new currency with his spotty peers since the events of the first movie, but he remains racked with self-doubt about his future.

It's a good thing that DreamWorks has signed up the most likable of Hollywood's Woody Allen types, Jay Baruchel, to continue voicing all those insecurities. But pretty soon there are more imminent threats to worry about. A crew of dragon trappers with estuary English accents are marauding the Nordic seas, and they don't seem to have bought into Hiccup's beastie-loving new world order. Even worse, their boss is a horrid dragon-hater named Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou) who wants to destroy Berk, and all the dragons on it.

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Complicating matters is an elusive dragon whisperer vigilante-turned-hermit, Valka (Cate Blanchett) who claims to be Hiccup's long-lost mother. Might her personality offer clues as to why our hero has never felt entirely comfortably in his own skin?

Dean DeBlois, the Canadian director of the sequel, was on hand in London with the British writer of the books upon which the film series is based, Cressida Cowell, to answer a few questions. DeBlois cited Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back as a key influence on the second movie, and said work had already begun on a third film to complete the trilogy.

"It's one of the few sequels that really lives up to its predecessor," he said. "Having seen that film as a kid, it takes everything I loved about the first film and expands on it. The scope increases, the characters become richer. And the stakes are higher. It was a tone that was very much the goal on this film. There were elements that are so exciting and none better to aspire to. I definitely hold it up as a hallmark."

Cowell was happy to see the films by DreamWorks depart radically from the narrative and style of the 12 books in the series. "I wanted people to feel they could do their own thing with them," she said. "I was not hovering over it like a discontented ghost, saying don't do it like this.

"I think I've been unbelievably lucky," she said. "I love the films and could not be luckier or happier. The books are funny, adventurous and exciting but also emotional. And that's a very hard combination to pull off. Mood is a hard thing to do, and these movies really have it."

While The Empire Strikes Back comparison might seem far-fetched, it's clear that serious time and thought has gone into making How to Train Your Dragon 2 a sequel that can standup to, or even surpass, the original. As one of my favourite animated movies of the past five years I was desperately hoping to see DreamWorks knock it out of the park at the preview. Film number two, I'm happy to report, maintains everything that made the first movie such a vivid experience: the aerial sequences are fabulous, there are gazillions of new dragons with all kinds of unexpected characteristics – one giant alpha-dragon actually breathes ice – and there's a familiar thread of comedy running through the whole thing that had us all guffawing throughout the screening. The ingenious Hiccup has also concocted an assortment of new weapons and tools, one of which rather resembles a very cool flaming lightsaber to help him in his battles. And if you think the peg leg he picked up at the end of the first movie is going to hold him back, you had probably better think again.

I'm not sure there can be anyone out there who didn't love the first How to Train Your Dragon movie. But if there is, here's the chance to vent your curmudgeonly spleen. For the rest of us, the film's release date of 4 July in the UK (13 June for lucky North Americans) can't come soon enough.